A’s fall to Brewers 5-3

Fought until the bitter end

The Athletics saw their short-lived win streak snapped on Friday night as they fell to the Milwaukee Brewers 5-3 in the first game of the weekend series against their NL Central foe.

Rookie vs. Veteran

Tonight’s starting pitching matchup pitted A’s rookie JT Ginn versus Brewers ace Freddy Peralta. Ginn was only just called up last week, taking fellow prospect Joey Estes’ spot in the starting rotation. Making his second start of the season for the big league team Ginn looked sharp through the first two innings with just one walk allowed with a trio of strikeouts. He also got some help from his defense as third baseman Gio Urshela made a terrific play at the hot corner in the bottom of the second inning:

That fantastic play deprived the Brewers of their first hit, at least for an inning. The Brewers would collect their firt base hit the next frame on a chopper that Urshela couldn’t make the play on. That base runner would come around to score on an RBI double and then that was followed by another RBI knock to make it 2-0 Brewers.

Meanwhile the A’s collected singles in each of the first three innings against Peralta but couldn’t bring them around to score. The fourth saw the Athletics string together a couple hits from Jacob Wilson and Miguel Andujar only to then see Urshela ground into a rally-killing double play. Side note: Wilson is now on a 3-game hit streak and has a knock in all but one game this year and is fourth in the American League with a .333 batting average.

Brewers add on, A’s fight back

Ginn got tagged for another run during his fifth inning of work. After securing the first two outs of the frame a single and walk chased the rookie from this contest, ending his night on a down note and putting himself in line for the loss.

• J.T. Ginn: 4 ²⁄₃ IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 2 BB, 7 K, 96 pitches

Not quite as dominant as his first outing but still a generally solid outing from a rookie making his eighth career start. The strikeouts are an encouraging signs of things to come for Ginn as he has a 13/4 K:BB ratio so far through two starts this year. New bullpen addition Jacob Lopez replaced Ginn for his season debut and gave up an RBI single to the first batter he faced, charged to Ginn and giving the Brewers a bit more breathing room against a dangerous A’s offense. 3-0 Milwaukee.

Still facing Peralta, the bats finally woke up the next inning as back-to-back hits put runners on the corners. Who else but Urshela would come up to bat in a key situation? A groundball to third looked like it would kill the rally dead in its tracks but the hustle from the veteran avoided his second double play of the day, scoring a run and putting the A’s on the board against Milwaukee:

It would go for naught tonight as Milwaukee added on a couple more runs in the bottom of the seventh against Lopez, with an error from the pitcher not helping matters at all in his first major league action of the season. Justin Sterner and Jose Leclerc finished off the game from the pitching side of things.

The A’s wouldn’t give up in this one, fighting all the way until the end. Back-to-back walks opened the ninth inning and gave the A’s one final chance to come back. Designated hitter Brent Rooker, who is finally starting to heat up after a tough start to the season, whacked an RBI double to cut into the Brewers’ lead:

That hit was immediately followed by Tyler Soderstrom’s RBI sac fly that made it 5-3 and turned this into a game:

But it was just too much of a deficit to overcome tonight. Shea Langeliers grounded out to end this game, snapping the A’s win streak and starting the weekend off on a losing note.

Well, not the outcome we all hoped for to start the series but it was always going to be tough going up against Peralta. The team falls to 9-11 and back into last place in the AL West. We need a better team performance tomorrow if we want to get back in the win column.

The A’s will have a better shot at the W tomorrow when the Brewers send out former A’s farmhand Chad Patrick. Milwaukee’s rookie right-hander will be going up against veteran Luis Severino, so the odds should be in the Athletics’ favor. Let’s hope we even this series up tomorrow evening!