The Oakland A’s are coming off a somewhat frustrating 3-3 week. Going .500 when playing at home to the Astros and away to the Angels is a decent return from those games, but the way it turned out was disappointing.
Having won the opener against the Astros, losing that series 2-1 was a shame following the 0-4 thumping they gave us at home to start the season. Then against the Angels, two excellent wins to start the series were soured a little by letting a 4-0 lead disappear yesterday and us having to put the brooms away without sweeping anything up.
We have a home-stand to look forward to now, though, with our first games of the season against Seattle and then another series against the Angels.
Seattle series
The youth movement in Seattle is starting to make it to the Big Leagues with star outfielder prospect Jared Kelenic having been called up a couple of weeks ago. The provisional pitching match-ups are as follows:
Gm1. Frankie Montas – Yusei Kikuchi
Gm2. Cole Irvin – Logan Gilbert
Gm3. James Kaprielian – TBD (Chris Flexen?)
It’s not yet clear who the Mariners will be starting in Game 3, the day-game we can enjoy in the British evening; however, it should be James Kaprielian’s turn for the A’s. Kap is a great story, made all the better by his Dad’s reactions in the crowd when watching his son pitch, so that should be a treat.
Angels series
Mike Trout is going to be on the sidelines until mid-July at the earliest recovering from his calf strain, so we will continue to get the benefit of not having to face him whilst recognising the negatives of not getting to watch one of the best ever doing his thing. We probably will get to see Shohei Ohtani pitch though, as he’s scheduled to make his return to the mound on Friday.
Gm1. Chris Bassitt – Alex Cobb
Gm2. Sean Manaea – Shohei Ohtani
Gm3. Frankie Montas – José Quintana
Gm4. Cole Irvin – Dylan Bundy
Quick apology!
As regulars will have noticed, I have been neglecting the blog over the past few weeks. I do have a good excuse for that in having been busy working on a couple of A’s UK-related projects that have taken up my ‘blog-writing’ spare time. Hopefully I’ll be able to launch one of those very soon, but will be back blogging more regularly in any case.