Davis Breaks Out with Single and Homer; the Next Move is Melvin's
Just when the Oakland A’s thought nobody was looking, they snuck into first place in the American League West.
And they put together some offense.
Those two facts aren’t unrelated.
Neither is this one: Khris Davis was in the middle of the eight-run inning that broke the game open in the fifth inning as the A’s took three of four from the Mariners with an 11-1 win. He walked and scored the inning’s first run, then drove in a run later with an infield single. Two innings later he would hit his first home run of the season.
Oakland is now 6-4, one-half game ahead of Houston in the AL West.
Held to one hit and two base runners in the first four innings, the A’s sent 14 batters to the plate, including Ramon Laureano, whose two-out bases-loaded double started the scoring, and Davis. Before the night was over, Davis reached base on his final four consecutive plate trips.
It was the kind of game the A’s were looking for from their DH, and the kind of game that might ensure that he gets in the lineup regularly against right-handed pitching. He got the start Monday because the Mariners were throwing a left-hander, Justus Sheffield. But the homer came against a right-hander, Zac Grotz.
Talking before the game, manager Bob Melvin suggested that he might be picking his spots in the lineup with Davis, the 2018 American League home run champ. Afterward, Melvin seemed to soften a bit on that.
“With the liner, (then) the homer, he felt really good today, and you could tell he looked comfortable in the box,” Melvin said. “So, it’s a good start, you know? We’ll see where we go from here, but obviously we know that this guy is one of the bigger bats that we’ve ever had in this organization.”
Over the last two starts Melvin has liked the at-bats Davis had been putting forward, even if the results weren’t there until the second half of Monday’s game.
Things had gotten so bad for Davis that after he’d gotten his first hit earlier in the series, he called time and asked for the ball the way you’d ask for it after a big number, like your 1,000th career hit or 100th RBI. That’s the way it is when you start the season 0-for-16. It was a bit of levity, a way of showing that he was feeling all right.
In five plate trips Monday, he reached back four times. But it might have been that first at-bat, a ball he smoked to left field, that was the omen for what would be happening.
“He looked great in BP, and it’s funny, he said he was going to go deep, and he sure did,” right fielder Stephen Piscotty said. “We’ve been seeing it. He’s been working really, really hard and putting the time in, and it was nice to see it pay off.
“That first ball he hit in first at-bat was just smoked, and you could tell he was dialed in.”
Piscotty, who’d also gotten off to a slow start, had two hits, both of them in the fifth inning, a single and a double. He said club’s 11-run, 12-hit performance was the kind of game Oakland had been waiting for. Mostly, winning three of the four games was huge for a team that had a three-game losing streak after dropping the season opener.
“We feel great about that; we’re going to have a nice flight back,” he said, “and take on some tough teams.”
The A’s have three games with the Rangers starting Tuesday and three more with the Astros beginning Friday before spending the next eight games on the road. First up against the Rangers is Lance Lynn, who has allowed just three hits and no runs in 12 innings.
It’s the kind of game that’s not a great matchup for a right-handed power hitter, so it will be interesting to see if the big night in Seattle will get Davis back into the lineup Tuesday. If so, that would indicate that Melvin believes Davis is ready to go off on a run.
Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3
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