Field Level Media - Professional sports content solutions | FLM

Gerrit Cole returns to one of his favorite ballparks — for more than one reason — when the New York Yankees kick off the Oakland Athletics’ going-away homestand with a three-game series that begins Friday night.

Major League Baseball has scheduled the Yankees and defending World Series champion Texas Rangers as the final two teams to occupy the visitors’ dugout at the Oakland Coliseum before the A’s (67-86) pack their bases and move to Sacramento next season.

Having already clinched a postseason berth, New York (89-64) begins the series four games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles atop the American League East. Coming off a 3-2 loss at Seattle on Thursday afternoon, the Yankees have a magic number of six to claim just their third division title in the past 12 years.

Cole (6-5, 3.97 ERA), a Southern California native, has pitched brilliantly in his career against the A’s, going 6-1 with a 2.53 ERA and 85 strikeouts over 64 innings in 10 starts. He is 4-0 with a 2.30 ERA in five starts in Oakland, striking out 39 in 31 1/3 innings.

Pitching on the east side of the San Francisco Bay has special meaning for the 34-year-old, whose wife, Amy, was a softball star at Foothill High in the Oakland suburb of Pleasanton. The couple met at UCLA.

The former Amy Crawford is the sister of former San Francisco Giants standout shortstop Brandon Crawford.

A family reunion could provide a welcome change of scenery for Cole after a 7-1 home loss to the Boston Red Sox last Saturday in which he and the Yankees were criticized for walking Rafael Devers intentionally with one out and nobody on base in the fourth inning.

The Red Sox went on to score three times in the inning, and Cole was done one out later after the visitors had tacked on four more runs in the fifth.

“Clearly, that was a mistake,” Cole admitted afterward. “I bought into the plan going into it. … If I make pitches after that and I continue to execute at a high level, then the plan works.”

Cole didn’t pitch when the Yankees and A’s split a four-game series in New York in April.

The A’s begin what should be a crowd-gathering final homestand coming off a nine-game trip in which they took two of three from the Houston Astros and Chicago Cubs. Their 4-3 and 5-3 wins in Chicago on Tuesday and Wednesday sent the Cubs to the brink of postseason elimination.

With a chance to give the Orioles a boost in their effort to catch the Yankees in the AL East, the A’s will send right-hander J.T. Ginn (0-1, 4.94) in search of a memorable first big-league win.

The 25-year-old rookie, a former second-round draft pick of the New York Mets, has never faced the Yankees in his six major league games, four of which have been starts.

“We’re expecting a lot of people to come out and show up, so we’re expecting a good atmosphere and we’re excited about that,” said A’s star Brent Rooker, who will take a .304 batting average into the final nine games of the season. “But we understand at the same time, there’s going to be a lot of mixed emotions from all sides, and we’re ready to just hopefully close on a high note.”

-Field Level Media