The Oakland Athletics personally hate you. Specifically you, the one reading this article right now. Whoever you are out there on the internet, the Oakland Athletics personally want you to feel sad and hate baseball.
It’s really the only explanation for this.
At least they were decent enough to lose fast this game. They didn’t make you wait around until the ninth inning before collapsing, nope, not at all. They made darn sure to put the game out of reach as fast as possible this time around. Sonny Gray got singled to death in the first inning, and the Rangers put up four runs in the opening five minutes of the game. All of those runs came with two outs.
Jeez, I really can’t say anything at this point.
If you kept watching this game after that half-inning, that’s on you.
It’s a beautiful day out, you could’ve had a picnic or something. You didn’t have to watch this! There are any number of activities out there millions of times more entertaining than baseball. You could be doing charity. You could go on a hike! You could be doing literally anything else!
It’s almost like the A’s know that spectator sports are inherently meaningless, and they want you to go and do something more productive with your time. How thoughtful!
But nope, dear reader. I’m assuming you chose to watch this game, by virtue of you caring enough about the A’s to read this website. And for that, you got exactly what you deserved.
Hell, @athletics, the A’s twitter account, just straight stopped live tweeting the game after the 5th inning. I really can’t blame whoever’s in charge. Typing out "The A’s fail to score" over and and over must get exhausting.
They got shut down by Nick Martinez. Nick Martinez. The only hit for the first five innings was Sam Fuld’s 2 RBI triple, which is great for him, but way too little, way too late.
By the way, Sam Fuld and Josh Donaldson were the only hitters who looked remotely competent today. Congrats, guys.
The Rangers’ two-run 6th inning was what really put this game out of reach, though. Before that, there was at least a chance of coming back. The A’s have shown some life in recent late-inning rallies, and there was every reason to expect one. But no, Dan Otero, who’s been absolutely brilliant this year, flubbed it, allowing two runs to score on a Leonys Martin double and an Elvis Andrus single. Suddenly it was 7-2, and the game was fully out of reach.
Nah, what really broke the comeback effort was when Coco singled and Donaldson doubled high off the wall to give the A’s a 2nd and 3rd, one out situation.
GUESS HOW MANY RUNS THE A’S SCORED?
GUESS
YOU’LL NEVER GET IT.
ZERO RUNS. ZERO.
GO A’S.
After that, the rest of the game was played as a formality. You knew how it was going to end. Everyone knew. Any suspense was gone. Jason Hammel pitched a few innings. It was weird.
We’ve spent the past few weeks wondering where rock bottom was. It wasn’t the Angels sweep, it wasn’t the series loss to the Astros, it wasn’t even last night’s terrifyingly awful blowup. If there’s one thing you should’ve learned by now, it’s that rock bottom doesn’t exist. You can keep going and going and going down the pit, and suddenly the season’s over and you wake up in the gutter with a nasty hangover and a face tattoo. Things can always get worse.
I’m guessing this team finishes sub-.500, despite winning 83 games already. They’ll take 3 wins away because we deserve it. I’m guessing the Giants win the World Series and we have to put up with that again. I’m guessing Josh Donaldson joins Grant Desme’s monastery.
Serves you right for liking baseball, like a jerk. No one likes baseball. Baseball’s dumb.
Basketball season starts in a few weeks, though. Man, the Warriors would never disappoint me like this.