Brandon Moss’ bat returns to A’s for a historic night

By Jennifer Rainwater |

Brandon Moss‘ bat returned after a two-month-long hiatus from baseball in Tuesday night’s American League Wild Card game. It returned in historic fashion and it returned in time for the A’s to be able to win and advance in the playoffs.

Of course we know that the playoff-challenged A’s, who have been in the postseason eight times in this century’s 15 seasons yet advanced in just one of those eight appearances, did not advance in the playoffs Tuesday night. That honor went to the Kansas City Royals, who prevailed in the four-hour, 12-inning marathon by the score of 9-8.

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The A’s may not have advanced but Brandon Moss was most certainly the offensive boss of the evening between both teams. Going 2-5 with a walk, Moss homered twice, driving in five runs on the night and setting an Oakland postseason record for RBI in a game.

The entire night was seemingly historic with the Royals’ seven stolen bases and the back-and-forth scoring, but only Moss set a postseason record.

This record-setting night is made all the more strange because Moss had been in a terrible slump since mid-July. Going into the All-Star game Moss was tied with third baseman Josh Donaldson for the team lead in home runs with 21. Moss’ 2014 season total? 25.

Moss was batting .268 with 66 RBI before the Mid-Summer Classic. He hit .173 from mid-July through September driving in just 15 more runs. He came into his first at-bat of the night having gone 3-14 with three singles and five strikeouts in his career against Royals starter James Shields.

This time Moss took Shields deep on an 0-1 change-up, giving the Athletics a 2-o lead. By the time the sixth inning rolled around the Athletics found themselves in the hole with the Royals up 3-2.

“Unbelievable night by him. He stepped up on the biggest stage we’ve had all year. It had been tough for him, struggling so long, and to do what he did, especially on changeups from a guy like Shields, and a guy like Ventura, who’s throwing 100, it makes it that much more impressive.” – Josh Reddick

It was Moss’ turn to bat and for a reason that is still somewhat of a mystery, Royals’ manager

Ned Yost

went to his bullpen for rookie starter

Yordano Ventura

.

Ventura had never pitched in such a big situation not to mention that he had just thrown 73 pitches in Sunday’s game, not to impune the monster shot that Moss was about to launch into the centerfield stands at all, just more to question Yost’s judgement at this point in such a pivotal game.

Ventura is known as a hard throwing right-hander who can consistently reach the 100 mph mark with his pitches, so the pitch Moss got to hit was vastly different from Shield’s change-up. With two runners already on base (charged to Shields) and no outs Moss belted another homerun, this time for three runs off of Ventura who threw him a 2-0, 98 mph fastball.

With that homerun Moss wrote himself into the A’s record books for driving in the most runs in a postseason game. It’s too bad that the team couldn’t hold on to either of the leads he provided them with and that the night ended in yet another disappointment for Oakland. Still, Moss said after the game,

“That was definitely the best baseball game I’ve ever been a part of.”

Really, both sides played a great game but no one hit as well as Brandon Moss. It was as though the past two months had never happened, that he hadn’t announced earlier in the week that he would need offseason surgery on his right hip. Tuesday night Moss was the same player he had been during the opening half of the season. As A’s manager Bob Melvin put it,

“We’ve seen him make those swings before.”

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