Oakland A’s lose to Dodgers, break more records in historically bad start
OAKLAND — The Oakland A’s are not a terrible team, but they’re playing terrible baseball.
That’s the scope of a dismal 0-5 start to the season, a historic losing streak extended by a 10-3 loss to the defending World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers on Monday night at the Coliseum.
“We haven’t done anything well,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Seems like everything that can go wrong has at this point.”
The 0-5 start is the A’s franchise’s third in history and first since 1987 (the other came in 1979). The A’s have been outscored 45-12, and have allowed at least nine runs in four straight games.
“It’s frustrating, obviously,” Melvin said. “It plays off of what we’ve done the last four games. Got behind early in the game and didn’t have an answer.”
At issue for the A’s is that they aren’t playing up to their standards in any facet. The pitching staff has been porous top to bottom. The A’s join the 1995 Chicago White Sox and 1974 San Diego Padres as the only teams since 1901 to allow more than eight runs in their first five games. The White Sox finished their season with 76 losses in the strike-shortened season. The Padres finished with 108 losses.
Though frustration is inevitable, there’s little panic from the team. It’s fair to say panicking may make matters worse, anyway.
“We’re a little down,” starting pitcher Frankie Montas said. “We lost five games in a row so we’re a little down. We know we’re a good team. It’s a little funk, and as soon as we’re out of it we’ll be running.”
The pitching woes start with the rotation; once through it now, the group as a collective holds a league-worst 9.81 ERA. Like his rotation-mates, Montas looked strong in the first inning on Monday, firing 99mph sinkers, a devastating splitter and slider for a clean inning. But trouble struck almost immediately after. The Dodgers were game to make each at bat uncomfortable. They started fouling off almost every fastball he threw, and pounced on his slider and splitter.
“I was getting a lot of foul balls and they made me throw a lot of pitches,” “It felt like they were sitting off-speed the whole time, and that’s how they did their damage, on off-speed.”
Mookie Betts reached on a ground ball Platinum Glover Matt Chapman couldn’t handle and powerful left-handed hitter Corey Seager knocked a bases-loaded double 106mph off the bat and Montas’ inning spiraled into a seven-run outing that lasted all of 2 2/3 innings. Montas said Chapman “apologized, like, 10 times” about the missed ground ball, but Montas could never be angry with Chapman, he said.
“I’m like, ‘Dude it’s all good, don’t worry about it.’ At the end of the day he’s going to be a guy that’s going to save me 20 runs on the season,” Montas said.
Still, it takes two to lose five-straight. The A’s bats went from listless to near lifeless against Dodgers young hurler Dustin May, who spun six scoreless innings with eight strikeouts, two walks and two hits.
Yes, the A’s collected all of two hits against May. Mark Canha led off the game with one, then the they didn’t get another until Mitch Moreland singled in the sixth.
They made some noise against long reliever David Price. Canha prevented the shutout with a solo home run in the eighth inning. And they managed to add on with Matt Chapman’s infield single good for an RBI. Ka’ai Tom’s first big league hit later on in the inning was a solid RBI single for the A’s third run. For those keeping count: That’s a first big league RBI, hit and inning pitched for Tom in a matter of two games.
Another silver lining was A.J. Puk, called up from the alternate site to replace an injured Chad Pinder on the active roster and replenish an overworked bullpen. Puk was the A’s most valuable player, tossing 3 1/3 scoreless innings with four strikeouts.
“A lot of work went into it and it was great to be out there,” Puk said. “The more you get into the game the more you get into the flow. I wanted to come in there and eat some innings and save arms in the bullpen so they can be fresh tomorrow.”
Puk didn’t have his best command, he walked three, but he was effective and kept strong contact limited. He even escaped a bases loaded jam by striking out Alex Rios looking at a 95.5 mph fastball.
Of some concern was Puk’s lower velocity in spring. The left-hander who averaged 97mph on his fastball in 2019 was touching 93mph at best in spring. But Puk cranked his velocity up to 96mph on Monday.
“His velocity still wasn’t there, then all of the sudden it ticked up today,” Melvin said. “Like I said, he saved us. We needed those innings out of him. Not only did we get the innings out of him but he was pretty economical and he got results, too. As far as the big league level that’s as well as he’s pitched at a time when we needed him to give us the innings.”
Puk dealt 65 pitches, and Melvin said the plan is to have him in the bullpen for now. In terms of saving innings, Puk did the trick. But Reymin Guduan, who pitched the ninth in another blowout, injured his hand colliding with Dodgers’ slugger Cody Bellinger. He left the game, forcing the A’s to go to J.B Wendelken for an out that inning.