After briefly falling below .500 the A\u2019s got back to the even mark yesterday evening when they beat the Angels in the second game of this four-game series. They remain a half-game over the Texas Rangers for first place in the AL West so a win tonight sure would feel good in order to remain atop the division all alone. Time to put two together and make this the start of an extended winning streak.<\/p>\n
One of the A\u2019s better pitchers will be taking the ball for them tonight. Right-hander Aaron Civale has been tabbed to make it two straight for the Athletics as he\u2019ll be getting the ball for the 10th time this year. The 30-year-old has continued to be a revelation for the A\u2019s as he\u2019s leading the starting staff with a 2.70 ERA in his first season in the Green & Gold and he\u2019ll try to lower than number even more with a strong performance against a division rival tonight. In five career starts against the Halos Civale owns a 4.28 ERA so he\u2019ll be hoping for better results now that he\u2019s in a new uniform.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the A\u2019s starting nine for the game tonight:<\/p>\n
New leadoff man tonight as Carlos Cortes draws the start in right field in place of Lawrence Butler. Other than that it\u2019s the rest of the starters tonight with everyone in the batting order moving down a spot. That means Langeliers in the 2-hole, Kurtz batting third with Rooker hitting cleanup. Sodey behind him, followed by the hot-hitting Zack Gelof at third, McNeil at the keystone, Bolte back in center field, and Hernaiz handling shortstop.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile the Angels have righty Jack Kochanowicz getting the start for them this evening. The third-year starter got hit hard in his first appearance this season before settling into a groove. He\u2019s recently fallen out of said groove as he\u2019s allowed six runs in each of his previous two outings. Can the A\u2019s take advantage of a struggling pitcher and make it three straight with six runs allowed?<\/p>\n
And the Angels\u2019 starting nine courtesy of old friend and current Halos manager Kurt Suzuki:<\/p>\n
Save for a bit of shuffling it\u2019s mostly the same batters from last night except in left field, where former Ranger Josh Lowe will replace Jose Siri tonight. Can Civale handle the lineup and keep them off the board tonight?<\/p>\n
After a successful April the A\u2019s have lost four of their five series this month. If they lose tonight they\u2019ll guarantee at best a split and put themselves in a big situation tomorrow for the series finale. Let\u2019s avoid that scenario, shall we? Let\u2019s go A\u2019s!<\/p>\n
Listen:
Athletics – Talk 650 KSTE, A\u2019s Cast<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After briefly falling below .500 the A\u2019s got back to the even mark yesterday evening when they beat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[116117,134882,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-329314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-athletics-discussion","tag-athletics-game-information","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}