The Oakland Athletics' Unique Road Victories in 2022
The Oakland A's were awful in 2022 as they had an American League (AL)-worst 60 wins. Twenty-nine of
those sixty wins were at the Oakland Coliseum and thirty-one came on the road. They were one of only two AL teams with more road
wins than home wins (the Chicago White Sox were the other team). Three of those thirty-one road wins were quite unique.
1) In late April, the A's
beat the San Francisco Giants 1-0 in San Francisco on the heels of Chad Pinder's leadoff home run. Pinder's home run was just
the twenty-eighth leadoff home run in a 1-0 game
in MLB history.
2) In July, they had a two-run lead against the Texas Rangers after the top of the ninth inning and
ended up winning the
game by seven runs (football score 14-7)! How did that happen? The Rangers tied the game with two runs in the bottom of the ninth
inning. The A's later exploded for eight runs in the 12th inning and the Rangers could only respond with just one run.
Remarkably, it was not the only A's-Rangers July game in which a team had a two-run lead going into the bottom of the ninth inning and
ended up winning by at least seven runs. On July 3, 1983, the
Rangers were leading 4-2 against the A's as the final half-inning began. The A's then scored two runs to tie the game. After
five scoreless innings, the
Rangers scored twelve (!!!) runs in the top of the 15th inning to win the game 16-4. It was
(and still is) the biggest margin of victory in an extra-inning MLB game.
The biggest victories in extra-inning games are all road victories since the largest possible margin of victory for a home team in an extra-inning game is four.
The Athletics' seven-run victory was the only the sixty-first time in
MLB history that a team won an extra-inning game by at least seven runs.
3) Finally, the A's defeated the home
Los Angeles Angels 8-7 in August despite allowing seven home runs. It was only the sixth time in MLB history that a team won
despite allowing at least seven home runs (against 113 losses). How did the Angel lose? All seven home runs were solo home runs and the
Angels didn't score any additional runs. While it's super unusual for a team to lose while hitting seven home runs, it's not that unusual for a team
to lose while scoring seven runs.