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The Nashville Sounds Oakland A's put on quite the show in Kansas City yesterday, demolishing the Royals to the tune of 16-3. With a 9th inning lineup featuring only one player who has been with the major league club all season (Marcus Semien), the young core of (hopefully) the next great A's team continued to gel as they have done throughout their baseball careers. While the results of this month's games provide a small sample with questionable predictive powers for the future, I think most of us can agree that this iteration of the A's is a lot more interesting to watch than the one with Billy Butler and Jed Lowrie.
Today's starting pitcher for Oakland is Jharel Cotton, he of the almost-perfect-game a few weeks ago in Nashville. In his first major league start last week, Cotton tossed a gem, going 6⅓ innings and allowing only one run. His smile and the standing ovation he received upon exiting the game was one of the emotional highlights of the season. Despite being a recent acquisition in the Rich Hill/Josh Reddick trade, Cotton's incredible changeup gives him the potential to be a member of the starting rotation next season. Fun fact: Cotton is only the second active MLB player hailing from the Virgin Islands.
Pitching for the Royals is lefty Danny Duffy, who has been having an outstanding season. While pitcher W/L record is still pretty much meaningless, there's no denying that 11-2 is mighty impressive, and his 3.13 ERA and 9.68 K/9 back up the fact that he has been very good.
Here are the lineups for today. Brett Eibner is seeing more playing time against his former team after putting on the best show at the plate of any A last night, and we've got Renato Nunez trying his hand at DH.
Game time is 4:15 PT. Go A's!
