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Athletics win 11th straight game on bases-loaded, extra-innings error

The Oakland Athletics have their 11th straight win, but saying they "won" the game might be a smidge inaccurate.

True, the A's had more runs than the Minnesota Twins at the end of the game, but, well, just take a look at how they went from having fewer runs to more runs in the 10th inning.

With the bases loaded, two outs and down 12-11, A's outfielder Ramon Laureano hit a hard grounder to Twins third baseman Luis Arraez. What should have been a groundout to end the game turned into an error to end the game, as Arraez air-mailed his throw to first base.

Another angle of the chaos:

Granted, Arraez did make a decent play fielding the ball. Laureano's grounder was 95.2 mph off the bat per Baseball Savant, and had an xBA of .230 (not high, but also not the easiest of plays). Of course, there's no nice way to describe that throw.

The end result was the A's improving to 12-7 and continuing their out-of-nowhere win streak. Two weeks ago, the A's were 0-6 and looking lost after the offseason exits of Marcus Semien and Liam Hendriks. Now, they are tied with the Boston Red Sox for the second-best record in MLB at 12-7.

How did the A's do this? Well, it's a textbook case of not freaking out about a bad week to open the season. Matt Olson has gone from a .558 OPS on April 6 to 1.078 as of Wednesday. Jed Lowrie went from .732 to .916. Stephen Piscotty went from .536 to .789. A shaky rotation has become less shaky.

And yes, they had a little luck along the way.

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