WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Brooks Baldwin spent the last couple of innings of Friday’s game in right field, visualizing what an at-bat against Athletics closer Mason Miller might entail.
“What do you do in this situation and that situation?” Baldwin asked himself. “Just be on time for the fastball and put a good swing on it.”
The Chicago White Sox infielder/outfielder thought through what Miller might throw in certain counts. And Baldwin got a chance to face him in the ninth inning — jumping on a first-pitch 99-mph fastball for a two-run home run to right field.
“He did come fastball inside, and that was one of the situations I ran through,” Baldwin said.
The blast brought the Sox within a run. But they came up short in their first-ever game in the Sacramento area, falling 6-5 to the A’s in front of 10,283 at Sutter Health Park.
“Don’t ever give up, especially in a ballpark like this where the ball flies pretty good,” Baldwin said of the ninth-inning team mindset. “You are never really out of the game.
“We had our opportunities earlier to put a couple of extra runs up on the board and didn’t come through. Those big hits will come.”
Friday began with a wrinkle for the Sox, who used reliever Tyler Gilbert as an opener before turning to the originally-slated starter Sean Burke. The Sox liked the idea of utilizing Gilbert, a left-hander, in the first inning against an A’s lineup that had two lefties among their first three hitters and then pivoting to the right-handed Burke.
Gilbert pitched a scoreless first, and Burke followed with a solid outing, allowing three earned runs on five hits with five strikeouts and two walks in 5 1/3 innings.
“I thought it worked well there early,” Sox manager Will Venable said of the strategy. “Gilbert did his job, and then Sean came in and looked really good. Looked comfortable right away. He did a really good job coming in and being prepared and did his job.”
Burke felt like there wasn’t a whole lot of change in terms of his preparation.
“I was still pretty much able to get my normal routine in,” he said. “I had to maybe take a few more breaks. We talked before the game, so I was just prepared for that and backed everything off of that. It was a little bit different, but not anything drastic.”
Burke surrendered a solo home run to Jacob Wilson in the fifth, which tied the score at 1.
The Sox scored twice in the top of the sixth on back-to-back RBI doubles by Nick Maton and Matt Thaiss.
But the A’s tied it again in the bottom of the sixth. Batting with runners on first and second and two outs, Wilson singled to center. Tyler Soderstrom scored easily from second and JJ Bleday raced around and scored the tying run from first when center fielder Luis Robert Jr. didn’t field the single cleanly.
“Honestly I thought I had that on my glove and it wasn’t there,” Robert said of the error through an interpreter.
Brent Rooker put the Athletics ahead an inning later with a two-out RBI double against reliever Jared Shuster. Rooker then scored on a single by Soderstrom. The A’s added another run in the eighth, making it 6-3.
But the Sox didn’t go away quietly.
Lenyn Sosa singled leading off the ninth and Baldwin followed with his third home run of the season. With one out, Lawrence Butler tracked down pinch-hitter Edgar Quero’s long fly just in front of the right-field wall.
“A lot of credit to our hitters for continuing to grind,” Venable said, before referencing late-inning success against some of the game’s top closers.
“(Emmanuel) Clase (of the Cleveland Guardians), (Aroldis) Chapman (of the Boston Red Sox), (Jhoan) Duran (of the Minnesota Twins) and now Mason Miller, these are the best pitchers on the planet and we continue to fight and put good at-bats on them.”
Miller struck out Robert to end the game as the Sox dropped to 6-20 overall and 2-6 during the long road trip. Eleven of the team’s 20 losses have come by one or two runs.
“You have to keep working hard,” Robert said of another close loss. “The outcome, that is something we can’t control, but we can control what our preparation is and our work on the field.”