Recap: A’s @ Giants ST Game 24

The spring is over! Last game! Every game from now through October is real and count – even the All Star Game (ugh). A’s brought some non-roster players to San Francisco for this matchup and aided by these guys who will play in Sacramento they beat up the Giants 8-1.

• The A’s threw six pitchers to the mound today. Not entirely sure why they went that route but, Tommy Milone got the nod, and kept up his great control walking no one, striking out three with 72.5% of his pitches crossing the plate for strikes (29 of 40 – he only pitched two innings). Fautino De Los Santos, Jordan Norberto, Travis Schlichting, Evan Scribner and Jerry Blevins combined for a scoreless seven innings in relief.
• The offense was powered by Josh Donaldson. What a way to finish the spring strong and hopefully have it carry over into the restarting regular season as he hit two home runs off of Giants starter Yusmeiro Petit. On the day his batting line was 4-for-5 with three runs scores and five driven in. This ends his spring with a decent .270/.319/.413 slash line across 69 plate appearances. Jonny Gomes also added a dinger off of Petit his third of the spring.
• Yoenis Cespedes went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts leaving five stranded. Cespedes struck out on mostly fastballs one time up against Dan Otero but then got a steady dose of sliders from Steve Edlefsen. Regardless he is getting swinging strikeouts. I don’t know if this is better or worse, but to me it gives me the idea that he has a good sense of the strike zone which is important but is having trouble with picking up movement.
• The A’s were surprisingly bad with runners in scoring position given that they did indeed score eight times, hitting just 2-for-11 and stranding twelve.