Elephant Rumblings: Medina has up and down debut

Happy Thursday, AN!

Last night’s game had its positives to go with the low points. Luis Medina made his MLB debut and struck out arguably the best player in baseball twice, but also got hit hard and gave up a ton of runs.

Among the positives is the fact that Medina made it through five full innings, something he had yet to do in Triple-A this year. The right-handed rookie had his longest start of the year and threw 93 pitches in his big league debut. He had struggled with control in the minor leagues but kept those problems relatively under control today, throwing strikes and only walking three batters.

Most exciting of all was seeing the repertoire. He showed off his electric fastball and solid curveball multiple times, including his first career strikeout of superstar Mike Trout with a 97 MPH fastball. He would end up striking Trout out one more time along with a memorable K of superstar Shohei Ohtani. Man, if this guy can put it all together…

There’s a lot to fix from today’s game and Medina is scheduled to return to Triple-A after today, per manager Mark Kotsay.

Medina got an aggressive promotion to begin with after only three starts at Triple-A but don’t be surprised to see him again this year during the rebuild. He could end up being an integral piece of the next A’s playoff team.

A’s Coverage:

• Anderson: Is Las Vegas big enough for three sports teams?
• Posnanski: The Sad Ballad of the Oakland A’s
• Franco: A’s outright Dermis Garcia
• Gallegos: Medina vows to ‘come back stronger’ after uneven debut

MLB News & Interest:

• Denton: Cardinals option top prospect Walker to Triple-A
• delos Santos: After 13 years in Minors, Drew Maggi is officially a big leaguer
• Gilbert: Galen (28 scoreless innings) fooling everyone
• AP: Mariners’ Robbie Ray to have season-ending surgery
• Adams: Pirates sign Bryan Reynolds to extension
• McDonald: Diamondbacks release Madison Bumgarner
• Today in Baseball History

Best of Twitter:

This is cool:

You can probably expect more of these kinda games as he gets more comfortable in the big leagues:

Perseverance, kids. :’)