A’s vs. Twins game thread

Looking to secure the series win this afternoon

The A’s are all geared up to take on the Twins for a Saturday afternoon contest at the Coliseum. Looking like it’ll be a hot one in the East Bay today as the club will be trying to lock down the series W after edging out a win in the series opener last night.

Taking the ball for the Green & Gold today will be lefty JP Sears. It’s been rough going for Sears recently. In his past four starts he’s sporting a 5.29 ERA but Sears has generally been reliable and consistent for the team this year. His reliability has been extra valuable for the A’s because of the amount of injuries the starting rotation has suffered this year, being the lone member of the season-opening rotation still standing. We’ll be hoping Sears can turn the tides and get his season back on track with a quality outing today. He’ll be facing the Twins for the second time this week, never a fun assignment for a starting pitcher. Today’ll be a test for the second-year lefty.

Here’s the lineup that’ll be backing Sears up for today’s middle game:

After placing Abraham Toro on the IL this morning the club will first turn to Tyler Nevin to take over at the hot corner to take over for Toro. And taking Toro’s usual spot atop the lineup will be rookie shortstop Max Schuemann. It looks like Mark Kotsay likes Shuemann leading things off for the club without Toro (he led off every game in the Royals series) so we can pretty much expect to see more of that going forward for now. Other than that the lineup looks about how you would expect. Langeliers gets the day off after catching nine innings last night and lefty Kyle McCann gets the start against a right-handed opponent.

That opponent will be Bailey Ober. One of Minnesota’s better starters, Ober is having a fine season to date but is hittable. Like Sears, his last start was against our A’s so at least the Green & Gold have that going for them. Hopefully they can score more than one run off him this time.

Here’s the Minnesota lineup;

Let’s go A’s! Secure the series win today and get a chance at a sweep tomorrow.