Right-hander Cal Quantrill celebrated a homecoming with five strong innings and Franmil Reyes smacked his 15th home run of the season Saturday afternoon, lifting the visiting Cleveland Indians to a 3-2 win over the Oakland Athletics.
Less than 24 hours after watching a late lead turn into a walk-off defeat, Indians reliever James Karinchak worked into and out of a ninth-inning jam to protect a narrow lead en route to Cleveland’s fourth win in its last five games sandwiching the All-Star break.
Right-hander Frankie Montas (8-8) limited Cleveland to two runs on six hits in six innings, but took the loss. He walked one and struck out seven.
Quantrill (2-2), a Stanford product who had never previously pitched in the San Francisco Bay Area in his three-year, big-league career, allowed a first-inning run on consecutive two-out doubles by Matt Olson and Mitch Moreland before settling in.
He surrendered just one other hit and one walk before, after having been handed a 2-1 lead, running into trouble in the fifth, when an infield single by Tony Kemp and back-to-back hit batsmen loaded the bases with no outs.
But Quantrill induced Elvis Andrus into grounding into a home-to-first double play and, after walking Olson to reload the bases, got Moreland to fly to center to preserve the lead.
The 26-year-old former first-round pick of the San Diego Padres was pulled at that point, charged with one run on four hits in his five innings. He walked two and struck out five.
Cleveland’s lead was the product of an Austin Hedges single, a Daniel Johnson walk, a Cesar Hernandez RBI double and an Amed Rosario sacrifice fly off Montas in the top of the fifth.
Reyes made it a two-run game with his solo homer in the eighth off the third Oakland pitcher, J.B. Wendelken.
Nick Sandlin, Bryan Shaw and Emmanuel Clase blanked the A’s on just one hit in the sixth through eighth innings before Karinchak, pressed into closer duties after Clase had given up the game-losing home run to Jed Lowrie the night before, took over with a 3-1 lead in the ninth.
He recorded his 10th save, but not before allowing a run on a Sean Murphy pinch-hit sacrifice fly. He got Andrus to ground out with the potential tying run on second to end it.
Hedges and Oakland’s Seth Brown were the only players in the game with multiple hits, each going 2-for-4 with a pair of singles.
–Field Level Media