The Athletics' 14-2 loss to the Chicago White Sox on Thursday night at the Oakland Coliseum is one the team will attempt to forget.
Everything that could go wrong for Oakland starting pitcher JP Sears went wrong. Since coming to the A's from the New York Yankees as part of the Frankie Montas trade, the 26-year-old had not allowed more than three earned runs in any of his five starts while going five or more innings in all of them.
However, that wasn't the case against the White Sox as Sears allowed six earned runs on eight hits, including three home runs, while only lasting two innings for the A's.
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A's manager Mark Kotsay floated a thought as to what he saw from the dugout that was different from Sears, resulting in Chicago batters jumping all over his pitches.
"Sometimes teams find nuances, and obviously tonight, I truly feel like they may have had an advantage with knowing what was coming to a certain extent, and that's part of the game," Kotsay told reporters postgame.
"But we're going to dive deep into seeing what or if Sears was tipping his pitches, and they hit a couple of pitches tonight. They stayed on the changeup really well. It seemed like they were on every fastball he threw, and that's not to make an excuse. You still got to execute. But for Sears, we're going to dive into it on our end and see what happens."
Despite being an out-of-character outing for Sears, he doesn't plan on flushing the start down the drain and intends to look at the tape to understand what went wrong.
Perhaps looking at film and taking what the A's skipper told reporters, Sears could see whether or not the Oakland pitcher was tipping his pitches and get back to being one of the bright spots on the team that's looking to the 2023 MLB season.
Oakland Athletics
"I look at things I could have done better as far as pitch selection counts and overall approach to certain hitters where I choose to be aggressive and less aggressive," Sears added.
"So, yeah, do a lot of evaluating and see some things that a lot of things I can get better on and some things maybe I did well to continue to improve on, but overall, just try and bounce back and get strong and, you know, be ready for the next one."
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The A's will attempt to regroup on Friday and return to the win column when they send out James Kaprielian (3-9, 4.79 ERA). Meanwhile, the White Sox will counter with Lucas Giolito (10-9, 5.21 ERA).