For A’s, was it a Bronx bummer or baseball inevitability?

By Art Spander

NEW YORK — So what do we call DJ LeMahieu? The Bronx Bummer? One swing and the Oakland Athletics fell victim to the law of inevitability, Yankee Stadium variety.

The A’s had played the Yankees four times over the last couple of weeks and won every game. Meaning they were overdue to lose. And in the most agonizing of methods, which is appropriate in baseball.

If you banged your head against the wall for every defeat in major league ball, where at the minimum you’ll drop 60 games a season, you wouldn’t have a wall. And maybe not much of a head either.

Yes, A’s manager Bob Melvin did a bit of what should have been or could have been Saturday after the leadoff and walkoff home run in the 11^th by DJ LeMahieu gave the Yankees a 4-3 victory.

Didn’t the A’s leave the bases loaded in the seventh, eighth and ninth? When that happens, even if you scored a run in the seventh, there’s trouble.

Didn’t Aaron Judge soar above the fence in right field in the 10^th to steal a probable home from Oakland’s Matt Chapman — "All Rise” is Judge's slogan in New York — after he homered in the eighth to the game?

And didn’t Melvin ruminate about all that? “Chapman has a homer unless you’ve got a 10-foot outfielder in right field,” he mused. (To be accurate, Judge is only 6-7, but a little exaggeration is acceptable.)

This game was a disappointment for the A’s. And a joy for the Yankees, especially since it was played before 44,412 fans in one of the landmark venues in sports. 

Sure the ballpark isn’t the exact one — the House That Ruth Built, erected in 1923, where the Babe and Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio and Mickey played. But this one, finished in 2009, is across the street. And still the only proper way to get there is on the No. 4 subway, with dozens of fans in pinstriped Yankee attire. One was a shrine, the other is a monument.

Everybody knows Yankees history, including ballplayers. New York hasn’t won a World Series for a while, but they are one of the best clubs in the game, a standard by which other teams rate themselves.

“We played really well,” said Homer Bailey, the A’s starting pitcher. He has a sense of perspective. But after going 5.2 innings, allowing two home runs to Gary Sanchez, only two other hits and striking out nine, what Bailey didn’t have was a win or a loss.

“You got two good teams going at each other,” said Bailey. “You can’t win every game. You’re going to lose some tight ones. Sometimes that’s just how it goes.”

Melvin, as a manager who’s trying to keep young players believing, did find the upbeat side of a game that from the Oakland viewpoint would have been at the least a semi-downer. No, you’re not going to sweep the Yankees, so move on was Melvin's idea.

Leaving the bases loaded in three consecutive innings and a total of 15 for the game? “You’re always looking for a silver lining,” said Melvin. “We loaded the bases, which means we're grinding out walks and putting runners in scoring position, not going out one, two three.”  

He also liked the relief performances of Blake Treinen and Lou Trivino, even though Trivino, after keeping the Yankees scoreless in the 10^th, gave up LeMahieu’s game-winner in the 11^th.

“He was good,” Melvin said of Trivino, “other than that one pitch.” 

Let’s let it stand right there.

Homer (Bailey) and the homers get A’s win over those Yankees

OAKLAND — They’re still the Yankees, the team with the pinstripes, with the monuments, with the 27 World Series titles, with the 1960s musical comedy about their dominance, “Damn Yankees,” when only the devil could beat them.

It doesn’t matter how they are doing at the any given time — and at this given time, lordy, the Yanks own the best record in the major leagues — the name resonates, the intensity percolates.

“Anytime you play a team like that,” Homer Bailey, the Athletics pitcher said, “it brings a lot of energy to the field. It’s not just who they are as an organization, but who they are this year — one of the better teams in baseball, if not with the best record in the game. It gets you up, makes it fun.”

Bailey was a reason Tuesday night, in the opener of a three-game series at the Coliseum, the Athletics had more fun than the Yankees, winning 6-2.

“I thought he was great,” Oakland manager Bob Melvin said of Bailey. 

He certainly was persistent. The Yankees make an opposing pitcher work. “They just foul so many balls off,” said Melvin. “The next thing, you’re in an uncomfortable pitch count.”

Yet not in an uncomfortable place on the scoreboard.

Sure, for a moment there, when Gary Sanchez, the third Yankee to come to the plate in the first inning, hit one into the seats, you’re thinking “Bronx Bombers” and all that history.

But like that, the A’s, Matt Olson, with a man on, and Mark Canha hit their own first-inning homers, and Homer and the A’s were back in front.

Which, reminded Melvin, was oh so important, given the opposition and the circumstances.

“The first time we play them this year,” said Melvin, “you can’t help but think back to the last time you played them.”

That would be the 2018 American League Wild card game, a 7-2 New York win that ended Oakland’s season. 

“A bunch of Yankee fans here,” said Melvin about the balance or imbalance of the 21,471 fans Tuesday night. “A raucous crowd. The whole bit. Sanchez gets them out in a hurry. Now we have to answer.

“I think the Olson home run was huge. Then Canha follows it up. You want to start well at home, knowing we play them six times the next 12 games or so. It was nice to get the first game.”

