Happy Friday A\u2019s fans!<\/p>\n
The Athletics wrapped up their season-opening road trip this week with a series loss to the Atlanta Braves. Combined with the sweep to open the year up in Toronto against the Blue Jays and the A\u2019s are already behind the eight ball with a 1-5 record to begin the year, sitting dead last in the division. No A\u2019s squad has ever made the playoffs after that rough of a start, but there\u2019s a first time for everything, is what I always say.<\/p>\n
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The A\u2019s will be back home tonight though! A little bit of home cooking is always a recipe to right the ship and begin a hot streak. The starting rotation hasn\u2019t pulled their weight, and the lineup has been much more lackluster than expected, but the A\u2019s can\u2019t let a tough six-game stretch ruin the next five and a half months of their year. None of us would be all doom-and-gloom if this was in the middle of July. It\u2019s time for the guys to wake up and play to their potential. Hopefully getting to play in front of the home town fans will spark something that\u2019s been missing for the past week.<\/p>\n
Things won\u2019t get much easier from an opponent\u2019s standpoint however. The Green & Gold have a three-game matchup with the division-rival Houston Astros. While they\u2019ve taken a step back from their juggernaut years, the Astros are still a quality, well-rounded team that the A\u2019s need to take seriously, perhaps even more so because we\u2019re in the same division. Houston, who went 87-75 last year and finished in second place in the AL West behind the Seattle Mariners, are out to a quick start as they\u2019ll arrive to Sacramento in first place with a 5-2 record. They split a four-game series with another division rival in the Angels to open the year before sweeping the Boston Red Sox in Houston. This\u2019ll be their first road trip of the year so knocking them down a peg would be nice, especially at home.<\/p>\n
Kicking off the series tonight we\u2019ll be treated to a matchup between southpaw Jeffrey Springs versus righty Cristian Javier. Springs opened his year on a high note (unlike last season), pitching into the sixth inning against a strong Toronto lineup. While he only collected a pair of punchouts, he kept the damage to a minimum as he gave the A\u2019s a chance to win that second game of the year by allowing just two runs to score. It didn\u2019t work out as the bullpen imploded and ruined Springs\u2019 chances for a W, but it was an encouraging outing for the #2 starter in the rotation. Javier on the other hand got touched up for six earned runs in 4 2\/3 innings of work in his first start of the season against the Angels. It\u2019s been a tough couple of years for Javier thanks to injuries but he\u2019s supposedly healthy now. Does he still have the \u2018stuff\u2019 that made him a seemingly core pitcher just a couple seasons ago?<\/p>\n
Tomorrow\u2019s contest will see right-handers Luis Morales and Tatsuya Imai go at it for the first of what should be plenty of matchups between these two. Morales, only 23 years of age, is one of the top prospects in the A\u2019s system but got absolutely rocked in his first start, allowing five runs in less than five innings of work against the Blue Jays. That continued a worrying trend that began during spring so hopefully he can turn things around against a division rival that he has yet to see in a professional game up to this point. Most of the Astros hitters won\u2019t have seen much of his stuff in person so on that front he\u2019s got an advantage. Though, the same can be said about Imai and the A\u2019s. Houston\u2019s big expenditure this offseason also got knocked around in his first big league game last week, yielding four runs to the Angels in 2 2\/3 innings of work. We could be in store for a offensive clinic on Saturday afternoon at Sutter Health.<\/p>\n
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Wrapping up the series on Sunday afternoon, the A\u2019s will send #5 starter Jacob Lopez to the bump while Houston counters with longtime Astro Lance McCullers Jr. Lopez was so-so in his first start of the year, tossing four full frames and allowing three runs against the Braves. Not great, not terrible. We\u2019ll be looking for more length from the lefty today against an Astros squad that he\u2019s yet to allow a run to in two career starts. McCullers, meanwhile, well we\u2019ve seen plenty of him over the years. The oft-injured righty has seemingly overcome his litany of injuries to be ready for the start of the regular season and he looked like he was in mid-season form in his first start, where he pitched seven innings of one-run ball against the Boston Red Sox. While Saturday could be a high-scoring affair, runs may be at a premium on Sunday in the finale.<\/p>\n
Once the A\u2019s finish this series it\u2019s back to the road as the squad will have to get back on a plane and return to the East Coast. Luckily they won\u2019t have to travel too far after that as they\u2019ll have three games against the New York Yankees before crossing town to take on the Mets. The schedule makers didn\u2019t do us any favors in that regard. Let\u2019s just call it\u2026 getting the tough parts of the schedule out of the way early.<\/p>\n
So what will we see this weekend? A home sweep? Nick Kurtz\u2019s first home run of the season? A perfect game from an A\u2019s pitcher? Gotta tune in to find out! Have a great weekend A\u2019s fans! Hopefully one filled with wins over those Astros.<\/p>\n
A\u2019s Coverage:<\/p>\n
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MLB News and Interest:Best of X:<\/p>\n
\u2018Bangeliers\u2019 is on track for a massive year:<\/p>\n
Nick Kurtz is loving his first-row seat to Langeliers:<\/p>\n
You fall down the Power Rankings when you begin the season 1-5:<\/p>\n
Here was the Rockhounds\u2019 first lineup of the year. A couple high-profile prospects atop the batting order:<\/p>\n
And here was how the Single-A Lugnuts lined up:<\/p>\n
We definitely need more from the starting rotation if we\u2019re going to turn this around:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Happy Friday A\u2019s fans! The Athletics wrapped up their season-opening road trip this week with a series loss…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2391],"tags":[537,46,5,48,3297,6175,54,632,3239,56,706,2219,4,3226,62,459,65,3442,4658,1949,812,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-661004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athletics","8":"tag-athletics","9":"tag-atlanta-braves","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-boston-red-sox","12":"tag-cal-raleigh","13":"tag-cristian-javier","14":"tag-houston-astros","15":"tag-jacob-lopez","16":"tag-jeffrey-springs","17":"tag-los-angeles-angels","18":"tag-luis-morales","19":"tag-mccullers","20":"tag-mlb","21":"tag-mlb-athletics","22":"tag-new-york-yankees","23":"tag-nick-kurtz","24":"tag-seattle-mariners","25":"tag-shea-langeliers","26":"tag-tatsuya-imai","27":"tag-the-athletics","28":"tag-the-mets","29":"tag-toronto"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116341530116733768","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}