Athletics fall behind early, see six-game win streak snapped against Marlins
OAKLAND — The Athletics’ six-game win streak is history.
Control issues and a sore back limited starting pitcher Joe Boyle to just an inning Sunday as the Athletics fell 12-3 to the Miami Marlins at the Coliseum.
A day after reaching .500, the A’s fell to 17-18 and will face the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers four times over the next three days. The Marlins improved to 10-26.
“Just one of those days,” designated hitter Brent Rooker said. “Not much went our way on either side of the ball, but that’s baseball. You’re going to have games like that. It was still a really good week for us, three straight series wins and we’ve been playing some good ball.”
The paid attendance of 12,212 on a youth baseball day promotion was the A’s second largest crowd of the season behind the 13,522 on Opening Day.
Nick Gordon of Miami hit a three-run home run off Boyle in a four-run first inning, his fourth of the season. After scoring 20 runs with 21 hits and six home runs in Saturday’s blowout win over Miami, the early deficit was too much to overcome as six Miami pitchers held Oakland to five hits and no home runs.
“Offensively today we really didn’t get much going outside of Rook having a couple of good at-bats,” Athletics manager Mark Kotsay said.
Sixto Sanchez gave up two runs through four innings before passing off to Burch Smith (2-0), Andrew Nardi, Anthony Bender, Calvin Faucher and Eli Villalobos for an inning each.
The Athletics got a run in the eighth when Max Schuemann singled home Rooker, who doubled down the left field line with two outs.
The Athletics cut the Miami lead to 5-2 in the fourth with Darell Hernaiz hitting a bullet RBI single (105.4 miles per hour) to center to drive in Rooker, who had singled and gone to second on a ground ball out. After Lawrence Butler walked, Kyle McCann hit a chopper to first. Josh Bell fielded the ball, but threw high to second with a second run scoring.
In his previous start, Boyle (2-5) weathered a first inning where only 10 of 26 pitches were strikes with two walks and two wild pitches by giving up only a single run that scored on a wild pitch. He ended up the winning pitcher, lasting through five innings as the Pittsburgh Pirates never scored again.
It was a similar story against Miami with one major exception. While Pittsburgh didn’t take advantage of the free baserunners, the Marlins got the three-run home run from Gordon for a 4-0 lead. It was the only hit Miami would get in the inning. The first run scored on a fielders choice after two of his walks.
Only 16 of Boyle’s 35 pitches in the first inning were strikes. He walked three and allowed three stolen bases, two of which were by Jazz Chisholm Jr. after getting a huge jump. He finished the inning, but didn’t come out for the second, with the club later announcing Boyle had departed with a lower back injury.
“I just felt it when I started pitching and it got progressively worse as it went on,” Boyle said.
Boyle’s injury as well as the Wednesday double header means the A’s will deviate from their five-man rotation to a degree for the first time in 2024.
“We’ll most likely have to make some moves here, which we haven’t had to do all season,” Kotsay said. “We’ll wait and see what the MRI shows for Boyle. In terms of the doubleheader, we’ll obviously add a pitcher at some point and we’ll make the decision and the and announcement.”
When the second inning began, Mitch Spence took the mound as Kotsay was forced to dig into his bullpen earlier than hoped — especially with four games to play over the next three days including a Wednesday doubleheader against Texas.
Miami reached Spence for a run in the second on a run-scoring single by Josh Bell and twice more in the sixth on run-scoring doubles by former A’s Jonah Bride and Christian Bethancourt. Michael Kelly replaced Spence and gave up a run-scoring single to Chisholm to put the Marlins up 8-2.
Miami added four insurance runs off left-hander T.J. McFarland, who got a procession of ground balls that found holes and ended up surrendering six hits and four earned runs.
“They hit the the ball everywhere we weren’t,” Kotsay said. “A lot of soft contact accounting for those four runs.”
Rooker finished 2-for-3 and was 6-for-10 for the series against Miami.
“I’m putting together good at-bats, seeing pitches well, swinging at the right ones, taking good swings and when I do all those things results tend to follow,” Rooker said.