Aggressive A's Beat Tribe

Tyson Ross' 25th birthday was a good one as the A's picked him up and got him a win. He didn't really pitch pretty, Glen Kuiper said, "he pitched extremely well" and perhaps that was just him being kind on the kid's special day. He struggled with his control walking five in his 6 2/3 innings of work. On the whole the A's tried as they might to lose this one by walking the leadoff batter in 5 of 9 innings. But win they did. I really liked how aggressive they were on the basepaths running all over Lou Marson with Cespedes, Pennington, Reddick and Sogard each swiping a base.

The Indians opened up the scoring early, getting a run in the first on back-to-back doubles from Shin-Soo Choo and Travis Hafner. After that is was all A's as a Cliff Pennington double scored Weeks in the 3rd to tie it and then an inning later Seth Smith hit his first home run as an Athletic to give the A's the lead 3-1. The A's would add another in the next inning as Kurt Suzuki singled home Kila Ka'aihue and finally tack on an extra insurance run in the eighth on a heads up baserunning play from Eric Sogard to score from second on an infield single.

The game was an affair full of walks. All said and done the A's took the free pass six times (all from starter Justin Masterson) and the Indians too got six free passes (five from Ross and one from Ryan Cook). Speaking of walks, Josh Reddick got his first, it only took him 63 plate appearances. Not the prettiest way of doing things but a win is a win is a win.

Go A's!