It proved to be the only run they scored off of the three-time Cy Young award-winner, and it was made possible because Butler didn’t ground into a double play.
Advertisement
“He’s going to have games where he’s going to have four hits”, A’s manager Bob Melvin said. The big blast gave the Dodgers a commanding 4-1 lead with just six outs to go before handing Clayton Kershaw his 11th victory over the season.
The A’s loaded the bases with nobody out against Jim Johnson in the eighth inning, then tacked on a pair of insurance runs with Luis Avilan and Pedro Baez on the mound, providing the final margin. He added an RBI-double to tie the game 2-2. What a twist! From there, the A’s took the chance to manufacture a run – Josh Reddick sacrificed the runners over, and Marcus Semien knocked one in with a groundout.
“We should have something to prove every day, but speaking on a personal note, yeah, I have a lot to prove”, Chavez said. “Probably one of my better games this year”. “It was awesome. What I’ll remember probably most is how much fun we were having in the dugout and everybody supporting each other and how good of a team win it was after such a tough road trip we had”.
Three fights broke out among a combustible mixture of 35,067 A’s and Dodgers fans. Entering Wednesday, though, Chavez had posted a 5.28 ERA in six starts since the All-Star Break, and there was some speculation of whether he was experiencing another second-half letdown.
I wonder what Kershaw did then.
As impressive as anything was the fact that his best pitch, his cutter, was off. So he went to augment his fastball with a slider, change up and curve. “It looked like he would be in there for a while”. Prior to Kike Hernandez’s two-out double in the eighth, Rollins’ home run was the only hit Chavez had allowed, and he retired 13 straight hitters at one point in between.
NOTES: Dodgers RF Yasiel Puig had an MRI on his injured right hamstring Wednesday that showed a “very mild” strain, manager Don Mattingly said.
Two games and two losses later, the Dodgers left the O.co Coliseum reeling Wednesday afternoon. With two days off coming up, Mattingly made the switch in order to keep Kershaw and Zack Greinke on turn in the rotation…. The left-hander is 1-1 with a 5.09 ERA in three starts with his new club, and control has been at the heart of the struggles.
Advertisement
On Tuesday, it was A.J. Ellis who sent the first pitch he saw from Fernando Rodriguez in the eighth inning over the center field wall for a three-run home run.
