American League Roundup : A’s 17-Run Spree Make Haas’ 6th Win Easiest of All

If it’s May and his team is scoring runs in bunches, the pitcher must be Moose Haas.

With Dave Kingman hitting two home runs and driving in five runs Tuesday at Toronto, the Oakland A’s trounced the Blue Jays, 17-3, to make Haas’ sixth victory of the young season his easiest.

The 30-year-old right-hander, who has been with the A’s only five weeks after spending nine seasons at Milwaukee, is off to the best start in a career that includes a 16-victory season and a 13-3 season.

He has become an instant favorite with Oakland hitters. Everytime Haas takes the mound, the A’s hit up a storm. In his six starts, the A’s have scored 55 runs. Last season he made 26 starts for the Brewers and they scored only 81 runs for him.

This was his easiest win. Kingman, hitting only .155 going into the game and with only three hits in his last 37 at-bats, homered leading off the second, hit a three-run smash in the third and singled to trigger a four-run fifth.

“I wasn’t thinking 6-0 in my head,” Haas told UPI, “I just wanted to keep the run production down because we hadn’t been scoring.

“This trade has been good to me. It should happen to everyone once. I can’t ever remember a start even close to this.”

Throughout his career, Haas has pitched well in May. His two wins this month have improved his record for the month to 26-11. He has a total of 71 victories in the other months.

Haas has pitched only one complete game, but it has not been because he couldn’t go the distance. In this game he pitched seven innings, giving up two runs, including one of the two home runs hit by Jesse Barfield, and only three hits. When he departed, the A’s had a 13-2 lead.

He has pitched 43 innings this season and given up only eight runs for an earned-run average of 1.65. His strikeout to walk ratio (27-9) is excellent.

“He’s done exactly what we expected him to do,” Manager Jackie Moore said. “He’s exactly what we wanted. He’s a veteran pitcher. He’s been around the league and knows the hitters. He’s not going to beat himself.”

The A’s had lost three in a row, so Moore decided to skip batting practice. They held it against Jimmy Key and three relievers. Key (0-3) gave up six hits and six runs in 2 innings. In six starts, Key, 14-6, in Toronto’s drive to the pennant last year, has an ERA of 13.27.

“We would have had to get up early for batting practice,” Moore said. “We have had a lot of batting practice this season. We decided to try something different.”

In addition to Kingman, Tony Phillips (4 for 5) and Alfredo Griffin (3 for 4) had big hitting days.

Cleveland 6, Kansas City 1--Now that their top slugger, Andre Thornton, has brought his big bat into play, no telling how long the Indians’ streak will continue.

Thornton, batting just .172, going into this game at Cleveland, hit two home runs and drove in five runs in a game called with the Indians batting in the bottom of the fifth because of thunderstorms.

The slugger, who now has 201 home runs in his Cleveland career, hit a two-run blast in the first and a three-run smash in the third. It was easily enough for Tom Candiotti, who gave up a run and six hits in five innings.

The right-hander fanned the first three batters he faced on eight wicked knuckleballs and struck out six.

Bud Black, who was taken out of the Royals’ rotation 10 days ago, returned to a starting job and served up the homers to Thornton.

The storm struck with one out in the bottom of the fifth. They waited more than an hour and called the game.

Milwaukee 10, Seattle 0--One of the reasons the Brewers traded Haas to the A’s was so that some of their good young pitchers would get a chance to pitch.

They don’t have any 6-0 pitchers, but the Brewers aren’t hurting. With rookie Juan Nieves (2-1) pitching a six-hitter for his first major league shutout, the Brewers improved their record to 14-10 and kept them just two games out of first place in the East.

The Brewers pounded out 15 hits, four of them by Robin Yount and three by Ben Oglivie. Paul Molitor hit a two-run home run and Nieves had an easy outing.

Nieves credited a pre-game talk with the coaching staff for his performance.

“I talked to Herm (Starrette, the pitching coach) and Tom Treblehorn and they told me to visualize in my mind, before the pitch, where the ball is going to be,” Nieves said. “I did that all through today’s game. I visualized how everything happened. I’m going to continue to pitch that way.”

Texas 4, Detroit 2--Rookie Pete Incaviglia hit a two-run home run in the sixth inning at Arlington, Tex. to give Charlie Hough a victory in his first appearance of the season.

Hough, on the disabled list with a broken finger, pitched 6 innings, giving up six hits and both Tiger runs. Greg Harris pitched two hitless innings to earn his fourth save.

New York 10, Chicago 6--Amid reports that Manager Tony LaRussa is about to be fired, the White Sox rallied from a 6-1 deficit at Chicago, then blew it.

Dave Winfield hit a sacrifice fly to put the Yankees ahead and Rickey Henderson hit a three-run home run in the ninth to clinch it.

Yankee broadcaster Billy Martin, rumored as the replacement for LaRussa, did not attend the game, saying it would be embarrassing to his friend LaRussa.

Baltimore 5, Minnesota 3--Juan Bonilla, Eddie Murray and Lee Lacy hit home runs at Minneapolis to back the pitching of Storm Davis.

Davis gave up seven hits in 7 innings to improve his record to 2-1 and Don Aase got the last four outs.

The Orioles, going into the game, had hit only 15 home runs in the first 23 games. Murray’s home run was a 427-foot blast to left.