OAKLAND — If Gerrit Cole and the New York Yankees had any sympathy for the plight of the A’s — a team that now has just five home games remaining at the Oakland Coliseum — that sympathy wasn’t expressed between the chalk lines.
The A’s (67-87) began their final homestand in Oakland with an extra-inning 4-2 loss to the Yankees (90-64) as Cole tossed nine innings of one-run ball with seven strikeouts and New York landed a three-run haymaker in the top of the 10th inning.
“When you get to extra innings, anything, really, can happen,” said A’s manager Mark Kotsay. “Overall, I thought we played good. We couldn’t really get anything going against Cole. We’re not the first to not get anything going against Cole. We swung at good pitches tonight; we really did. We just didn’t square anything up.”
J.T. Ginn, making just the fifth start of his major-league career, couldn’t match Cole inning-for-inning, but held his own against the American League’s best offense. The rookie rebounded from allowing a career-high 10 hits in his last outing, pitching five innings of one-run ball against New York with four strikeouts. And of those four punchouts, his most impressive was his fourth-inning strikeout against Aaron Judge.
“You know when Gerrit Cole’s on the mound and he’s on that runs are going to be hard to come by,” Ginn said. “You of go into the game with that (knowledge), knowing that you have to be sharp from pitch one and you can’t afford to give up two or three runs. You have to be nails from the beginning. Fortunately, I was able to do that and get us through five and put us in a position to (win).”
Ginn combined with Michel Otañez, Scott Alexander, Tyler Ferguson and Mason Miller to hold the Yankees to one run on five hits through nine innings. An offense of the Yankees’ caliber, though, can only be held in check for so long. In the 10th inning, New York landed its best punch.
Jasson Dominguez scored the go-ahead run on a passed ball. Juan Soto, scratched from the starting lineup, entered off the bench and drove in a run with an opposite-field double. Anthony Volpe followed Soto’s lead, slapping a single into right field that scored Soto. In a stretch of three batters, New York had a three-run lead. As pitching coach Scott Emerson met McFarland on the mound, chants of, “Let’s go Yankees!” reverberated throughout the stadium.
Oakland did not go quietly. JJ Bleday scored Brent Rooker in the bottom of the 10th with an opposite-field single, conjuring visions of a dramatic comeback to properly kickoff the Oakland sendoff. That hope was short-lived. New York’s Luke Weaver struck out Shea Langeliers, Seth Brown and Zack Gelof, and that was that. The Yankees may very well feel sorry for the A’s and their fans, but unlike the green and gold, they still have consequential baseball left to play — and with consequences comes mercilessness.
Aside from the game, Friday night’s atmosphere provided a glimpse of how the A’s plan to commemorate their final five games at the Coliseum. Rickey Henderson, on his bobblehead night, caught the ceremonial first pitch from his daughter, Adrianna. McFarland changed his entrance song to “Jungle” by Andre Nickatina while Zack Gelof changed his walk-up song to “93 ‘Til Infinity” by Souls of Mischief. The A’s pregame playlist in their clubhouse was exclusively Bay Area rap, the slaps including “Burn Rubber” by Too $hort and “Super Hyphy” by Keak Da Sneak.
“My expectations are that these fans are going to come out here as they always have: with a passion and an energy,” Kotsay said pregame. “Like I talked about with the reverse boycott game, even though there was an anger, there was a passion and an energy about it, which has always been there with this group of A’s fans since I can recall back to 2004 when I first became a part of this organization.”
Lawrence Butler got the crowd hyphy by burning rubber on the bases, stealing his 16th base of the season in the fourth inning to tie Jimmy Sexton (1982) for the most steals by an A’s player in a single season without being caught. Butler accounted for the A’s only run prior to extra innings, scoring from second in the fourth on a single by Langeliers. With a single prior to his steal, Butler extended his on-base streak to 26 games, the longest active streak in all of baseball.
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