Vargas Walks It Off as Arizona Survives ATH's Ninth-Inning Surge
Arizona needed every bit of a wild 10th inning to hold off the Athletics, 6-5, after Jacob Wilson's two-run homer in the ninth turned a near-certain loss into a tie. Ildemaro Vargas delivered the decisive blow — a walk-off single to left that scored Moreno and capped one of the more chaotic finishes of the summer.
Max Kepler did his best to make this game a non-event early. In the first inning, he launched a 392-foot homer to right center, plating Marte and Moreno to give Arizona a 3-0 lead before the Athletics had even settled in. Kohl Drake then did his part, working five innings and allowing just one earned run on four hits with five strikeouts — enough to keep the lead intact while Jack Perkins labored through five innings on the other side, surrendering three earned runs on five hits. Arizona pushed it to 4-1 on a Marte sacrifice fly in the seventh, and at that point the Athletics looked cooked.
They weren't. Shea Langeliers launched a 444-foot shot to left center in the eighth to make it 4-2, and then Wilson went to work in the ninth. His 394-foot homer to left scored Walton and suddenly it was 4-4 — a swing that moved Arizona's win probability from 97% all the way down to 65%. That's a 31-point collapse in a single at-bat, and it looked like the kind of momentum shift that buries teams. The Athletics weren't done: in the 10th, Jonah Heim hit a sacrifice fly to center to score Soderstrom and give ATH a 5-4 lead. Arizona had burned through a dominant Kepler performance and now trailed in extra innings.
What followed was the story of the night. Nolan Arenado — who reached 2,000 career hits earlier this week, joining an elite club of players with 350 home runs and 10 Gold Gloves — singled to center to score Carroll and tie it at 5. That brought up Vargas, who punched a single to left, scoring Moreno from third to end it. Arizona wins 6-5. The Athletics, who are already dealing with the loss of rookie Joshua Kuroda-Grauer to the injured list following a foul ball injury Monday, now absorb a gut-punch defeat after holding a lead in the 10th. This appears to be a team that simply can't close the door right now, and Arizona — with Kepler's three-RBI night and a bullpen that held firm when it mattered — looks like a squad that knows how to manufacture wins even when the script goes sideways.