Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY Sports
A.J. Griffin has had an up-and-down season for the Oakland Athletics, but his start on Wednesday afternoon was the best he’s put together thus far in his young career.
The right-hander pitched a complete game shut out over the Cincinnati Reds, only allowing two base hits en route to the A’s 5-0 victory.
With the win, Griffin improved to 6-6 on the season and helped the A’s sweep the short two-game series with the Reds, who didn’t really do much with the bat on Wednesday.
It was both Griffin’s first career complete game and his first shut out (as his previous career high for a single game was eight innings).
Griffin, known for his wild haircut, quirky personality and pregame routine off playing guitar in the A’s clubhouse, said after the game, “Everyone wants to make (manager) Bob Melvin look as good as possible. I wanted to go out there, finish the game and make him look like a genius again” (as quoted by A’s writer Jane Lee.
After a rough 2-5 road trip through Texas and Seattle, the A’s seem to have enjoyed Monday’s off day — Tuesday night’s win over the Reds and Bronson Arroyo came with timely hitting and a solid 5 1/3 innings from the bullpen (which had a difficult stretch over the past week or so).
Oakland has another off day on Thursday before welcoming in the St. Louis Cardinals (holders of the league’s best record) for a weekend series that looks to be a battle of two of the game’s most efficient clubs thus far in 2013.
Adrian Garro is an Oakland Athletics writer for RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter and/or add him to your network on Google.