Having enjoyed the hors d’oeuvres of their three-day going-away party, the Oakland Athletics hope to serve the fans a perfectly cooked main course Wednesday night when they go for a second consecutive win over the Texas Rangers.
Considered to be the franchise’s double play combination of the future, Zack Gelof and Jacob Wilson combined to pen a piece of Oakland baseball history in Tuesday’s 5-4 walk-off win as the A’s kicked off the final homestand of their East Bay existence.
Gelof singled, stole second and scored on Wilson’s one-out single in the final inning of the night, sending many of the 30,402 in attendance home with a positive lasting impression of the ballclub that lived 57 years in their backyard.
The A’s are moving to Sacramento next season, where they will await construction of a new ballpark in Las Vegas.
“For those who are here, that’s a great way to have a memory of a walk-off win for their last home game,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said afterward. “I just hope the next two days are equally enjoyable.”
The third-year manager also hopes the hard-earned win has a carryover effect on his young team.
“We’re still competing every night to get as many wins as possible,” he said. “We’re still talking about teaching moments, how we’re going to make this team better next year.”
A pair of 26-year-old Texas-born left-handers who grew up about 300 miles apart get an opportunity to carve out their own small pieces in Oakland baseball lore when Cody Bradford (6-3, 3.59) of the Rangers and Brady Basso (1-0, 2.33) of the A’s square off in the rematch.
With another big crowd expected, Bradford will make his Oakland Coliseum debut in a building reminiscent of the old days, when the A’s (68-89) won four championships. He has dominated the A’s in three career head-to-heads at home, including two starts, going 1-0 with a 1.23 ERA with 16 strikeouts in 14 2/3 innings.
Bradford is coming off his best game of the season, a 2-0 home win over the Toronto Blue Jays last Wednesday in which he threw seven shutout innings.
The second-year pitcher will be backed by a couple of guys who contributed to the A’s more glory days.
Jonah Heim, who debuted for the A’s in their postseason run in 2020, drove in two runs in Tuesday’s loss. His 13th home run, a solo shot in the eighth inning, created the 4-4 tie that Wilson’s hit broke in the ninth.
Semien grew up an A’s fan. He attended high school in nearby Albany before playing his college ball just up the road at Cal and later spending six seasons with Oakland (2015-20), and he thrilled some of his old fans with two hits on Tuesday as he relived his own glory days. With the A’s, he hit .256 with 107 homers and 345 RBIs and was part of three playoff teams.
“That stadium is fun when it’s full,” he recalled. “We played the (2019 American League) wild-card game there. We did not win, but just playing in front of the thousands of fans there — there’s a ton of fans in Oakland. … We also had a game on the 50th anniversary of the Oakland A’s where it was a free game, so the whole stadium was full and I think we scored 16 runs.”
In the second game of the series, Semien is scheduled to face Basso, who has yet to go head-to-head with the Rangers (74-83) in his rookie season. He has allowed just three runs over 16 innings in three September starts — the first three starts of his career.
Only one of Basso’s six appearances has come in Oakland, where he made his first career start on Sept. 7. He threw six shutout innings that day against the Detroit Tigers in a 2-1 loss.
-Field Level Media
