Come Fly With Them: Athletics Have 4 Games, 3 Cities, 3 Time Zones in 57 Hours

In what figures to be the most compressed bit of baseball on the Oakland Athletics schedule for this year or any other year you'd care to name the A's played Sunday in Texas, have a doubleheader Monday in Seattle and a game Tuesday in Colorado, all in a 58-hour time frame. After that, the season gets easier.

There will more than their usual number of airports visited and airplanes flown for the Oakland A’s between now and Tuesday.

After dropping a 6-3 series finale in Arlington, Texas, 6-3, to the Rangers on Sunday, the A’s hopped on a plane and headed for Seattle, will they will play a Monday doubleheader, games that were originally scheduled for the beginning of the month but which were scratched when the A’s were shut down for five days after a positive COVID-19 test for A’s pitcher Daniel Mengden.

After Game 2 at T-Mobile Park Monday night, it’ll be back to the skies for the A’s, who will fly to Denver for the start of a two-game series against the Rockies Tuesday.

From Sunday afternoon through Tuesday evening, the A’s will play four games in three cities in three time zones in the space of about 58 hours.

There’s one exception to every rule, of course, and the exception this time around is Frankie Montas, who left DFW to fly hope to be with his wife, Nicolle, who is due to give birth in the next 48 hours to a daughter the couple is naming Ellie. 

With Montas, who will be on the paternity list through Thursday, the A’s will be making a roster move before the doubleheader in addition to adding a 29th player as teams can do in 2020 doubleheaders.

Stephen Piscotty, who drove in a first-inning run to give Oakland a 1-0 lead, isn’t about to make himself crazy thinking about all that travel.

“Things can get a little overwhelming if you start thinking about it,” Piscotty said. “So, for me, I’m just trying to go from station to station, from here to the flight. Check in, get ready for the doubleheader and move on. The best way to think about it is one step at a time here.”

That works for A’s manager Bob Melvin, who sees his team with a 29-17 record and the owner of a six-game lead in the American League West pending the result of the Sunday night game between the AL West runner-up, Houston, and National League West leader Los Angeles.

“It’s not ideal,” Melvin said wryly of the upcoming stretch of games. “But based on what happened, we knew this was coming. You try and hang in there and play at least .500. It’s all on the road, and it’s all lumped together, and there’s not much time and we’re traveling all over the place to do it.

“But you know other teams have done it, too. There’s no excuses.”

Sunday was something of lost day for the A’s offense, which got just six hits, just one of them in the first six innings against Rangers’ starter Lance Lynn. Down 4-1 after Montas was dinged for a three-run Rougned Odor homer in the sixth, Oakland finally got a couple of hits in the seventh with one out. Rookie catcher Jonah Heim thought he’d made the game closer when he smoked a sinking linger, but Texas third baseman Isiah Kiner-Falefa dove to his left for a diving catch that ended the inning.

“If that sneaks through, then potentially (Lynn) is out of the game, they have a lefty in the game and we have some matchups we’re going to play after that,” Melvin said. “That was the key play in the game.”

From the time that Marcus Semien doubled in the first inning, setting up Piscotty’s RBI grounder, to the sixth inning when Semien worked a walk, Lynn, now 6-2 with a 2.40 ERA, retired 17 consecutive Oakland batters. He threw a cutter/slider that the A’s couldn’t master.

“In the first inning we had a chance to do a little bit more damage,” Melvin said. “And once he settles in, he did what he’s been doing all year.”

Montas, now 3.4 with a 5.86 ERA, saw Derek Dietrich homer on the first pitch of the second inning, ting the game, but he retired 13 of 14 batters before the sixth inning, when two singles set up Odor for his third homer of a series, a back-breaking three-run shot.

“I feel like I was hitting my spots,” Montas said, adding that he made a mistake with Odor. The fastball was good today. It was just those two (home run) pitches).”

Montas was 2-1 with a 1.57 ERA in his first four starts. Since then he’s 1-3 with a 10.80 ERA. He was the opening day starter, but with the A’s needing to make some decisions about starting pitchers for the postseason, he’s going to have to up his game in his last few starts to get due consideration.

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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