Game #102: Nothing goes right, A’s brushed aside 8-3

In the beginning, Dan Straily looked crisp. Indeed, both pitchers had good performances against the same teams in their last starts and were looking to continue that success. It would be Straily, however, who blinked first. In the third inning, with Mike Trout batting and J.B. Shuck at 1st, he would be wildpitched to 2nd. After Trout K'ed, Albert Pujols would single to give the Angels the lead 1-0. The A's would answer back, though, and take the lead momentarily in the 4th. Yoenis Cespedes took one of his two walks on the night, and promptly stole second against Wilson. After Nate Freiman would ground out weakly, Wilson would uncork his own wild pitch to score Cespedes, making it 1-all with Chris Young batting. It would be Young, then, who doubled and scored on Derek Norris' single, sliding just under the tag of Hank Conger on a good throw by the LFer Shuck to give the A's the lead. This would be the only lead the A's would see.

Things would unravel in the 5th for the A's and Straily. After leading off with a walk, Erick Aybar was singled to 3rd by Shuck. He would score on a Trout sacrifice fly to make it 2-all. The next play turned out to be the pivotal one in the game. With Pujols batting, Straily got him to roll over on an easy ground ball to third. Or so it should have been. Josh Donaldson got a little ahead of himself, and brought his glove up too early to transfer to his free hand. This allowed the ball to trickle into LF, and seemingly breathed life into the Angel offense. Josh Hamilton would single to right-center to give them the lead 3-2. Mark Trumbo then followed with a screaming double into left-center to make it 5-2. It never really got any better. Straily was then pulled for Jesse Chavez, who limited the damage in that inning, but would give up 2 more of his own in the 6th. He was then pulled for Dan Otero, who would allow a single to Pujols but otherwise had a clean outing. Somewhere in there, Derek Norris hit a meaningless home run off of Wilson, who finished with 123 pitches on the night.

To repeat: sometimes your team sucks in every facet of the game. That happened today. Bartolo Colon is pitching tomorrow, and the A's face Jerome Williams and Garrett Richards in consecutive games. I like the A's chances.