The Athletics finished off the three game series in a big way with the Philadelphia Phillies this afternoon before packing up to head to Baltimore to finish up this road trip.
Now that’s the kind of first inning we were hoping for. A walk, a bomb, a walk, another bomb and before the Philly fans could wipe the cheese whiz off their chins their hometown boys were down 4-0. Welcome back to the squad Shea Langeliers with his MLB leading 46th hit which just so happened to leave the ballpark for his eleventh long ball of the season.
After a Tyler Soderstrom walk, Brent Rooker launched his fourth homer of the season. In the meantime, J.T. Ginn worked two effective and efficient innings to get his defense back into the dugout.
After skipping a second inning scoring outburst, the A’s got back to business in the third with a leadoff walk by Tyler Soderstrom who advanced to second on a long fly out to deep center field. Advancing on that out allowed him to score rather easily on a Carlos Cortes base hit. Jacob Wilson made scoring super-easy for Cortes from first on a long home run to left field. That was Wilson’s third homer and eighteenth RBI of the season.
With two outs in the fourth inning, and Shea Langeliers on first, Don Mattingly pulled Painter and replaced him with lefty Tanner Banks. Soderstrom said “welcome” with a single into right field allowing Langeliers to cruise into third with two outs. Rooker fought off an inside slider to poke it into right field for an RBI on his 500th career hit. Soderstrom moved to third on the knock. That gave the A’s an 8-0 lead going to the bottom of the fourth.
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Kyle Schwarber got the Phillies on the board with his 12th homer of the season. The line-drive shot exited the building quickly. But the A’s got that run right back with a walk to Lawrence Butler and a triple totally lost in the sky to center field by Zack Gelof. Gelof scored on a base hit by Nick Kurtz.
Ginn continued to cruise, finishing the sixth inning with only seventy pitches allowing only two hits and one earned run! Lawrence Butler doubled to lead off the seventh for the A’s. The homer parade continued on a nine-pitch AB, with Zack Gelof’s third homer of the season, scoring Butler.
Ginn finished off the eighth inning, already surpassing the longest outing for an A’s starter in 2026. That would be all for him this Spring evening in Philly. He exited with 8.0 innings, one earned run on four hits and one walk. Hs struck out eight. Brooks Kriske entered the game to handle the ninth. He gave up two hits but no runs and ended the game with a 12-1 victory over the Phillies.
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