Good evening (morning?) and welcome to the second Game Thread of the season, brought to you by the unholy hour of 2:35AM. Not many things can voluntarily rouse me in the middle of the night these days, especially twice in a row, but the A’s certainly qualify. It just might be harder than it was a decade ago. And for those of you excited to see the A’s offense, but afraid of their starting pitching staff, all of your fears were justified in last night’s loss; the barn burner in which the A’s scored 7 runs, hit 3 home runs, and still managed to lose.
And today’s news of Jesus Luzardo’s injury, the one really bright spot in the A’s starting rotation, does nothing to quell the fears.
Needless to say, tonight becomes the must-win. I mean, it’s not must-win, must-win; the A’s can still make the playoffs starting the season 0-2, but who wants an early basement seat for an entire week? More importantly, who wants to fly to Japan, give up two home games, and lose them both? We can only hope that Marco Estrada is better tonight than Mike Fiers was last night, and let’s be honest, that is one low bar.
The A’s offense will be facing Yusei Kikuchi, a lefty making his big league debut in his home country of Japan.
So good morning! Welcome to the 2019 Oakland Athletics baseball season! I’ll be your host for this morning’s last Japan game before we start our daily A’s fixes in exactly a week.
Here are your lineups:
LET’S GO OAK-LAND!