Field Level Media
Aug 1, 2018
Sean Manaea took a shutout into the seventh inning and batterymate Jonathan Lucroy drove in four runs with three hits Wednesday afternoon, helping the Oakland Athletics complete a historic season-series sweep of the Toronto Blue Jays with an 8-3 victory at Oakland Coliseum.
The win was Oakland's third in three days at home against the Blue Jays and seventh straight this season, capping Oakland's first season-series sweep of seven or more games since going 7-0 against Baltimore in 2004.
The Blue Jays had never been swept in a seven (or more)-game season series in their history.
The A's outscored the Blue Jays 51-18 in the sweep.
Manaea (10-7) shut out the Blue Jays on four hits for six innings before leaving after allowing a leadoff single to Russell Martin in the seventh. The A's left-hander walked two and struck out five.
Down 7-0 at the time, Toronto went on to score in the seventh off A's reliever J.B. Wendelken on Randal Grichuk's second double of the game.
Earlier, the A's had scored twice in the second, twice in the fourth and three times in the sixth, all off Blue Jays starter Marcus Stroman (4-8), with Lucroy contributing to all three uprisings.
His two-out single in the second scored Khris Davis, who had walked, and Matt Olson, who had doubled, to open the scoring.
Lucroy had an RBI double and Nick Martini posted a sacrifice fly in the fourth, during which Oakland increased its advantage to 4-0.
The veteran catcher capped his big day with a run-scoring single in the sixth, after which Franklin Barreto smacked a two-run double, making it 7-0.
Lucroy's four RBIs equalled a season best, accomplished previously last Monday at Texas.
Stroman was charged with seven runs on 11 hits in five innings. He walked one and struck out six.
The Blue Jays got as close as 7-3 in the eighth on a two-run homer by Russell Martin, his ninth of the season.
Barreto then completed a three-hit, three-RBI day with his fourth home run of the season, a solo shot in the bottom of the eighth that completed the scoring.
Lucroy and Marcus Semien scored twice, while Semien and Olson had two hits each for Oakland, which improved to 30-10 since June 16.
Grichuk, Martin and Yangervis Solarte collected two hits apiece for Toronto, which has lost seven of nine.
--Field Level Media