A’s Continue To Make Coliseum A House Of Horrors For Yankees
Aug 29, 2022, 2:27 PM | Updated: Nov 11, 2022, 12:00 pm
(Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
(Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
Amid a very forgettable year of Oakland A’s baseball, some things never change: Oakland’s dominance of the New York Yankees at the Coliseum.
Entering play on Saturday night, the Yankees had seemed to have snapped out of their funk as they carried a five-game winning streak into action against A’s rookie Adam Oller. After being outscored 16-6 over the first two games of the series, things appeared bleak for Oakland as Oller was tasked with facing a dangerous New York lineup that currently leads the league in home runs.
Instead, Oller and the A’s completely booted the Yankee offense out of the picture for the rest of the weekend.
Oll out.
8 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 K pic.twitter.com/LQv3vrXtri
— Oakland A's (@Athletics) August 28, 2022
Saturday night featured an impressive eight-inning, one-hit performance from Oller as Oakland snuck out a 3-2 win in extra innings thanks to a clutch game-tying, two-run home run from Stephen Vogt to snap New York’s five-game winning streak.
On Sunday, rookie Adrián Martínez did his best Oller impression to hold the Yankees to just one run and three hits over 5.1 innings of work while striking out six batters in what was a memorable performance for the 25-year-old.
“When I saw Adrian last night, he had a big smile on his face,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said following Sunday’s win. “This kid just seems to feed off big environments or the Triple-A numbers don’t show how he’s able to go out and perform here. He did that today against one of the best lineups in the league.”
From the eighth inning of Friday night’s game until the top of the fifth inning of Sunday’s game, New York could only muster one base hit over 18 innings of action.
“You have to tip your cap sometimes,” MVP front-runner Aaron Judge said postgame Sunday of Oakland’s impressive pitching. ”They had some good pitchers over there who made pitches when they had to and kept us off balance the last couple of days.”
Although Judge drilled a three-run home run on Friday night that would be enough to give the Yankees a 3-2 victory, the slugger struggled throughout the four-game series, hitting just .154 with just two hits over 18 at-bats.
Of course, beating the mighty Yankees at the Coliseum isn’t new to the Oakland A’s–they’ve made it an art form over the past decade.
Yankees are now 14-25 (.359) at Oakland Coliseum since 2012. That's their worst record at any ballpark in that span (min. 7 games)
— Katie Sharp (@ktsharp) August 28, 2022
According to Katie Sharp of Stathead, the Yankees have won just 11 of their last 25 games at the Coliseum since the start of the 2012 season, the team’s worst record at any road stadium during that period.
In a season that has been full of disappointments, the past two days at the Coliseum were full of fun and reminiscing with the team celebrating the 20th anniversary of the 2002 A’s and their legendary 20-game winning streak.
For 48 hours, it was as if the Athletics were back in the playoff hunt as a packed crowd watched Oakland’s pitching shut down the 78-50 New York Yankees.
All things considered, you could argue that the past two games were the high point of the season for the green and gold.