It was imperative. The Yankees were playing as if they had Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle. They were 15-4 in August (now 15-5, of course), had hit 47 home runs in those 19 games and were averaging 5.93 runs a game, the highest in 12 years.

But Bailey, who the A’s obtained in a trade from Kansas City on July 14 — that deal certainly worked — checked all the numbers and took the challenge without blinking. His best pitch is the splitter, the split-finger fastball, an off-speed offering that drops.

“I just kept staying with it,” said Bailey. And the Yankees stayed after it in a manner. “They didn’t hit a ball hard, other than the homer," said Homer.

They did keep making contact, if only with those fouls, so after 5.2 innings (which doesn’t seem like much) and 108 pitches (which is a lot) Bailey was relieved. 

“I just tried to get them out,” said Bailey, who succeeded often enough to get his 11th win. “Then let the offense do what they’ve been doing all year. I tried to make them put the ball in play. I had a few strikeouts, but with this defense it’s not that important.”

Bailey had problems throwing the splitter until July. ”I finally had a better understanding of the pressure points,” he said about gripping the ball. “It’s been working really well.”

Said Melvin, “He pairs it up with the fastball. As the game goes along, he gets better and better.”

Bailey has been a member of the A’s fewer than five weeks, but he’s all in, to borrow a phrase.

  “This is a club that believes it can play with anybody,” said Bailey, “and we’re showing it.”

For Giants, on edge, wrong play and wrong pitch lead to defeat

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — They live on the edge. Or, as they did on this Saturday of wind, fog, sunshine and frustration, fall off.

Another team, the Dodgers for example, has the players and the punch to overcome mistakes, a burst of runs correcting whatever failures take place.

But the Giants do not. If they make the wrong call, the wrong play, the wrong pitch, they lose, as they did to the Yankees, 6-4, at Oracle Park.

If it seems the Giants were there, well, they weren’t. Until scoring four runs in the bottom of the ninth, which didn’t prevent a second straight loss to New York but looked better cosmetically than getting shut out.

Still, it was a defeat, and shoved the Giants five games below .500, and we haven’t even reached May. Meaning the situation is apt to become a great deal worse, especially with no one in the starting lineup Saturday hitting above .280 and with Mad Bum, Madison Bumgarner, looking like Bad Bum.

But it was Derek Holland who threw the wrong pitches Saturday, most of all an inside fast ball to Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez with the bases loaded in the top of the fifth. Sanchez drove the ball 467 feet into the bleachers in left center, and like that, a 2-0 game was a 6-0 game.

Bruce Bochy wanted to take the blame. “It was my fault,” said the Giants' manager. “He (Holland) was ahead in the count, 1-2, and he still had his stuff. I gave him a chance to get through. He was making his pitches. He made a mistake.”

Holland said he deserved to take the blame, not the boss. “We were cruising,” Holland insisted. “One pitch took away a whole game. Those guys (his teammates) fought back. That’s what upsets me the most. Letting them down.”

These are upsetting times around the old ballpark. First is the Giants' incapability. Next is the attendance. There were only 33,071 on hand Saturday at what seemed like a marquee game, Giants-Yankees — and a great many in the crowd were cheering for the Yankees. True, it’s still only April, but it was the only game in the region, the Warriors and Sharks both idle Saturday.

Nobody expects the Giants to get a ton of hits and runs, and even in the championship seasons they won on pitching. Still, with Evan Longoria hitting .206, Brandon Crawford .207 and Buster Posey .247, you’re going to need near perfection from the pitchers. It doesn’t exist.

Bumgarner, who started Friday night, gave up two runs in the first. Bumgarner and Holland, two of the Giants big three, each are 1-4. Those combined eight losses are exactly half of the San Francisco total.

Maybe that’s why Bochy chose to squeeze as much as possible out of Holland, to get him confidence as much as to get the team a win. “But his margin of error is not real big,” said the manager, which of course only reflects the Giants as a whole.

San Francisco invariably is playing from behind, trying to extricate itself from a quick deficit.

The Giants did show resolve in the final inning Saturday, Yangervis Solarte hitting a three-run homer and then pinch hitter Erik Kratz hitting a bases-empty home run.  

“One pitch takes us out of the game,” said a rueful Holland. “I was told by an old pitching coach you’re one pitch from greatness and one pitch from humility.”

These are humbling days for the San Francisco Giants.

Newsday (N.Y.): Michael Pineda gets first win since April 6

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND, Calif. — Michael Pineda stood taller, literally, extending his body to the maximum, which is considerable for someone who is 6-7. And also figuratively, finally looking like the pitcher he and the Yankees believed he was.

It had been a difficult seven starts for Pineda, who was winless in each of them. But he came to the mound at O.co Coliseum on Sunday after working on standing more erect, which would help him throw sliders to the bottom of the strike zone.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Rob Refsnyder gets big hit, but will he be staying with Yankees?

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND, Calif. — The question was inevitable. So was the answer.

Rob Refsnyder had the big hit Saturday, proving that on this day, at least, he deserved to be on the Yankees. But not unexpectedly, the present seemed less important than the future — the immediate future.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.