Oakland Athletics Sweep Tigers, Seem to Have Righted Ship
After an awful start, the Oakland Athletics are trending in the right direction, finally. They entered their most recent series in Detroit with the Tigers having won six out of nine games, but two of those losses came at the hands of Detroit at the Coliseum.
Oakland has been headed upwards, and they continued that ascension during their three-game set with Detroit. Oakland beat the Tigers thrice, earning their first sweep in the Motor City since 2002, when the A’s beat them in three as part of their record-breaking 20-game winning streak. These three games, coupled with a win on Sunday against the New York Yankees, give the Athletics their first four-game win streak of the 2015 season.
The Athletics beat the Tiger in a couple different ways. On Tuesday, they relied on late-inning clutch hits to complete a comeback and take game one. Detroit entered the seventh inning with a 3-0 lead, but Billy Burns opened the scoring for the Athletics with a bases loaded RBI single to make it 3-1.
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Ben Zobrist, the following batter, came up with most clutch of hits, as he swatted his sixth career grand slam, turning a two-run deficit into a two-run lead.
Clutch hits were hard to come by when things weren’t going well for Oakland. Another thing that wasn’t easy for Oakland during the downtime was good bullpen pitching. They ended up getting both on Tuesday. Evan Scribner and Tyler Clippard combined for three perfect innings with four strikeouts to close out the Tigers and seal Kendall Graveman‘s third career win.
In the last two legs of the series, the days belonged to the Athletics’ starters. Oakland ace Sonny Gray dominated the Tigers’ vaunted offense en route to his seventh win of the year. The 25-year-old stud threw eight shutout innings, allowing just two hits and a walk while striking out seven Tigers, all while lowering his ERA to 1.65, a mark that leads the major leagues.
Jesse Hahn followed his rotation mates’ lead, as on Thursday, he threw seven innings of one-run ball, surrendering five hits and a walk with five strikeouts. Hahn has been a little inconsistent this year, but he’s proving that when he’s right, like he was against Detroit, he’s a great complement to Gray.
On both days, the offense gave them plenty of support, as Gray received six runs to work with, and Hahn received seven. Thursday’s total of seven runs almost wasn’t enough, as the bullpen woes reared their ugly heads again. After a perfect eighth inning from Drew Pomeranz, Dan Otero allowed four runs while recording just one out in the ninth, cutting Oakland’s lead to 7-5. Clippard recorded the final two outs without incident, saving Hahn’s third win.
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The defense has also been better, although is still isn’t quite perfect. Through the three games in Detroit, the A’s committed two errors, both coming on Wednesday. In the bigger picture, over this 12-game hot stretch, they’ve committed eight errors, and that includes a three-error game and a two-error game. Half of the 12 games have been errorless. They do still own the most errors and lowest fielding percentage in baseball, but the gap is closing.
After being as many as 15 games under the .500 plateau, the A’s have closed in to 10 games below. Their uptick is coming at a good time, as they should get a couple key arms back soon, as Edward Mujica and A.J. Griffin should both be returning to the mound within a few weeks. If the team continues to put up runs like they have been, and get some added pitching insurance, the team could make a run at the .500 mark, and beyond.
The Athletics will travel to Boston to start a three-game series with the Red Sox, then have 12 games against division rivals in a 15-game stretch. Oakland plays six against both the Texas Rangers and Los Angeles Angels, split between home and away evenly. This stretch could go a long way towards deciding whether the Athletics can be competitive in the AL West for the rest of the season.