The Oakland A’s were riding a streak of 14 home runs of the solo variety. Matt Olson’s two-run home run in the seventh inning not only snapped that streak, but secured the A’s 5-4 win over the Chicago White Sox on Thursday afternoon.
The A’s scored two of their first three runs on a pair of solo home runs from Sean Murphy and Matt Chapman off White Sox starter Dylan Cease. Oakland went 1 for 5 with runners in scoring position; a Tony Kemp walk with the bases loaded in the fourth inning broke a 1-1 tie early.
The win prevented a brutal four-game sweep of the first-place team worsened with Chris Bassitt’s gruesome injury and trip to the hospital on Tuesday.
Cole Irvin thrives on pitching to contact, and the Chicago White Sox have an aptitude for contact hitting. Thursday’s getaway game could have gotten away from Irvin, but he held the line.
A long start looked imminent in the first inning when Irvin gave up a run with a lot of traffic generated by two walks — one after getting ahead 0-2 and the second on four pitches — and a pair of hits. He navigated two bases-loaded situations over his six-inning start and walked four batters total with seven hits allowed.
Irvin’s fourth walk was to Jose Abreu with two outs, and Andrew Vaughn made it pay with a two-run home run that gave the White Sox a 3-2 lead in the fifth inning.
Chapman’s home run tied the game up in the sixth and was his fifth home run in six games. Olson’s home run came off high-octane reliever Michael Kopech and was his 31st of the season, which ranks as third most in the American League behind Los Angeles’ Shohei Ohtani (40) and Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (35).
The White Sox got the tying run on base in the ninth against Lou Trivino. Chicago scored on what should have been the final out of the game, but Starling Marte and Elvis Andrus collided in the outfield to score a run on Andrus’ error.
