The Athletics were left without an answer for New York Yankees starting pitcher Domingo Germán on Wednesday.
That’s putting it lightly.
The 30-year-old threw the 24th perfect game in MLB history in the Yankees’ 11-0 win over the A’s at the Oakland Coliseum.
In speaking to reporters after the game, A’s manager Mark Kotsay was visibly frustrated and called out his team’s lack of adjustments at the plate, but tipped his cap to Germán for his historic performance.
“He threw strikes, he pounded the zone, obviously,” Kotsay said. “You don’t throw strikes when you go nine innings and don’t get a baserunner out there. I think overall offensively, our approach wasn’t great. We didn’t make any adjustments tonight to what he was doing. ( He was) throwing his changeup and his breaking ball until he got two strikes. We hit a ton of balls to the pull side and didn’t make one adjustment to try and hit a ground ball to the right side or hit the ball to the right side … and that’s what happens.
“Obviously you tip your cap to the performance. The kid did an amazing job of keeping us off balance all night and we didn’t do a good job of making an adjustment.”
Unlike Germán, A’s starter JP Sears (L, 4 IP, 7 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 5 K) certainly had an outing to forget. Oakland’s young lefty recognized just how monumental his counterpart’s accomplishment was.
“Congratulations to him, that’s obviously one of the top things you can do as a pitcher in the big leagues, so congratulations to him for that,” Sears told reporters. “But not a great night on our side of the ball and our guys battled, but not one of those nights you want to be a part of.”
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Fresh off an impressive 2-1 win over the Yankees on Tuesday night, the effort on Wednesday night was a complete 180 for Kotsay’s squad.
“It was night and day from yesterday,” Kotsay explained. “We were a different team out there. We didn’t perform. We didn’t come to compete, and it showed in just the way we played overall.”
The A’s, if at all possible, will look to bounce back from the historic defeat and close out the series with a win on Thursday.