Nobody reads old blogs. Maybe historians will, a thousand years from now. But usually, like baseball games, they are very much a thing of their moment, and forgotten soon after.
So I suppose it’s rather pointless that I’ve always had a goal, with my blogging, to make them readable not just in their moment, but many years down the line. But if, for some reason, someone does decide to go back and read these things, I think I somewhat succeeded in that goal. By focusing on what it feels like to be an A’s fan, instead of going into detailed analysis of each game, I think the previous version of Catfish Stew is still readable, fifteen years later.
If the blog was merely a list of “Kirk Saarloos did this in the third inning” and “Dan Johnson did that in the fifth inning”, and “What do the A’s do now that Bobby Crosby is injured?” on the other hand, aside from the nostalgia of reviving forgotten names, it would be a dreadful bore. Facts and events are local. Emotions are universal.
The exception is, of course, when moments of significance happen. Those are always fun to revisit, even if it’s just the facts. Today’s A’s-Rangers game was bookended by two such moments.
The first moment was A’s rookie sensation Jesús Luzardo’s first major league start. He was magnificent, even if he didn’t have all his pitches working. His fastball was sparkling, he located it well, and he kept batters off balance with his changeup. He went five innings and didn’t allow a run.
He accomplished that without having his slider working very well. He tried to get some right-handed batters to chase his backfoot slider, but he wasn’t quite locating that pitch exactly where he wanted it. It started low and inside and ended up even more low and inside, so hitters never chased it for a strike. The exciting thing is, if he does manage to find that pitch so that it starts out looking like a pitch over the plate, and ends up in the dirt by the back foot of the right-handed hitter, he will be even more difficult to hit.
I haven’t been this excited about a young A’s pitcher since Rich Harden. He looks like a star in the making to me.
Luzardo did not get the victory in this game, as the game proceeded the way most of the A’s games have proceeded this season. The A’s offense did nothing against the Rangers starter, Lance Lynn, who was similarly magnificent in this game, moving his fastball in and out with various cuts and sinks like a vintage Bartolo Colon. Luzardo left the game with the score tied, 0-0. The Rangers scored a run off Luzardo’s successor, Yusmeiro Petit, in the sixth inning. Matt Chapman managed to time one of Lynn’s fastballs in the seventh for an opposite field homer to tie the game at 1. The game then moved to the ninth inning, tied 1-1.
The other moment of significance happened in the bottom of the ninth. Just like in the first game of the season, the A’s loaded the bases in a tie game with one out. A sacrifice fly would win the game.
In the first game it was Matt Olson who came up in that situation. This time it was Stephen Piscotty. Just like Olson, Piscotty was facing a new reliever coming into the game. And just like Olson, Piscotty hit the first pitch he saw into the air into the outfield, deep enough for that sacrifice fly. And also just like Olson, Piscotty’s ball kept going, and flew over the fence for a game-winning walkoff grand slam. Final score: A’s 5, Rangers 1.
This was the first time the A’s had ever hit two walkoff grand slams in a single season, and they did both of those in a span of less than two weeks. And given that this is a shortened season where each game is worth 2.7x what a game is worth in a normal 162-game season, I joked on Twitter soon afterwards that “The Oakland A’s are the first team in major league history to hit 5.4 walkoff grand slams in a season.”