5 players, 5 homers: A's bash, set marks
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Back in the day, the Athletics had the Bash Brothers, but Wednesday they went with a full family affair as five different players hit home runs in a 9-7 victory over the Astros in Game 3 of the American League Division Series.
For a time, it appeared that power display wasn’t going to be enough -- the first four homers were all solo blasts. But Chad Pinder changed that narrative with a three-run pop in the seventh that erased a 7-4 deficit and revived the A’s hopes.
| Game | Date | Result | Highlights |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gm 1 | Oct. 5 | HOU 10, OAK 5 | Watch |
| Gm 2 | Oct. 6 | HOU 5, OAK 2 | Watch |
| Gm 3 | Oct. 7 | OAK 9, HOU 7 | Watch |
| Gm 4 | Oct. 8 | HOU 11, OAK 6 | Watch |
Shop for postseason gear: Prior to Pinder’s blast, Tommy La Stella, Mark Canha, Matt Olson and Marcus Semien each left the yard with solo shots in what has become a homer-happy Dodger Stadium, with the ball again carrying well on an 81-degree afternoon.
It was just the third time in postseason history that a team has had five different players homer in the same game, joining the 2015 Cubs in Game 3 of the National League Division Series and the ’17 Astros in World Series Game 5. With the A’s five-homer output on Wednesday, teams this postseason moved to 18-0 when outhomering their opponent.
The A’s have homered 10 times in the first three games, breaking their previous record of nine in a postseason series, a mark set in a four-game sweep of the Giants in the 1989 World Series.
The five home runs on Wednesday equaled their record for a postseason game, set in Game 3 of the ’89 World Series, the first game back after an 11-day break following the earthquake that rocked San Francisco.
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A’s manager Bob Melvin felt the earth move a bit for his own team when Pinder’s poke turned the momentum in a series where the Astros had previously been the ones shifting the momentum after Oakland had taken early leads.
“That was more like an earthquake than a shift,” Melvin said. “Off the bat, the way it’s carrying today, you think, ‘Maybe?’ But as soon as [right fielder Kyle] Tucker kept going back, you had a pretty good idea that it had a chance to go out. He’s got tremendous power to all fields and is getting a great opportunity right now and taking advantage of it.”
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Trailing 2-0 in the best-of-five series, the A’s came out swinging, with La Stella opening the barrage against Astros rookie Jose Urquidy with a 415-foot blast in the first.
Canha drove a 394-foot shot to tie the game at 2 in the second after the Astros had answered in the bottom of the first. Olson unleashed a 427-foot bomb to right field for a 3-2 lead in the fourth, and Semien made it 4-2 with his 419-footer in the fifth.
All that seemed for naught when Houston scored five times in the fifth to take a 7-4 lead, but the A’s weren’t done. Ironically, Pinder’s crucial blow wound up being the shortest of the five as he pushed a 360-foot opposite-field fly that just carried over the short right-field fence.
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The versatile 28-year-old has been splitting time at third base in place of injured standout Matt Chapman, and he came up big with a 3-for-4 day and four RBIs, capped by his homer off reliever Josh James as he jumped on a first-pitch slider.
“I wanted to get something up in the zone early in the count,” Pinder said. “The guy has good stuff, but I wanted to get something up and try to elevate a fly ball. Really, I was just trying to hit a sac fly, put something in the air deep enough in the outfield to get a run in and kind of chip away at their lead.”
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With the ball carrying well to right field all game, Pinder’s punch instead wound up being a game-changer.
“I saw him drifting a little bit,” Pinder said. “The ball has been carrying here. I didn’t know off the bat. I knew I hit it good enough for a sac fly, and it just kept going. It was awesome.”
There have already been 18 combined home runs in the series -- a record for the first three games of any postseason series, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The mark was previously 16, set by the Cardinals and Astros in the 2004 NL Championship Series.
The record for a Division Series is 22 in 1995, in five games between the Mariners and Yankees. The eight solo homers ties the record for the most in a Division Series, set in 2002 by the Angels.
The five homers on Wednesday tied the A’s with eight other clubs for second-most in a postseason game -- one shy of the team record of six, set by the 2015 Cubs (NLDS Game 3)