Stephen Vogt homered in his last major league at-bat, rookie Ken Waldichuk outdueled Shohei Ohtani, and the Oakland Athletics completed their losingest season in 43 years with a 3-2 victory Wednesday afternoon over the Los Angeles Angels and a three-game sweep.
Despite the win, the A’s (60-102) retained the second-worst record in the majors, meaning they will go into the new draft lottery with the same odds of landing the top pick (16.5 percent) as the other teams with the three most losses in the majors this season (Washington Nationals and Pittsburgh Pirates).
Meanwhile, the Angels (73-89), who had brought a seven-game winning streak into Oakland, completed their eighth consecutive postseason-loss campaign with a 46-60 record under Phil Nevin, who had the interim removed from his manager title earlier in the day.
Having announced he will retire at season’s end and getting a ceremonial start at catcher, Vogt ended Ohtani’s perfect-game bid with a fifth-inning walk and scored the game’s first run on Conner Capel’s sacrifice fly.
Then, facing Zack Weiss with the score still 1-0 in the seventh, he led off with his seventh home run of the season and his 56th in 528 games for the A’s over two stints.
Capel singled and scored on a Nick Allen sacrifice later in the seventh to increase the Oakland lead to 3-0, and the A’s bullpen held on from there.
The Angels rallied within 3-2 in the eighth on a Jo Adell triple, a Logan O’Hoppe single and, after a double play, Mike Trout’s 40th home run of the season.
But staring down a potential third straight extra-inning game in the series, A’s reliever Kirby Snead retired the Angels 1-2-3 in the ninth for his first career save.
Trout’s homer gave him 40 or more for the third time in his career. He became the fourth major-leaguer to reach 40 this season after Aaron Judge, Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso.
Waldichuk (2-2) shut out the Angels for the first seven innings, allowing just three hits. He walked one and struck out four.
Ohtani (15-9) saw his season-ending ERA drop to 2.33 in defeat, charged with one run on just one hit. He walked one and struck out six.
Vogt scored twice for the A’s, while Trout was the only player in the game with multiple hits, having stroked a third-inning double before his homer.
–Field Level Media