The Oakland Athletics kept up their winning ways on Tuesday as they defeated the New York Mets 7-3 in the opening game of their three game interleague series. The A’s benefitted from control issues for the Mets pitchers. Although Oakland managed only one extra base hit, Dillon Gee and D.J. Carrasco combined to walk eight batters. The A’s took full advantage of this as they plated five of the seven walks.
The A’s entered this series with a five game winning streak and were hoping to maintain the hot streak as they have worked to climb back into the AL West race. Considering athletes can be fairly superstitious, it should surprise nobody that the A’s stuck with the gold jerseys. The A’s are now 10-3 when wearing the gold tops and I’d imagine they won’t be going anywhere as long as the A’s keep winning.
Josh Outman put together his third straight solid outing in picking up his third win. After going 2 2/3 innings against the Red Sox on June 3, Outman has gone six or seven innings in his subsequent three starts, giving up five total runs, four of them earned. He walked two batters and gave up four hits but avoided too much trouble. The Mets threatened in the fourth when they loaded the bases with one out, but they could only manage a sacrifice fly by Ruben Tejada.
The A’s offense combined a lot of patience with timely hitting to put together a solid offensive performance. In the first and third innings, when the A’s put four runs on the board, Jemile Weeks and Cliff Pennington led off each inning with back-to-back walks. The first inning saw Coco Crisp load the bases with a single and then Hideki Matsui and Conor Jackson grab sacrifice RBIs. The third inning saw four straight walks to start the inning and an infield single to grab the second run of the inning.
The A’s and Mets return to action Wednesday at 4:10pm pacific on CSN California as the A’s look to grab their seventh straight win. Gio Gonzalez will face knuckleballer R.A. Dickey.
In some late breaking news, the A’s have optioned first baseman Daric Barton down to the minor leagues to figure out what’s wrong with his swing. Mark Ellis is eligible to come off the disabled list tomorrow, which means the team needed to clear a roster spot. Given how well Jemile Weeks has played over the last two weeks, it would have been stunning if the A’s had sent him back to Sacramento.