Red Sox @ A's Game Thread/ 3rd-5th June 2022

In likely one of Boston’s last trips to Oakland Coliseum, a reminder of the Red Sox’ history there



By Jon Couture
June 3, 2022 | 10:37 AM

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After Thursday night, the Red Sox are going to have a hard time making their latest series in Oakland notable beyond it happening around its competition across the bay.

Some Red Sox may have been at Game 1 of the NBA Finals; Alex Cora, in a bit of an eye-popper quote, said earlier in the week it was even cost prohibitive for his players. For those that were, it’ll be quite a 24-hour jump — from the $1.4 billion Chase Center on the San Francisco waterfront to a place where the possums run wild and free.

What today is known as RingCentral Coliseum is a relic of a bygone baseball era, and won’t be long for the majors if the Athletics’ bosses get their way. The sport’s fifth-oldest stadium — only eight remain that pre-date Baltimore’s Camden Yards — is almost universally maligned, with the possum story of a few weeks ago joining the feral cats, the sewage overflows, the “intimacy tarps,” and just the general aesthetic of the place since it was renovated in the mid-90s to win back the Raiders (for a couple decades).

The older of you may remember when the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum was one of the sport’s jewels, the site of the 1987 All-Star Game right before the Athletics won three straight pennants behind the Bash Brothers, Rickey Henderson, and some long-haired Hall of Fame closer.

And almost all of you likely remember some sliver of Red Sox history in Oakland, because for a place they’ve only visited once a year for most of the last two decades, they’ve sure had a lot of memorable games there.

Thus, if I may take a moment to not lament the 2022 Red Sox bullpen, a few memories of afternoons and late nights gone by watching Boston spend part of a West Coast trip in the East Bay.

May 27, 1968 — Why not salute the first? Especially when, with a crowd of just 6,875 announced for what months earlier was still the Kansas City A’s, the seats were about as depressingly empty as they’ll probably be on Friday?

“So, Boston really needs a stadium? They ought to parcel the new one out here into three U-Haul-It trucks and send it to home,” quipped the Globe’s Clif Keane in the next day’s paper.

Playing the day after Oakland brawled with the Tigers, the reigning American League champs beat the A’s, 3-2, with reigning MVP Carl Yastrzemski smashing the longest home run in the brief history of the park. (The Oakland Tribune estimated it at 450 feet.)

Two additional notes: May 27 was a notable day in baseball history, as that same night the American League formally voted to split into divisions for the 1969 season, and the National League awarded expansion teams to Montreal and San Diego. (The NL wouldn’t agree to divisional play until a month later.)

Also, Boston’s second game in Oakland included the 1968 debut of ’67 Cy Young winner Jim Lonborg, used in relief after he’d torn up his knee skiing the previous Christmas. Though he’d pitch parts of the next 12 seasons, at 26, his best days were already behind him.

Oct. 7, 1975 — The Red Sox and Oakland have a relatively beefy playoff history. That aforementioned A’s dynasty of the late 1980s included a pair of championship-series sweeps of Boston, the 1990 version ending with Roger Clemens — Ninja Turtles on his cleats, goatee on his face — ejected in the second inning.

In 2003, the Red Sox completed a comeback from the Division Series brink in Oakland, Manny Ramirez crashing a game-winning home run and Derek Lowe closing it out with a celebratory crotch chop.

A shoutout, though, to their first postseason meeting, when the Red Sox ended the reign of the three-time World Series winners with an ALCS sweep of their own. Rico Petrocelli put the Sox up in the fourth, Dick Drago got a pivotal double play in the eighth, and Boston won, 5-3, to set up a World Series with the Big Red Machine.

June 7, 2007 — The Red Sox and A’s have played nine 1-0 games at the Coliseum, the visitors winning six of them, none more notable than the one played 15 years ago Tuesday.

When Curt Schilling shook off Jason Varitek.

The big-money Sox were already up nine games in a division race they were never much challenged in on their way to a world championship, but were on a season-worst four-game losing streak that getaway Thursday. They had only four hits that day, but David Ortiz’s first-inning solo shot off Joe Blanton was enough as Schilling played the stopper, needing only 90 pitches to reach the ninth without allowing a hit.

