OAKLAND – Only 4,118 fans scattered across the Coliseum’s green seats on a sunny, Easter afternoon. What they saw was the A’s improbably rally for their first win: a 4-3, walk-off triumph Sunday that kept the Cleveland Guardians from sweeping the four-game, season-opening series.
“It’s hard to win here, so to put those three games behind us, we can come out here with a good taste in our mouth and get ready for Boston,” said A’s starter Paul Blackburn, who took a perfect game into the fifth inning and a shutout through seven.
Indeed, as the Red Sox (2-2) arrive in town for a three-game series, the A’s won’t be wallowing in a winless start to a still very suspect season, one that could end a 57-year residency here unless negotiations with Oakland officials keep them longer before a planned move to Las Vegas in 2028.
“Nobody wants to start 0-4,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said. “I was proud of the effort there, and the fight-back we showed after the eighth inning. That’s a good sign of this club not folding or not having the energy to bounce back from what was pretty ugly, to turn things out to a positive day.”
Blackburn was intent on delivering that victory, exiting with a 3-0 lead. The Guardians promptly scored three runs in the eighth off A’s relievers Lucas Erceg and Austin Adams, setting the stage for a ninth-inning nail-biter.
Abraham Toro’s bases-loaded, four-pitch walk brought in Darell Hernaiz for the game-winning run in the bottom of the ninth.
The A’s loaded the bases in the ninth, behind Ryan Noda’s walk and back-to-back singles from Shea Langeliers and Lawrence Butler. Hernaiz, pinch-running for Noda, got a bad jump on Butler’s hit to center field, thus delaying the A’s walk-off celebration. Eli Morgan entered for the Guardians and didn’t throw a strike to Toro, who watched a 90-mph fastball sail high to essentially end the 2 ½-hour affair.
The season-opening series attracted a total of 26,902 fans, not counting the thousands who stayed in the Coliseum parking lot on Thursday’s Opening Night as a protest of the A’s planned move to Las Vegas by 2028.
The official crowd count for that 8-0 opening loss was 13,522, or about half of last year’s home debut, when 26,805 saw the A’s beat the Angels and eventual two-time MVP Shohei Ohtani. But that A’s team stumbled to a 3-16 start and lost 23 of their its 28 games.
“Getting this first (win) out of the way, you can relax, get the edge off, have fun and go play baseball,” said catcher Shea Langeliers, after the A’s first Easter-day win in 10 years.
Blackburn said he and Langeliers stuck to their game plan inning after inning, up until Blackburn got pulled before the eighth. He allowed three hits and one walk in 88 pitches, with three strikeouts.
“You have to kind of realize it’s still March. I wanted to go all nine (innings) today but in the big scheme of things, this is a marathon,” Blackburn said. “My pitch limit was 85 to 90 my first time out and that’s about right where I landed.”
Josh Naylor broke up Blackburn’s perfect game in the fifth with a leadoff single to right field. Blackburn soon found himself in a bases-loaded jam after allowing an infield single to former A’s star Ramón Laureano and a four-pitch walk to Estevan Florial. The shutout stayed intact, however, when Blackburn got No. 9 hitter Gabriel Arias to fly out to shallow right field, where second baseman Zack Gelof battled the sun to snare the third out.
In the seventh, Laureano reached on a two-out single, and with Erceg up in the A’s bullpen, Blackburn got Bo Naylor to pop out to Gelof to end that threat.
Blackburn didn’t allow a base runner through four innings. His day opened with a 92.1-mph fastball for a called strike against Steven Kwan, who eventually lined out to right.
Blackburn’s dominance shouldn’t have been too stunning after his 4-0 showing in spring training. That ended with six no-hit innings against the Chicago Cubs on March 20, then just two hits by the Giants over 5 2/3 innings last Tuesday.
Blackburn, 30, was the A’s 2022 All-Star representative, and the Heritage High-Brentwood product deserved a win Sunday that would have improved his career record as a starter to 17-24.
Dany Jimenez came on to pitch the ninth for the A’s and immediately found trouble: Bo Naylor walked, and Florial reached on a Gelof error. Langeliers picked off Naylor at third base to slow the rally, and although Jimenez had an ensuing pickoff attempt sail into center field, the Guardians couldn’t scratch across a go-ahead run in the frame.
But in the equalizing eighth inning, Erceg allowed a leadoff triple to Florial, who would score on a groundout to spoil the A’s shutout bid. Once Erceg allowed a two-out single to Andres Gimenez, Adams entered and promptly threw his first pitch behind Jose Ramirez. The lead was cut to 3-2 when the Guardians scored off an error by shortstop Nick Allen, and Blackburn’s potential win officially vanished when Naylor’s single off Allen drove in a tying run.
The A’s jumped out to a 2-0, first-inning lead via J.J. Bleday’s RBI triple and Seth Brown’s single that scored Bleday. Esteury Ruiz scored the initial run after leading off with an infield single and stealing second. That marked only A’s second lead all season. Their first was short-lived, having gone ahead 3-2 in Saturday’s third inning, only for the Guardians to answer with three runs in the fourth inning to spark their 12-3 rout.
Sunday’s lead grew to 3-0 in the fourth, as Ruiz tripled down the right-field line and again scored on a Bleday hit, this time on a single to right.
“We need to add onto a lead to make things more comfortable,” Kotsay said, “but a win is a win.”
They’ll try for the next one against the Red Sox. First pitch Monday is set for 6:40 p.m.
“The Red Sox coming to town is always exciting,” Langeliers said. “But’s it’s the big leagues and, in my head, I’m excited to play anybody.”
The A’s claimed infielder Tyler Nevin off waivers from the Baltimore Orioles, while designating pitcher Adrián Martínez for assignment. Martinez went 4-8 with a 5.51 ERA in 34 appearances (13 starts) the previous two seasons.
Nevin, 26, is the oldest son of former big-leaguer Phil Nevin. A 2015 first-round draft pick by the Colorado Rockies, he made his Major League debut in 2021 with the Orioles. Primarily a third baseman, he’s batted .203 in 266 career at-bats (five home runs, 29 RBI) between the Orioles (2021-22) and the Detroit Tigers (2023). He played 41 games for the Tigers last year when he wasn’t splitting time at Triple-A Toledo (.326 batting average, 15 home runs, 58 RBI).