2019 American League Wild Card Game

2019 American League Wild Card Game

Tampa Bay Rays 96 - 66 in the AL	1 - 0 Series Summary	Oakland Athletics 97 - 65 in the AL

Overview[edit]

The Teams[edit]

Managers: Rays: Kevin Cash | Athletics: Bob Melvin

Rays

Athletics

Umpires[edit]

Chad Fairchild, Fieldin Culbreth, Bill Miller, Chris Guccione, Lance Barrett, Adam Hamari

Series results[edit]

Game	Score	Date	Starters	Time (ET)
1	Tampa Bay Rays 5 Oakland Athletics 1	October 2	Charlie Morton (1-0) Sean Manaea (0-1)	8:09 pm

Results[edit]

Game 1 @ Oakland Coliseum[edit]

Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Rays	1	2	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	5	7	1
Athletics	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	8	0
WP: Charlie Morton (1-0); LP: Sean Manaea (1-0)
Home Runs: TB - Yandy Diaz 2 (2), Avisail Garcia (1), Tommy Pham (1)

Attendance: 54,005

The Rays upset the Athletics thanks to a barrage of homers that resulted in an early 4-0 lead that the A's could never reverse. The hero of the game was Yandy Diaz, one of the few Rays players with postseason experience, who in spite of playing just one game since July 22nd, led off the game with a home run off Sean Manaea, then added another to lead off the 3rd inning and chase Oakland's starter from the game. Manaea, who had been outstanding after returning in September from missing a whole season, seemed to settle down after the opening bomb, striking out the next three batters, but he was touched again in the 2nd, as he allowed a single to leadoff hitter Matt Duffy, and then a homer to Avisail Garcia that made the score 3-0. He got two more strikeouts that inning, but when Diaz greeted him with another homer to lead off the 3rd, his night was done, as manager Bob Melvin called on Yusmeiro Petit to take over.

In the meantime, one of the other Rays with postseason experience, ace starter Charlie Morton, got in trouble in the bottom of the 1st, loading the bases on a single and a pair of walks, but Jurickson Profar flied out to Garcia in right field to end that threat. In the 2nd, Sean Murphy grounded into an inning-ending double play after a single by Robbie Grossman, wasting another opportunity. In the 3rd, Marcus Semien reached all the way to third base on a throwing error by 3B Michael Brosseau, and immediately scored on a sacrifice fly by Ramon Laureano, but that turned out to be the Athletics' only run of the game. Morton stranded a couple more runners in the 4th after a pair of singles and then induced another inning-ending double play in the 5th, this one by Matt Olson. Meanwhile, Tampa Bay had added an insurance run in the top of the 5th as Tommy Pham took Petit deep with two outs.

Diego Castillo took over on the mound for Morton in the bottom of the 6th and gave his team a pair of scoreless innings. Nick Anderson then took care of the 8th. Oakland's bullpen had also been strong, as apart from Pham's homer, Petit, Jake Diekman, Jesus Luzardo and Liam Hendriks did not allow anything, but the score was still 5-1 coming into the bottom of the 9th. After Anderson struck out Grossman for the first out, manager Kevin Cash called on Emilio Pagan and he got Josh Phegley to ground out before striking out Semien to end the game. The Rays were moving on to face the Houston Astros in the Division Series, while for the second straight year, the A's were eliminated after just one postseason game.