OAKLAND, Calif. _ A full season of Coliseum baseball that began with the A's scratching Sonny Gray from his schedule Opening Day start wrapped up with Oakland finding a way to wedge Gray back into the rotation for one more start.
Before the A's took the field for their home finale, a 7-1 win over the Rangers, manager Bob Melvin said Gray will get his first start in almost eight weeks Wednesday in Anaheim
It's been a mostly miserable season for the A's top starting pitcher. After missing a chance to start the opener because of food poisoning, he went on to land twice on the disabled list. When he's been healthy his ERA has been diseased. It had never been over 3.28 in the first three years of his career, but from May 9 on it hasn't been under 5.00.
His ERA sat at 5.74 after an Aug. 6 start in which he felt some discomfort in his elbow. He'd hoped it was just a passing thing, but it's taken almost two months or rest, then rehab work for his arm to feel close to normal. And until Sunday's announcement that he'd start against the Angels, there was some doubt as to whether or not he'd play again this year.
Even at that, he's not going to pitch much. Melvin said Gray would be on a strict pitch limit, and that could keep him to just a couple of innings.
Gray is the poster child for the A's season, which has seen the club use the disabled list 27 times and go through 14 different starting pitchers, all of whom have made at least four starts, matching a Major League record. As a result the A's starters have the fewest innings pitched for any American League team, 843, and the second-fewest wins, 42.
Through all that, the A's have had to pile changes upon changes, and Jharel Cotton is perhaps the brightest light left shining. The owner of 26 consecutive outs in his second start at Triple-A Nashville after being picked up in the trade of Rich Hill and Josh Reddick to the Dodgers, Cotton threw seven scoreless innings Sunday.
He was only supposed to throw six innings, max, but his pitch count was so low, just 58 after the six innings that Melvin gave him an extra inning. The Rangers, their AL West title locked down Friday night, swung early and often, and nobody did much of anything until Adrian Beltre's solo homer off Cotton in the seventh.
Cotton has allowed exactly one earned run in each of his first four starts, a level of excellence not reached by any A's pitcher dating back to at least 1913, when the earned run became an official statistic.
The A's gave Cotton more than enough to win with a seven-run second inning, ending a streak of 19 consecutive scoreless innings off Rangers' pitching this series. Bruce Maxwell got the first run home with the first of his three hits, a single, and Brett Eibner's grounder made it 2-0. Stephen Vogt contributed a three-run double and Ryon Healy a two-run homer to give Cotton plenty around which to carve out a victory.
By the time he left the game in favor of reliever Sean Doolittle, Cotton was well on his way to a 2-0 record and a 1.44 ERA with one start next week against Seattle left on his dance card.
The A's, who will finish the season with three games in Anaheim and four in Seattle, drew 17,048 Sunday as Oakland finished its home schedule with a 34-47 Coliseum record. That's the same as in 2015, tied for the second-worst (31-50, 1979) in Oakland history.