You likely know the rest: After retiring current A’s manager Mark Kotsay and Jason Kendall on groundouts, Varitek called for a first-pitch slider to Shannon Stewart — who, coincidentally, played his last major-league game exactly one year later on June 7, 2008.

Schilling wanted to throw a fastball. He did, and at 95 miles per hour, it was his fastest of the day. Stewart ripped it past a diving Alex Cora into right field.

“I was sure [Stewart] was taking. Tek was sure he was swinging,” Schilling told reporters after finishing his third and final one-hitter. “I was wrong. . . . And I’ve got the big ‘what if’ for the rest of my life.”

“I think Eric Hinske said it best,” Mike Lowell noted, “when he said, ‘I’ve never seen our pitcher throw a shutout and we win, 1-0, and we’re all disappointed.’

It was actually the second time a Red Sox pitcher lost a no-hitter in the ninth inning at Oakland Coliseum. Marty Pattin, whom the Red Sox got as part of the trade that sent Lonborg and George Scott out of town in 1971, tossed a one-hitter at the A’s on July 11, 1972. The only damage was a Reggie Jackson one-out single in the ninth.

April 21, 2018 — Cora, to be clear, had no chance at Stewart’s single, but that didn’t keep him from lamenting what might have been.

“Have I been this close to being a part of one?” he told reporters that day. “Not 10 feet.”

Eleven years later, another trip to Oakland changed that . . . sort of. Sean Manaea no-hit his rampaging Red Sox, who’d opened 17-2, outscoring opponents by nearly four runs per game. That included pounding what would become a 97-win A’s team by in the Friday series opener.

“That’s baseball. We talk about being humble and staying hungry,” Cora told reporters that Saturday night. “Well, we were humbled.”

It was not without controversy. Sandy León reached base in the fifth on a pop up that Marcus Semien, racing toward the outfield, got a glove on. (It was ruled it an error.) In the sixth, Andrew Benintendi appeared to have a hit when he beat out a swinging bunt up the first-base line, but was called out after an umpire huddle for leaving the base line.

In the moment, it was the start of a three-game losing streak, and the Red Sox dropped out of the first place about a month later when Manaea beat them again at Fenway. Their history, however, would not be denied.

Red Sox at Athletics Series Preview

The start of a west coast swing.
By Matt_Collins@MattRyCollins Jun 3, 2022, 2:06pm EDT 0 Comments

SB Nation Blog

Athletics Nation
The opponent in one sentence

The Athletics are a second straight team on the Red Sox schedule who infuriated their fan base by selling off a lot of top talent and now find themselves among the very worst teams in all of baseball.
Record

20-33
Trend

Down. The A’s have been trending down since the lockout ended and they traded Matts Olson and Chapman, really, but recently they’ve hit a big skid in their schedule. They are coming immediately off a sweep at the hands of the Astros, which itself was preceded by losing three of four to the Rangers. For all my math heads out there, that’s six losses in their last seven games.
Pitching Matchups

6/3: Nathan Eovaldi vs. James Kaprielian, 9:40 PM ET

The big issue for Nathan Eovaldi this season, as anyone who has been paying attention knows all too well, has been the long ball. He allowed another one last time out in an otherwise great start — the first complete game of his career — and he’s allowed at least one in eight of his nine starts so far this season. The best fix for that should be heading to a spacious ballpark with one of the worst power-hitting teams in the entire league. That’s what he gets traveling to Oakland to take on the A’s. Even with the home run problems Eovaldi has been pretty good, but the Red Sox could really use a homerless streak for him to get back to borderline ace status.

Kaprielian might be a familiar name for some going back to his days as a prospect in the Yankees system, but the former first round pick was never able to break out of the minors with New York, largely due to injury issues. He’s since made his way to Oakland where he spent his first significant time in the bigs last season. He was fine in 2021, but this season has been a struggle. The righty has watched his strikeout rate fall significantly while issuing more walks, leading to a 5.93 ERA and a FIP that is only very slightly better. He’s also allowed at least four runs in each of his last two starts, and has allowed five homers over his last three. Kaprielian will feature a fastball that sits 92-94, along with a slider, changeup, and curveball.

