Irvin goes all-in on heater to fry Fish with 11 K's

OAKLAND -- Cole Irvin and Jesús Luzardo developed a close bond during their time as teammates with the A’s last season, often spending their off-days taking part in group fishing trips and breakfast gatherings while on the road.

The relationship remained intact even after Luzardo was traded to the Marlins last July. On Wednesday, however, forever friends turned into temporary foes as Irvin squared off against the Marlins in what was Luzardo’s first start back at the Coliseum since the trade.

In a high-level pitching duel that saw the two exchange zeroes on the scoreboard for most of the afternoon, it was Irvin who got the best of his former teammate in the A’s 3-2 walk-off win over Miami by allowing just three hits and no walks with a career-high 11 strikeouts across seven scoreless innings, while Luzardo carried a no-hitter into the sixth before the A’s broke through in that same inning with a pair of runs on Chad Pinder’s two-run single.

“Being teammates with [Jesús], you always want a guy to do well, except for when he’s facing your own team,” Irvin said. “He threw pretty well today. It’s always fun to watch him pitch. I watched as much as I could today. It was fun. A good pitcher’s performance.”

Irvin opened the game by retiring six batters in a row before Charles Leblanc bunted his way on for a single to lead off the third. That bunt was symbolic of the lack of quality contact by the Marlins, who mustered only three singles against Irvin and averaged an exit velocity of just 81.9 mph on their 13 balls hit in play against him.

As opposed to Luzardo’s flashy arsenal of pitches that includes a fastball that maxed out at 97.1 mph and a nasty changeup, Irvin was simpler in his route to domination. There wasn’t much guessing Marlins hitters had to do at the plate. Of his 92 pitches, Irvin threw the fastball a whopping 67 times. While the heater only averaged 91.4 mph on Wednesday, its deceiving nature made it practically unhittable. That much was clear by the career-high 21 swings-and-misses Irvin’s fastball generated against Miami, used as the putaway pitch on nine of his 11 strikeouts.

“It was a little bit of country hardball today,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said of Irvin’s effectiveness. “He was just throwing fastballs for the most part. Mixed in a breaking ball now and then. But for the most part, it was, ‘Here it is,’ and we seemed to have trouble picking him up.

“He's not high on the velo radar. But obviously he's doing something that guys don't pick it up and gets on them. You don't see guys swing through that many pitches. Maybe at 98 or 99 [mph], but not at 91. There weren’t a lot of tricks to it.”

For A’s outfielder Skye Bolt, who delivered the game-winning blow in the form of a sacrifice fly that scored David MacKinnon in the 10th, Irvin’s success with a slower fastball elicits flashbacks to a legendary Braves pitcher he grew up watching as a teenager in Atlanta.

“I call him a little bit of a Tom Glavine over there,” Bolt said of Irvin. “He can put the ball wherever he wants to. You saw today with 92 and 91 mph fastballs how many late swings down the middle of the plate there were. The name of the game of pitching is deception, and he does that very well. He’s really good.”

Irvin keeps a baseball bucket list of achievements he’d like to reach. High atop that list along with pitching a complete game was reaching a double-digit strikeout total in a game.

In what was his 58th Major League start Wednesday, Irvin finally crossed that milestone off his list.

“I’m just glad to get over the double-digit hump,” Irvin said, noting that he received congratulatory text messages from a group of former A’s teammates that included Frankie Montas, traded to the Yankees earlier this month. “That one’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I’m just glad to get through it, and 11 is pretty cool.”

Given the way he’s pitching, now holding a 3.16 ERA that ranks 11th among qualified American League starters, going the distance for that elusive first complete game might also be within reach over the final month of the season.