WEST SACRAMENTO — Six days removed from Independence Day, Tyler Soderstrom opened and closed the show with fireworks at Sutter Health Park on Thursday night.
Soderstrom, 23, opened the series finale against the Atlanta Braves with a firecracker of a three-run home run and capped off a 2-1 series win with a one-out, RBI single in the 11th inning to give the Athletics a 5-4 victory.
With Brent Rooker at second base as the automatic runner and Miguel Andujar intentionally walked, the 2020 Turlock High graduate relished the opportunity to play hero.
Soderstrom tagged a slider from Atlanta southpaw Aaron Bummer up the middle at 103.2 mph, just past second baseman Ozzie Albies, to plate Rooker. Soderstrom rounded first and was quickly mobbed by teammates and showered with ice water as he down in the outfield grass, out of breathe from the celebration.
“Just got to stay in there. Can't bail out. Got to stay true to the left field and just tried to see a slider up there, and I got it, and I was able to stay through up the middle, so it worked out,” Soderstrom told Chris Townsend and Steve Sax on "A's Cast" after the win.
It marked the first walk-off hit of the 23-year-old’s career.
Soderstrom finished 3 for 5 with four RBI.
The first baseman-turned-outfielder started the game with a 445-foot, three-run homer off Braves ace Spencer Strider into the berm in right field in the first inning gave the A’s a 3-0 lead. It was his 16th of the season. Per Statcast, it had an exit velocity of 108.5 mph and would have also been gone in the other 29 MLB ballparks.
The A’s improved to 39-56 while the Braves dropped to 40-52.
“It means a lot. You know, Atlanta’s a great team over there, so to come out with the series win is great, you know, just keep this momentum going,” Soderstrom told Townsend and Sax.
"We're always trying to win these games, trying to stay hot and have some momentum going into the All-Star break and ready to roll for the second half. So just continue to learn and just get better…”
JP Sears, making his 100th career appearance, retired the first 11 Braves batters he faced, five by strikeouts. Back-to-back doubles by Austin Riley and Sean Murphy put the Braves on the scoreboard with two outs in the fourth to end Sears’ streak of 15 1/3 scoreless innings, which was the second-longest active one to Detroit’s Tarik Skubal (18).
Atlanta’s Jurickson Profar then erased the deficit with a two-run homer to left field, his third of the season.
Albies and A’s top prospect Nick Kurtz exchanged homers to send the game into extra innings. It was Kurtz’s 15th home run of year, tying for most amongst MLB rookies.
"It's super fun," Soderstrom said of the team’s youth and chemistry. "I've played with some of these guys like Law [Butler] since Low-A, so it's cool to be up here in the big leagues, sharing these experiences with them. Getting my first walk-off hit tonight was super special. Something I always dreamed of, for sure.
"We feel like one through nine, you see the lineup, all the young guys in there for the last couple of weeks. So we're all really confident in each other. We've played together for a while now. So one through nine, we can get it done."
As the A’s bats heat up, so does the weather as the club navigates their first season at the Triple-A venue in state’s capital. The temperature at first pitch was 99 degrees, the highest for an A’s home game since that measurement was tracked daily in 1991. The highest-recorded temperature for an Athletics home game occurred July 27, 1956 when the then-Kansas City A’s hosted the New York Yankees in 101-degree heat.
The A’s will finish out the homestand and the first half with a three-game set against the Toronto Blue Jays. The series began Friday with RHP Max Scherzer (0-0, 4.77 ERA) facing A’s RHP Luis Severino (2-10, 5.30), who has yet to earn a victory at home.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
