OAKLAND, Calif.—Brent Rooker hit his 27th homer of the season and the Oakland Athletics added two more long balls to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6–5 on Friday night.
After leading the majors with 45 homers in July, the A’s showed no signs of slowing down in their first game of August in front of a season-high 21,060 fans at the Oakland Coliseum.
Shea Langeliers and Seth Brown went deep against Gavin Stone (9–5) as the A’s won for the 10th time in 14 games, starting with an 18–3 win at Philadelphia in the final game before the All-Star break.
“Really in Philadelphia, we really dove into approaching individually what we’re trying to do each game,“ Langeliers said. ”We just kept growing with that approach. It’s just building confidence with the guys. We’re stringing good at bats together and obviously putting across crooked numbers. When the offense is doing that you tend tp keep momentum on your side.”
Teoscar Hernandez hit a two-run homer in the first against Joey Estes (5–4) but the Dodgers managed little else until Shohei Ohtani broke an 0-for-15 slump with a three-run homer with two outs in the ninth.
But it wasn’t enough for the Dodgers, who lost for the fifth time in six games. Los Angeles’ NL West lead over Arizona dropped to four games.
“It’s just not Shohei’s job alone to carry this offense,“ manager Dave Roberts said. ”That’s impossible. He’s a guy that is the top of the order, the most dangerous, most talented player we have. I think the game plan has to be to try to limit him, and if you can limit him, you take your chance with the eight other guys.”
Estes allowed two runs and two hits in six innings, retiring 15 straight following Hernandez’s homer, capped by a running grab by third baseman Abraham Toro to rob Ohtani of a hit in the sixth.
Will Smith and Gavin Lux then drew back-to-back two walks but Estes struck out Hernandez to get out of the jam and end his night.
“For Joey, that last inning, the emotion kind of got to him,“ manager Mark Kotsay said. ”I think he was kind of trying to get through that sixth inning after the play Toro made, which was an unbelievable play. He showed a lot of emotion after that and thus resulted in two walks to the next two guys. But he made a big pitch there against Teoscar to strike him out and get out of that jam.”
Austin Adams got Ohtani to ground out with the bases loaded and two outs in the seventh.
“The balls that I’m supposed to be hitting well, I’m not—fly balls that should have been going out haven’t been going out, line drives right at the guy,“ Ohtani said through an interpreter. ”So it’s more about me rather than the (other) team or how the team is attacking.”
Stone’s rough recent stretch continued as he started to run into trouble in the fourth when Langeliers and Brown hit solo homers to tie the game at 2.
Stone was replaced after allowing an RBI triple to Miguel Andujar and a run-scoring double to JJ Bleday in the fifth. Rooker greeted Joe Kelly with a two-run shot to make it 6–2. Stone is 0–3 with a 7.15 ERA in his last five starts.
