West Sacramento, Calif. – Maybe it has something to do with the environment.
After all, the Athletics are playing their home games at Sutter Health Park, a 25-year-old Triple-A ballpark and there were moments Tuesday night in the Tigers’ aggravating, 7-6, 10-inning loss that felt distinctly minor league.
Like in the bottom of the eighth. Colby Thomas reached on an error by shortstop Zach McKinstry, though first baseman Spencer Torkelson will tell you he should have caught the throw. In a 5-5 game, that was a potentially fatal mistake.
It was compounded when third baseman Colt Keith and catcher Dillon Dingler got crossed up on a pop up at home plate. The ball fell in fair territory. Fortunately, rookie reliever Troy Melton, who pitched three scoreless innings, alertly collected the ball and started a fast 1-6-3 double-play.
But the accumulation of physical and mental mistakes ultimately took a lethal toll.
“We can’t take it as an excuse that it’s just the game,” a very terse Tigers’ manager AJ Hinch said in a post-game interview that lasted less than a minute. “We created our own mess and we paid for it. You can’t make those kinds of mistakes and expect to win at this level. And some of those are on the scoreboard and some aren’t.
“Frustrating night. We didn’t do anything to win.”
And yet, they put themselves in a position to do that just. They fought back out of 3-0 and 5-4 deficits earlier in the game and then stranded runners at second base in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings and the game stayed tied 5-5 into the ninth.
But with two outs in the top of the 10th inning, one-time Tigers’ farmhand Elvis Alvarado wild-pitched the free runner (Kerry Carpenter) to third and walked Wenceel Perez on six pitches.
BOX SCORE: A’s 7, Tigers 6 (10)
McKinstry worked himself into a 3-1 count and then on 3-2, laced an RBI single to right field to break the tie.
But, story of the game, the lead didn’t last long.
After some steely bullpen work by Melton and Kyle Finnegan, the Athletics never let Will Vest settle into the bottom of the 10th.
Tyler Soderstrom bounced an opposite-field single to score the free runner and tie the game. Riley Greene in left field made a bad decision and tried to throw home. He had no chance to get Brent Rooker and the throw allowed the winning run to get to second base with no outs.
After a sacrifice bunt moved the runners up, Hinch deployed a five-man infield, bringing Javier Baez in from centerfield. But the defensive alignment became moot after Vest walked Lawrence Butler to load the bases and Darrel Hernaiz to force in the winning run.
In one of the not-so-endearing quirks of Sutton Health Park is that the clubhouses are located behind the wall in left field. So the down-beaten Tigers players had to essentially walk across the field and through the Athletics’ walk-off celebration.
“Definitely frustrating,” Carpenter said. “Anytime we lose it’s frustrating. But honestly, we have to flush it. We can’t let it affect tomorrow. We can still go out there and salvage tomorrow.”
It was the third loss in a row for the Tigers and cut their lead in the Central Division to 9.5 games over the Royals.
But before we continue to slog through the misplays, let’s take a minute to appreciate a monstrous and memorable swing by Greene. He’s done a lot of things in his short time in the big leagues, but he’d never done this.
Down 3-0, the Tigers had the bases loaded with two outs in the third inning. Greene fell behind Athletics starter Osvaldo Bido 1-2 and then launched a 1-2 slider over the batter’s eye in dead centerfield.
The ball left his bat with an exit velocity of 110.7 mph and flew 471 feet. Prodigious.
“That did not surprise me,” Carpenter said. “We were talking earlier this year after I hit one at Comerica Park and you were asking if I thought I could reach the upper deck in right. I said I couldn’t, but I know Riley could and he showed that tonight. He was awesome, as talented as they come.”
It was Greene’s 32nd homer and his first career grand slam. The 471-footer was the longest home run by a Tiger in the Statcast era (since 2015) and it tied Giancarlo Stanton for the second longest by any Major League hitter.
It was two feet shorter than Kyle Schwarber’s 473-footer.
“He had done well against (Bido) in the minor leagues and it carried into tonight,” Carpenter said. “That was one of the best swings I’ve seen.”
But the jolt was short-lived. The Athletics, who broke on top with a three-run homer by Jacob Wilson in the first inning, took the lead back against Charlie Morton in the bottom of the third. And again, the defense was suspect.
The rally started with a misplay by Keith at third base and the Athletics started the inning with three singles. Morton did well to limit the damage to two runs.
Keith got one of those runs back, swatting his 12th homer of the season in the fifth, tying the game 5-5.
But he wasn’t thinking about that afterward. Besides the misplay in the third and the botched popup in the eighth, he dropped a one-out pop up in the bottom of the seventh, too, and that one allowed Rooker to get to second base with one out.
Melton bailed him out, though, getting Soderstrom to ground out and Wilson to pop out.
“It’s definitely frustrating,” said Keith, who did not use the shadowy lights as an excuse. “Pretty embarrassing show for me on the field today. I misread some balls, misjudged some balls. I didn’t really field a ball cleanly all day. I felt really sped up.
“It sucks. I really want to make those outs for our pitchers. But the only way to go from here is to forget about it, keep working, keep trying to get better so I can be an asset to this team.”
Both games in this series have been sloppily played by the Tigers. They’ve been charged for four errors and there have been others, like Keith’s misplay in the seventh or Torkelson’s missed scoop that helped extend a five-run seventh-inning against Tarik Skubal Monday, that don’t go on the ledger.
It’s been, for the lack of a stronger word, uncharacteristic.
“You can call it a lack of concentration, I guess,” Carpenter said. “But it happens. It happens to the best of them. It was back-to-back plays that needed to be caught and there were other lapses. But we are as prepared as any team with our pre-game stuff. We obviously harp on doing the little stuff right.
“I don’t know if I have an explanation other than it was one of those games that kind of snowballed for us on the field.”
Tomorrow, as Keith said, is a new day, a new opportunity to play well and win a game.
“We need to stay confident out there, I think that’s a really big thing,” Carpenter said. “You have to keep your confidence knowing that it’s baseball and these days are going to happen. You have to keep the confidence and make the next play.”
@cmccosky
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