WEST SACRAMENTO -- Josh Jung of the Texas Rangers hit a fly ball into right field in the top of the seventh inning Thursday afternoon that probably would have been a routine out on another day, but on this one -- with the flags whipping from the first pitch to the final out -- kept going … and going … and going until it landed as an unlikely home run.
Plus, there was the sun during the cloudless matinee at Sutter Health Park that caused fielders to misplay balls and shield their eyes. The wind and the brightness made for, Athletics manager Mark Kotsay said, “probably one of the more difficult games that I’ve been a part of in terms of the elements.”
Difficult because of their own poor execution as well. The Athletics lost to the Rangers, 9-6, because of a rough top of the ninth that had nothing to do with Mother Nature, just the home team’s inability to hold a 6-5 lead.
“I think we’ll be OK,” Jacob Lopez said after starting for the Athletics and pitching five innings. “This team has a lot of heart, as you’ve seen based on the times when myself or the rest of the staff, they give up some runs and the offense picks up right away. But it’s a long season and we’ve got a good team.”
Justin Sterner, in to start the ninth inning and looking to close out what the Athletics hoped would be an 11th win in their last 14 games, gave up four runs (three earned) on four hits and a walk to turn a one-run advantage into a heartbreaking loss. But the most damage came when he fielded an intended sacrifice bunt by Kyle Higashioka and threw slightly high to third baseman Darell Hernaiz in an attempt to get Jake Burger on a forceout. Instead, the ball went off Hernaiz’s glove when he stretched for the catch, an error that allowed Burger to score the tying run.
“He left a couple balls up,” Kotsay said of Sterner. “Two guys get on and we don’t execute getting an out at third base. That was probably the pivotal play of the inning. … But unfortunately, the throw caught Darell a little bit high. He was stretching. That kind of changed the inning there.”
The weather issues worked both ways and played a big part in setting the A’s up for a potential victory. Nick Kurtz came up in the bottom of the eighth with the bases loaded and the A’s trailing 5-3 and lofted a fly to short left. Rangers left fielder Wyatt Langford charged hard. Langford slid.
Maybe the sun was a factor. Maybe the wind played havoc.
But when the ball fell in front of Langford, the double into short left field scored three runs as a boost to the offense that too often lately had been churning for runs. The Athletics, after all, had scored one run on Sunday against the Mets in New York, one on Monday and two on Tuesday vs. the Rangers.
On Thursday, they went from powering to a 6-5 win the night before on home runs by Shea Langeliers (at 467 feet the longest of the season in the Majors) and Jacob Wilson to struggling to get anything going in the series finale. Three of their first four baserunners got on via either a walk or being hit by a pitch. The lone hit until the fourth inning, a Langeliers single, helped load the bases in the third, but all three were stranded.
One of the A’s two hits in the fourth inning was a bunt single, from Lawrence Butler, and Butler and Carlos Cortes were also left on base.
Even when the offense finally broke through in the fifth, it started with a Langeliers walk. That was soon followed, though, by Tyler Soderstrom’s automatic double and Jacob Wilson’s two-run bloop single to right. When Cortes lined a single to right, the Athletics had a 3-2 lead.
Scraping together four total runs in the three games before Wednesday’s breakout of home runs made the offense a focus of attention. Kurtz’s eighth-inning double fit right in, just as it fell right in, but it wasn’t quite enough.