Cleveland Guardians’ Andres Gimenez (0) swings for the fences and connects for a grand slam against the Oakland Athletics in the first inning at the Oakland Coliseum on Fri Apr 29, 2022 (AP News photo)
By Jeremiah Salmonson
The Oakland A’s were back in action on Friday night at the Oakland Coliseum. The A’s were returning home after splitting the series with their cross town rivals during the week. The Giants won the first game as the A’s won the second in shutout 1-0 fashion on Wednesday night at Oracle Park.
On Friday, the A’s would hope to continue their solid play by beating the Cleveland Guardians who had lost seven straight games. Unfortunately, on Star Wars light show night, the A’s lost the the guardians by the final of 9-8.
The game got off the a quick start. In the first inning, Jose Ramirez hit a solo home run with two outs off Frankie Montas to open the scoring. In the bottom of the inning, the A’s responded in a big way scoring four runs in part to a three run blast from Sean Murphy. The second inning was quiet but the action started back up in the third inning.
In the third inning, Frankie Montas got himself into more trouble. He loaded the bases and managed to get two outs in the inning. Then came up Andres Gimenez who hit a grand slam over the right field fence to put the Guardians on top 5-4. It was demoralizing for the A’s but how they would respond was impressive.
The A’s went on to score two runs in the fourth and sixth inning respectively to retake the lead 8-5. The A’s scores those runs playing small ball and getting big hits when they needed to. Notably, Sheldon Neuse had a two run triple in the sixth inning to extend the A’s lead. Unfortunately, that’s all the runs would score but the Guardians were not done.
The Guardians exploded for four runs the seventh inning. The runs come on a two run double from Jose Ramirez followed by a two run homer from Josh Natalie driving in Ramirez. That would be all the scoring for the night as the Guardians defeated the A’s 9-8.
The starters in the game both got no decisions as the loss went to Domingo Acevedo (0-1) and the win to Trevor Stephan (2-0). The save was credited to Emmanuel Clase his seventh of the year.
The A’s will take on the Guardians again on Saturday at 1:07 PM PST in Oakland. Cleveland will start Shane Bieber (1-1 ERA 2.82) Bieber will be matched up against Oakland starter Cole Irvin (2-1 ERA 3.32)
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