The Athletics couldn’t win two in a row. They dropped their middle game of their three-game series against the Washington Nationals, losing in walk-off fashion 2-1 to their NL East rivals and wasting a beautiful performance from their starting pitcher.
Lefty Jeffrey Springs got the ball for tonight’s start, making his 24 appearance of the season. Bringing a flat 4.00 ERA into this contest, Springs was absolutely locked in early, retiring the first 15 batters he faced this afternoon. During that time he only punched out three Nationals but was riding a perfect game for the majority of this contest.
The A’s meanwhile were going up against Cade Cavalli, a once highly touted arm in the Washington system that has faced injuries in recent years. Finally back with the Nationals and making only his second career appearance in the big leagues, Cavalli was matching Springs inning for inning early on. While the Athletics were able to get some runners on with hits, walks, and even errors from the Nationals’ defense, they just couldn’t manage to break through against the right-handed Cavalli. For Washington this has got to be an encouraging outing for the young gun, who bent but didn’t break against an A’s lineup that just exploded for 16 runs just last night.
Cavalli didn’t manage to stick around long though, not even finishing five full frames. Into Washington’s bullpen early, left fielder Tyler Soderstrom strode to the plate to start the sixth and went after the first pitch he saw, hitting a line-drive homer over the right field wall to give the A’s the 1-0 lead:
Big fly #20 for Sodey, who had the only extra-base hit for the A’s today. That solo homer was also enough to give Springs a chance to get the win.
That is, until the first batter of the bottom of the sixth inning. Facing Nats backup catcher Riley Adams, Springs’ sixth pitch of the sixth was demolished by Adams, who sent a hanging slider over the left field wall to ruin Springs’ perfect game and shutout bids. The lefty managed to finish the inning, including getting two more strikeouts before ending his night, but he would not get his 11th win of the year.
Jeffrey Springs: 6 IP, 1 H, 1ER, 0 BB, 5 K, 1 HR, 92 pitches
With the way the 32-year-old Springs was pitching tonight, he easily should have gotten the win. This was arguably the most dominant we’ve seen him all year and he gets nothing to show for it. At the very least, he wouldn’t be saddled with an unnecessary loss on his stat sheet.
Now tied 1-1 and into the later innings, it was now going to come down to the bullpens and see who would blink first. For the A’s, they turned to another left-hander in veteran Sean Newcomb. He managed to put together a couple of scoreless innings while allowing just one hit. Washington was able to match inning for inning tonight though. Now in the bottom of the ninth, manager Mark Kotsay turned to new closer (?) Michael Kelly hoping the right-hander could get us to extras. Plans went sideways almost immediately though as the leadoff man hit a double and was soon brought around to score on a game-ending RBI single off the bat of Nats shortstop CJ Abrams, sending the A’s home losers.
Dang. Wasted a gem of a performance from Springs. The offense seemed to have wasted all their runs for the series in yesterday’s contest and now they lose a very winnable game in embarrassing walk-off fashion. Soderstrom got a hold of one pitch and that brief lead was fun, but watching the A’s hitters the rest of the night wasn’t inspiring as they managed just three singles outside of Sodey’s blast. Add in a bad outing from someone who could be the new closer and it comes out to a tough night for the squad. Can’t let easy wins slip out of our fingers if the club wants to get back to contention next year. Learn from this one, guys.
The series wraps up bright and early tomorrow morning in the finale. The A’s will go with another left-hander when they send rookie Jacob Lopez to the mound for his 14th start of the year. He’s been a solid addition overall to the starting rotation and is coming off back-to-back shutout appearances. The lefty will bring a 3.99 ERA into the finale tomorrow, where he will be facing Nats left-hander Mitchell Parker. The second-year starter for Washington has had a much rougher sophomore season that his rookie campaign last year as evidenced by his high 5.69 ERA he’ll bring into tomorrow’s contest. He got his especially hard his last time out, allowing eight earned runs and 12 hits in just 4 innings against the Brewers. The A’s would like to make it two straight rough outings for Parker. Whoever wakes up early enough for tomorrow’s game could be treated to another offensive explosion.