A team that once won 20 straight games will attempt to hand its guest a 21st consecutive defeat when the Oakland Athletics open a three-game home series against the reeling Chicago White Sox on Monday night.
Both teams enter the series on a losing streak, but Oakland’s two-game skid — the last two of a three-game series against the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers — is dwarfed by Chicago’s run. The White Sox lost their 20th in a row on Sunday in Minnesota.
Coincidentally, the Twins ended the A’s 20-game winning streak in September 2002 with a 6-0 home win. Scott Hatteberg, Oakland’s first baseman that day and poster boy for its “Moneyball” season, was on hand for the series-ending 3-2 loss to the Dodgers as part of the A’s Alumni Sundays promotion.
The Oakland winning streak equals the fourth-longest in modern major league history. One of the teams that would have also been above them, but it came in a previous era, was the 1880 Chicago White Stockings, who won 21 in a row.
The modern-day White Sox have a chance to match that number, but at the other end of the spectrum, when they attempt to avoid tying the 1988 Baltimore Orioles for the longest losing streak in American League history.
The White Sox had three chances to end the A’s franchise-record streak 22 years ago, but were beaten 1-0, 9-2 and 7-4 in Oakland.
Another sweep by the home team in this three-game series and the White Sox would tie the modern-day futility record of 23 consecutive losses, set by the Philadelphia Phillies in 1961.
“We’ve lost 20 in a row. That’s painful,” Chicago manager Pedro Grifol said. “We’ve just got to find a way to put that behind us and go out there and be professionals and do what we have to do (in Oakland).”
Tasked with ending the skid will be rookie right-hander Jonathan Cannon (1-5, 4.11 ERA), who is winless in his past seven appearances, going 0-4 with a 4.78 ERA. He has never faced the A’s.
One player who would probably like nothing better than to put the streak to bed in Oakland is Chicago first baseman Andrew Vaughn, a San Francisco Bay Area native who starred at UC Berkeley.
Vaughn did his best to get the White Sox a win Sunday in Minnesota, recording two doubles, a single, two RBIs and two runs in a 13-7 defeat. The slugger has yet to homer in 10 previous visits to Oakland.
This time, he’ll be facing left-hander JP Sears (8-8, 4.53).
Sears, who is 0-2 with a 13.50 ERA in two career starts covering eight innings against the White Sox, pitched brilliantly in his most recent outing, shutting out the host San Francisco Giants for seven innings in a 5-2 win on Tuesday.
Sears went 4-1 in July, a month Oakland finished with five series wins and a split of two games with the Giants. The A’s then lost two of three to the Dodgers to kick off August.
“It was a good run. We played really good baseball,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said. “This series (against the Dodgers), if you throw out the (six-run) ninth inning (Saturday), we basically played 26 of 27 innings of really good baseball against a really good team. Our goal is to continue to win series.”
–Field Level Media
