A’s Shintaro Fujinami delivers best outing, not good enough for historic win

Shintaro Fujinami’s best outing of his three-start career left him with his third loss, and the A's fell to 3-12 following Saturday’s 3-2 defeat to the New York Mets before 12,967 fans at the Coliseum. 

OAKLAND – The way Shintaro Fujinami was dealing, he put himself in line for first his first major league win Saturday, and the first ever by a Japanese-born starting pitcher in A’s history.

Alas, that will have to wait for another day.

Fujinami’s best outing of his three-start career left him with his third loss, a typical result in this staggering start to the A’s season. They’ve now lost 12 of 15 games following Saturday’s 3-2 defeat to the New York Mets before 12,967 fans at the Coliseum.

Fujinama’s line: six-plus innings, four hits, two runs, two walks, and five strikeouts on 92 pitches, those latter two categories being career highs.

“To be honest, I wanted to get through the seventh and get the win, but it was a little tough,” Fujinama said through a translator.

A’s manager Mark Kotsay entered Saturday’s game seeking six innings from Fujinami, and that barely happened, once the 29-year-old right-hander induced three consecutive groundouts to reach the seventh with a 2-1 lead.

“It was a great step forward for Fuji and for us as a team to send him back out,” Kotsay said.

Fujinami opened the seventh by surrendering his second solo home run of the day, this one to former A’s star Mark Canha down the left-field line to pull the Mets into a 2-2 tie. Fujinama got pulled after walking the next batter, and that left him on the hook for a potential loss, as pinch-runner Tim Locastro scored on Brandon Nimmo’s two-out single off reliever Trevor May.

Fujinami proved sharper than his first two starts — those also came on Saturdays — when the A’s dropped those by a combined score of 24-1. He got charged with 13 of those runs in 6 2/3 innings, never making it beyond the fifth inning in either start.

“I feel more comfortable and I’m getting used to a major league atmosphere,” Fujinami said.

This outing, Fujinama struck out four of the first eight batters, he did not allow a walk through four innings, and his shutout bid ended on a solo home run by Pete Alonso in the fifth to cut the A’s lead to 2-1 — the first lead Fujinama had to protect as a major leaguer.

“He has nasty stuff,” catcher Carlos Perez said. “He had command of his fastball and mixed it well with the cutter and split. His fastball rises a lot, the split looks like a sinker, and it’s hard for hitters.”

When he took the mound in the sixth, he hit Sterling Marte with a 1-0 pitch, but three groundouts stranded Marte. Highlighting that stretch was a short-hop scoop from shortstop Aledmys Diaz with the infield playing in and Sam Moll warming up in the bullpen.

This was the pitching prowess Fujinama showcased the previous decade for Hanshin in Japan, and it prompted the A’s to sign him to a one-year, $3.25 million deal in January.

Fujinami, who turned 29 on Wednesday, still made Saturday’s showing one of the most encouraging moments in this rough but expected start to the A’s season.

“He attacked today, did an outstanding job, pounded the zone, threw strikes,” Kotsay said. “He really dominated, I thought, pretty much the whole game. … He had command of the fastball and that made everything else play. When he can do that, he’s going to be really good.”

As Fujinama calmly exited to the dugout, he drew a round of applause from the fans, which included a bevy of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, blue-clad Mets fans, as well as others who showed up for the kelly-green ballcap giveaway on Jackie Robinson Day.

Two weeks ago, Fujinama yielded the most runs ever in a major league debut by an Oakland pitcher, surrendering eight runs in 2 1/3 innings as the Angles posted a 13-1 win at the Coliseum. That said, Fujinama retired the side in order through two innings.

A week later, he again turned in a boom-then-bust performance, taking a no-hitter into the fourth inning, only to exit in the fifth after coughing up five runs, three hits, four walks and a hit batter.

“I tried to do too much the last two outings,” Fujinama said.

Fujinama had a lead to work with for the first time in his MLB career Saturday once the A’s scored twice in the second inning: Ramón Laureano came home first after a leadoff single, and Esteury Ruiz’s single brought in Diaz for a 2-0 lead.

Those were the only runs the A’s could push across. They stranded nine, including Shea Langeliers at third base as Kevin Smith struck out to end the game.

Fujinami opened this game with a strikeout and flyout, before Francisco Lindor ripped a 97.6-mph fastball into the right-field corner for a double. Fujinama answered by striking out the cleanup hitter Alonso on three pitches. After a two-out single to Nimmo in the third,  Fujinami got Marte to fly out to the center-field track on a 3-0, 97.8-mph fastball with the A’s ahead 2-0.

Fujinami showed signs of cracking in the fifth like last outing, or so it seemed when he issued a one-out, four-pitch walk. After opening with a ball to No. 9-hitter Francisco Alvarez, that prompted a mound visit, and Fujinami then recorded his career-high fifth strikeout and induced a flyout on his 70th pitch (43 strikes).

That he didn’t issue a walk until the fifth inning was a welcome change, after A’s pitchers yielded an Oakland-record 17 walks in Friday night’s 17-6 loss to the Mets.

After that defeat, Kotsay said: “It just feels like a noncompetitive environment right now and we have to make an adjustment. We’re better than this on the mound.”

Fujinami looked better. Just not good enough to pull out win No. 1.

NOTES: Of the six other Japanese players to ever play for the A’s, three were pitchers but none started a game: Kiichi Yabu, Hideki Okajima, and Steve Chitren. … The A’s are 0-7 in day games. … Left-handed pitcher Richard Lovelady joined the A’s two days after being claimed off waivers from Atlanta. He is 2-3 with a 5.62 ERA in 46 games over the past three seasons with the Royals. … Pitcher Hogan Harris was optioned to Triple-A Las Vegas in a corresponding move. Harris’ major-league debut Friday saw him allow six runs on one hit and five walks with a hit batter. … Kotsay said Jackie Robinson Day grows more meaningful to him every year, “to imagine walking in his shoes and going through what he went through on and off the field. It’s a great day to honor Jackie and his legacy.”