© Kevin Jairaj | 2021 Aug 13
Rarely can a single player take over a baseball game like Starling Marte did on Friday night in the Coliseum.
Marte, the A’s signature deadline acquisition, was everywhere during the first installment of this late-August Bay Bridge Series. As close to a five-tool player as can be, Marte made plays with his glove, bat and legs to lead the Athletics (70-53) to a 4-1 win over San Francisco (78-44).
Marte entered Friday hitting .341/.382/.463 while going a perfect 13-for-13 on steal attempts. His line Friday read 1-for-4 with a run and a RBI, but the numbers don’t capture his imprint on the first installment of this late-August Bay Bridge Series.
It started in the second inning, when the Giants threatened with runners on first and second. Wilmer Flores cracked a line drive deep into left center, but Marte sprinted back to the warning track to rob what would’ve been a two-run extra base hit.
The rivals traded zeroes before Oakland infielder Josh Harrison flared a single into shallow right, scoring Jed Lowrie and Yan Gomes. As Harrison exited the batter’s box, Harrison toot-tooted his arm like a kid asking a nearby trucker to honk on Route 580.
SF responded with a slump-busting solo shot from Mike Yastrzemski, but then Marte locked in.
With two outs in the bottom of the seventh, Oakland clinging to a 2-1 lead, Marte ripped an RBI double down the first baseline. It was his first hit of the night, but provided the A’s with a key insurance run. Then, the speedster bolted from second to third as reliever José Álvarez lifted his leg to deliver. Álvarez sniffed it out, but his move to third went awry and Marte took home on the throwing error.
In the end, Marte had the damage-saving catch, an RBI double and a crucial run created essentially out of thin air.
Marte and the A’s handed San Francisco its first loss on the season when Alex Wood starts immediately following a defeat; SF was previously 11-0 in such situations.
And as Marte lit up the Coliseum before the postgame fireworks, the San Francisco bats once again went dim. The Giants hitters who have seemingly all been hot the entire year looked lost at the plate. The team that had hit .247 with runners in scoring position — in the top third of MLB — went 2-for-13 Friday, though they also reached on three walks. This comes one game after that same core, with Yastrzemski instead of Posey, combined to go 0-for-17 in a 6-2 loss to the Mets.
After that loss, manager Gabe Kapler said there’s not a specific message or change in approach he’d relay to the heart of the order, rather just a random rough stretch of at-bats for his strongest hitters. That’s baseball, in other words.
And still, two games can still be an aberration. But with their grasp on the NL West slipping, a simultaneous cold stretch for SF’s heart of the order would be a potentially dire trend with 40 games left.