Why run when you can walk?
When Wilmer Flores steps into the batter’s box, he changes the game. You don’t lead the league in runs batted-in without this being true, and you don’t lead the league in runs batted-in without doing a lot of things right. The big things, definitely. Barreling baseballs, launching taters — all those headline grabbing feats of flair and power. In case you missed it: Flores’s career-night on Friday was this kind of display. Three swings, 8 RBIs. He was the bowling ball on the mattress. The center. He stepped up to the plate and the field, the players, the fans, the energy reoriented itself to his core.
So I have to ask: Was A’s manager Mark Kotsay not at Friday’s game? I know Mason Miller didn’t pitch in the game, but did he not watch from the dugout? Are they so myopic that they could not see who was on-deck from the mound when they decided to intentionally walk Mike Yastrzemski and load the bases with two outs in the bottom of the 10th inning of a scoreless tie?
Kotsay — never an RBI man (though he did knock in 82 in ‘05). If he was, he might’ve considered the guiding truth of every great RBI man: there’s more than one way to get one. By jamming up the bases, possibility blossomed for Wilmer to exert his will on the outcome of this game. Recency bias might say otherwise, but at his core, Flo isn’t the blustery homer-happy hitter from Friday. He’s the contact guy. The spoil pitches guy. The push a single to the opposite field guy. Above all else, he’s the guy who’s locked-in, and after a conference at the mound, Kotsay and Miller decided to invite that guy to the plate with the game on the line.
I ain’t complaining! The Athletics’ brain trust decided that they had a better chance of extending the game another inning by going after the righty rather than the lefty. Exploit split-advantage, that was the reasoning expressed in Kotsay’s postgame interview. Miller had faced 29 lefties so far with so-so results, while his numbers against righties had been the kind-of dominance you’d expect from the young All-Star reliever who throws 104 MPH fastballs. Maybe too they were worried about covering a bunt (Yaz laid one down earlier), maybe they wanted to create a force situation at every base. There was certainly thinking involved in the decision making process…but it showed some clear blind spots.
Flores is not a god of hitting (despite how I may have depicted him earlier) … but he might be a demi-god in certain situations. Flo doesn’t trade in solo homers, rather he cashes in when clear scoring opportunities present themselves. With runners in scoring position, he out hits himself and most of the league with a .395 average while leading the league with 34 RBIs going into Saturday’s game. Add the filter of 2-outs onto that situation, and Flores still hit .333 with a league-leading 15 RBI total. In 7 plate-appearances with the bases-loaded, Flores was 4-for-5 with 2 walks and 13 RBI.
Screw the platoon advantage. If I had those numbers front-of-mind, I would’ve just gone after Yaz. But Miller didn’t, and Giants fans are grateful for it.
10 pitches from Sears before Flores hit his grand slam, and the next day, he forced Miller to throw 9 before working his bases-loaded walk.
The A’s reliever is averaging two strikeouts an inning for a reason, and it’s not subtle. He fanned Tyler Fitzgerald on 103 heat letter high for the second out of the 10th. Flores saw seven four-seamers clocked at 102 MPH or faster, and two that reached 104 MPH. Still, with two strikes, Flo managed to foul off two of those signature four-seamers and stay alive. Probably the most impressive feat to me was somehow fouling away an 89 MPH slider right after fouling off a fastball at 103. That’s a 14 MPH difference in velocity! The mechanics of Flores swing is uncomplicated, with few moving parts, helping him cover these crazy changes in speed and movement — but it still boggles the mind. How is it possible to recalibrate your timing so finely? Did he just pick up the spin out of his hand? Was it just pure instinct and reflex? Maybe he’s just born with it, hard-wired into his DNA, the hitting gene; maybe it’s Maybelline?
Spoiling the slider served as the catalyst in that final at-bat. Nicking a seam off of it was enough, Flores took the wheel. He spit on a follow-up slider down and out of the zone that would’ve baited a lesser-mortal in swing-mode. With a full count, Flores knew the fastball was coming and out of the hand, it was clear, the offering was nowhere near the zone. A true RBI guy does the little things. Sometimes not even a swing is needed.
The walk-off was the San Francisco Giants’ sixth of the season (most in MLB), and Flores’s tenth of his career. It secured the team’s first pair of consecutive wins and first series win since May 7th in Chicago.
Fitting that Miller’s walk ended this contest. A walk-off hit would’ve been disingenuous given the pitching performance by starters Landen Roupp and Luis Severino, and both of clubs’ bullpens. This was a pitching duel through and through, and though Flores stole the headline (again), I’d be remiss not to mention Roupp’s start. Hands down, his best of the season, throwing 6 shutout innings while scattering 5 hits and 2 walks while striking out 5. It was the deepest he’s gone in a game since throwing 7 in Anaheim on April 19th.
While his curveball was as loopy as ever, he shined with command of his swervy sinker. He got 21 called strikes in total: 12 with the fastball and 7 with the breaking ball. The curve tamped down an early scoring opportunity in the 2nd, striking out J.J. Bleday on three-pitches with a runner on third and less than two outs. With runners on the corners and one out in the 4th, Roupp got Bleday again with an elevated cutter that he popped up to third. He then closed out the frame, stranding runners again, by freezing Nick Kurtz on a 3-2 sinker with front door movement.
Randy Rodriguez, Tyler Rogers, Ryan Walker and Camilo Doval emphatically closed out the final four frames. The only A’s hitter to reach base was a 2-out walk by Camilo Doval in the 10th. Rogers needed just four pitches to record three outs in the 8th. Ryan Walker, with no drama whatsoever, threw just six in the 9th. And in the 10th, Doval got Bleday to swing over a slider for an unproductive first out of the 10th, then closed out the frame with another slider to Brent Rooker.
Fun win. What Wilmer do next?