Four months without meaningful baseball came to an end Friday night at the Coliseum. There was no crowd to hype the home team, though the hype man still shouted his prompts over the speakers. Pregame pomp and celebration was replaced by protest, reflection and some solitude.
And then, history was made late in the night. For the first time this season, an extra inning game was played with a runner placed on second to start the 10th. Matt Olson hit a grand slam walk-off home run with the bases loaded in the 10th inning, giving the A’s a 7-3 win to open the season.
Here are some more observations.
Ramón Laureano does it all — a tale of exit velocity victories
The A’s were hitless through three innings, looking about as cold as they did against the 18 San Francisco Giants pitchers they faced in the exhibition games.
One hot streak snapped the cold, briefly, against Angels’ left-handed starter Andrew Heaney: Ramón Laureano’s blazing home run shot into the left field seats, hit with a 110 mph exit velocity. It was the A’s first hit and first run of the regular season, and it interrupted a dismal bout of average at bats.
Down a run in the eighth against Ty Buttrey, Laureano blasted a double down the first base line at 103 mph, scoring Marcus Semien to tie it. Matt Chapman followed that with a 102 mph triple off the right field wall, scoring Laureano to give the A’s their first lead.
Though the offense started cold, there were signs of a breakthrough early. In his first at bat, Khris Davis hit a fastball to the warning track at 100 mph exit velocity. Chapman hit a pair of 100 mph line outs. Mark Canha hit a 101 mph pop out.
There was some decent contact there. And coaches new it would be a matter of time until the bats would catch up, timing wise. The slugging A’s we saw mid 2019 made a brief appearance late.
Frankie Montas: Amped, then solid
Frankie Montas, making his debut as an opening day starter, was clearly a little amped up. Crowd not needed.
Montas was throwing the kitchen sink from the get-go — splitter, slider, sinker and a cheesy fastball.
David Fletcher succumbed to Montas’ devastating splitter for a strikeout to start. A Mike Trout hit-by-pitch spiraled into a bases-loaded, two-out situation that called for Montas to hurl 98 mph fastball up in the zone to get Albert Pujols out swinging, concluding a 27 pitch first inning for the right-hander.
After settling down, Montas was as advertised. His sinker was particularly mesmerizing — he threw back-to-back 98 mph ones to Brian Goodwin in the second inning. Five strikeouts made up his first six outs.
Frankie Montas, Wicked 97mph Sinker. 🤢 pic.twitter.com/oP1KdyHOox
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) July 25, 2020
His fastball touched 98 mph a handful of times, hovering around a 96 mph average. His splitter and slider played well, too. The lone earned run on his opening day record came on a Goodwin RBI single after Montas lost control earlier in the inning, walking a consecutive batters with one out.
He dealt 81 pitches, 44 strikes, in four innings with three walks, five strikeouts and three hits to Shohei Ohtani and Trout, of course, along with Goodwin’s RBI.
Protest at the Coliseum
Protest against racial and social injustice returned to the Oakland Coliseum for the first time since Bruce Maxwell took a knee during the national anthem in 2017.
Tony Kemp and Khris Davis lifted their right fists during the playing of the anthem on Friday night. Both the A’s and Angels held a long black cloth in a moment of silence before the anthem as an act of protest.