6/4: Nick Pivetta vs. Paul Blackburn, 4:07 PM ET

While the Red Sox continue to wait for Eovaldi to get back to where he was last season, it’s been Pivetta picking up the slack of late as the team’s best pitcher. Going back to his second start on May, the righty has pitched to an impressive 1.59 ERA, striking out 30 batters while walking only two over 34 innings of work. He’s also allowed more than one run in just one of the five starts in this stretch, lasting at least six innings in all of them as well. After a brutal start to his season, he found a mechanical tweak which has allowed him to throw strikes, and as long as he continues to do so I see little reason to doubt he can handle a lineup like Oakland’s.

Blackburn has had sort of a weird career in Oakland in that he’s spent just small amounts of time in the majors each year going back to 2017. Now, some of that is injury as he was placed on the 60-day injured list (then DL) in both 2017 and 2018. Still, across all of these seasons he only has 192 1⁄3 total innings. He’s already tied his career-high for starts this season with 10, and he’s been quite good in them with a 2.15 ERA and a 3.18 FIP. He’s not going to miss a ton of bats, instead relying on control and command with 5.6 percent walk rate and a ground ball tendency that has allowed him to keep the ball in the yard at a strong rate. Blackburn will feature a pair of fastballs (though skewed heavily towards his sinker) that sit in the low-90s along with a changeup, cutter, and curveball.

6/5: Rich Hill vs. Frankie Montas, 4:07 PM ET

Back in 2015, Hill revitalized his career with the Red Sox, turning an impressive September into a multi-year deal with the Athletics. Now he returns to Oakland at the end of his career, and it’s not really clear what he can be from start to start. More often than not this season he’s been effective, albeit with a relatively limited workload, but as we saw last time out he is liable to be hit around whenever he takes the mound. Without a pitch that can hit 90 mph, he needs to be on point with his command and make sure he gets ahead in counts so he can show off all of the different arm angles and curveballs he throws. But when that doesn’t happen and hitters can sit on his pitches, things go downhill quickly.

The Red Sox do have the misfortune of having to face off against by far the best player on this Athletics roster this year in Montas. A former Red Sox prospect, he has blossomed in Oakland and is expected to be one of the hottest targets at the trade deadline this season. He’s been awesome once again to start this season with a 3.20 ERA and a 3.10 FIP. He’s not really elite at any one thing, but he’s above-average across all areas to lead to consistently strong results. Montas will feature two mid-90s fastballs, a splitter which is the centerpiece of his arsenal, and a slider.
Old Friends

Montas, as mentioned just above, is a former Red Sox prospect. He was still very early in his career when he was sent to the White Sox back in 2013 in the trade that brought Jake Peavy to the Red Sox. Peavy helped the Red Sox win a World Series so Boston doesn’t regret the trade, but Montas would look very good in this rotation right now.

Jed Lowrie of course came up with the Red Sox way back in 2008 and served as a solid utility man for Boston for a few years, struggling to stay healthy but producing relatively well when on the field. He was traded to Houston prior to the 2012 season, and he’s been bouncing all around the league since then.

Domingo Tapia was part of that infamous 2020 Red Sox pitching staff, making five appearances for the Red Sox in that dismal season.
Notable Position Players

Ramón Laureano is arguably the best position player for the A’s these days, and while that’s probably not a sign of a great team he’s a really solid player. He plays good defense in the outfield with the chance to make the highlight reels on any ball, and also has some pop at the plate with good patience.

Tony Kemp has good plate discipline and is going to be very tough to strike out, but he’s still well below average overall this season thanks to an extreme lack of power.

Sean Murphy could be another interesting trade candidate this summer or perhaps next winter as a good defensive catcher while being around league-average at the plate, which is very good for the position.

Lowrie is in a similar zone as Kemp in that he is being held down by being unable to provide any power, even with doubles, at the plate.

Seth Brown has been able to hit for solid power, but he is still hovering around league-average thanks to a relatively high strikeout rate.

Luis Barrera hasn’t played a ton this year but has been good when he’s gotten in thanks to a high contact rate and some patience thrown in.

Elvis Andrus is having a little bit of a renaissance at the plate in a similar vein as Barrera, relaying on putting balls in play.

Sheldon Neuse is supposed to be a big power bat as long as he makes enough contact, but there’s been very little power so far this season.

Cristian Pache was part of the Olson return prior to the start of the season and he’s an outstanding defensive player whose offense has not yet been up to snuff.
Bullpen Snapshot

Dany Jiménez handles the ninth inning for the Athletics, and while he boasts an impressive 2.47 FIP that seems to mostly trace back to not having allowed a home run, which doesn’t feel sustainable. He can miss bats, but patience should lead to traffic and hopefully runs.

