Athletics' Liam Hendriks opens door for Yankees in first inning

The A’s did indeed use an opener on Wednesday.

Maybe not in the pure sense, Liam Hendriks was the first pitcher in a bullpen game, not an opener who gave way to a starter. But Hendriks did open the game, and then he helped the Yankees open the scoring. He opened the proverbial window of opportunity, and just nearly opened the floodgates.

It wasn’t exactly what the Athletics had in mind.

It’s been a long, winding, and often a strange road for the A’s, who went into a do-or-die wild-card game with one starter on the roster — Edwin Jackson, seated comfortably in the visitor’s bullpen when the first pitch was thrown — and a reliever on the mound. But after Hendriks gave up a walk to Andrew McCutchen to start the game, and then a two-run home run to Aaron Judge to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead, the potential dangers of the unorthodox method were immediately clear.

It’s not that an opener can’t win — the A’s proved, over and over, that it’s a valid approach, especially when your starting pitching staff is a legion of walking wounded — it’s just that there are a lot of variables to consider. Sure, most of your bullpen might be airtight, but what if just one pitcher is having an off night, or even an off batter?

On Wednesday, Hendriks, the first Australian-born pitcher to start a postseason game, learned that firsthand. Perhaps daunted by the raucous din within Yankee Stadium, Hendriks walked McCutchen on five pitches — none of the four balls particularly close. By the time the waist-high, 94 mph fastball reached Judge, it looked all but destined for one of the higher layers of the Earth’s atmosphere. Judge, instead, deposited it neatly in the second deck in left — a no doubter that came off his bat at 116.1 mph.

It’s true that two runs are hardly insurmountable, but at Yankee Stadium, against a Luis Severino that looked dynamite in the first inning, it was a hurdle, to say the last. And for baseball purists on social media and beyond, it seemed to hardly matter that, after Hendriks was done, Lou Trivino came in and did a perfectly admirable job of keeping the Yankees’ intimidating lineup in check. For many, the opener was a bust.

Just hours before the game, coach Bob Melvin said they had a general plan to who would come in after Hendriks, “but it’s a bit of play it by ear" - which could sound strange, considering what was at stake, but was the same philosophy that have gotten the A's this far.

“It's numbers,” Melvin said, noting that the Astros, which have one of the strongest rotations in baseball, still often choose to go to the bullpen by the sixth. “And it's based on numbers after the sixth inning and the impact relievers can have, especially power relievers which you're seeing more and more of, and especially the first time that they're facing somebody. It's just a big change from the third time around to seeing a power reliever for the first time. It's the numbers.”

Not just the baseball numbers, either. But the ones the follow dollar signs, too. Melvin made it clear that playing the game this way wasn’t a way to make some sort of statement, or rewrite the book of baseball. It’s just a situation that team’s with relatively little money have to adapt to — a factor the Yankees never need to really consider.

“Our payroll isn't the highest, so how do you go about it the best?” Melvin asked rhetorically — a question that the A’s have been asking since the advent of the Moneyball era. “At that point in time in the season [the trade deadline], relievers are just cheaper . . . So I think it was smart that we continued to try to fortify the bullpen, which had gotten better and better as the season went along.”

And earned them a little extra bit of season to boot.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.