A.J. Puk is probably the best reliever in this bullpen. A former starting pitching prospect, he has great control and solid swing and miss stuff to help him pitch to a sub-2.00 ERA.

Zach Jackson is another guy who has not yet allowed a home run, but his control issues are more extreme than Jiménez which has led to some poor outings.
Weather Forecast

It doesn’t look like it’s going to be a particularly beautiful weekend in the Bay Area, but we should avoid any weather-related delays or cancellations.

1st & 2nd, two outs, and Dalbec gets picked off of 1st?

Bogaerts shines while making Red Sox history
59 minutes ago
Sonja Chen

Sonja Chen
@sonjamchen


OAKLAND -- It couldn't have been more perfect if it were a classic baseball movie.

Xander Bogaerts stepped to the plate in the top of the fourth inning. He watched two four-seamers from A's starter James Kaprielian go by -- one down and in, the other just a touch outside. The third pitch, however, was right over the heart of the plate -- and Bogaerts squared it up, launching it deep to left field for a solo shot.

Fittingly, Bogaerts drove in the first and last runs of Boston's 7-2 win over Oakland, going 2-for-5 with three RBIs. The homer itself wasn't otherworldly -- 389 feet, 102.8 mph off the bat -- but it perfectly highlighted a historic night for Bogaerts.

With his start Friday night, Bogaerts has now played 1,094 career games at shortstop, breaking a franchise record that lasted for over a century. He passed Everett Scott, who played for the Red Sox from 1914-21. Bogaerts and Scott are currently tied for the most career starts at short.

"It means a lot to us," manager Alex Cora said. "We'll wait for the celebration tomorrow because tomorrow's another big day for him.

"Just showing up every day, it means a lot to us, it means a lot to his teammates. It means a lot to the city of Boston."


Ask around the Red Sox clubhouse, and one word repeatedly comes up to describe what Bogaerts means to this club: consistency.

"Something that defines him is consistency," center fielder Kiké Hernández said. "He's as consistent as they get, and I'd say that's both on and off the field -- at the plate, on defense, in the clubhouse, same guy every day."

Bogaerts has long been a fixture in Boston. He signed with the Red Sox as an amateur free agent out of Aruba in 2009 and made his Major League debut four years later, appearing in 18 games in the 2013 regular season. But it wasn't until Boston's magical World Series run that fall that Bogaerts became indispensable in the lineup -- and he hasn't looked back.


It's not just the sheer number of games that jumps out about Bogaerts' feat -- it's also that he did it at shortstop. Shortstop is a grueling position, and there was initially some doubt about Bogaerts playing there every day in the Majors.

"When I came up, there was a lot of talk about, maybe I've got to switch positions," Bogaerts. "I've got to give a huge credit to the coaching staff and obviously the organization for believing in me and giving me that opportunity."

Four Silver Sluggers, three All-Star selections and two World Series rings later, Bogaerts is reliable as ever. In 2022, he leads American League shortstops with 33 runs and is second in extra-base hits with 20, trailing only Toronto's Bo Bichette. His 62 hits lead all MLB shortstops.


And what does Bogaerts think of his numbers so far?

Probably not much, Cora said. One standout quality is that Bogaerts always strives to be better. Through 51 games this season, Bogaerts is slashing .325/.394/.492, good for the third-highest OPS on the team. He won't sing his own praises, but Cora is more than happy to do it for him.

"He's just a humble kid that loves to win games. He did his part -- hit the homer, hit the double, played solid defense," Cora said. "There's only one man in the big leagues that can say his shortstop is Xander Bogaerts, and it's me. And I'm proud of that."


The feeling is mutual among Bogaerts' teammates. Though he's just 29 years old, Bogaerts is the longest tenured member of the Red Sox, and his teammates -- old and new, young and old -- say they look up to him both on and off the field.

"What you see is what you get," Bogaerts said. "It's very cool for those guys to see that and speak like that."


Christian Vázquez, who has played alongside Bogaerts since they were teammates in the Minors in 2011, summed up the impact clubhouse leaders like Bogaerts have in a few simple words.

"When they go," he said, "we go."