Josh Donaldson Sets A's Straight with Five Hits in 11-2 Win; Giants Close Gap on Dodgers as Yusmeiro Petit Hurls Complete GameD

Players of the Day for Tuesday, September 9, 2014

American League

Donaldson: 5-for-6

Despite having won just three times in their last 12 games, the Oakland A's have maintained their hold on the first wild card spot, though their grip has been tenuous of late, at best.

Winning, 11-2 over the White Sox in Chicago on Tuesday, the A's managed to hammer out 18 hits, five of them coming off the bat of third baseman, Josh Donaldson, who was also responsible for driving in four runs and scoring twice in his six at-bats.

Donaldson's hits were all singles, except for a fifth-inning double that plated two teammates and put the A's up 4-0. His two other RBI came in the ninth inning off a single, when the A's added five runs.

With a .257 batting average, Donaldson leads the team in RBI with 93.

The A's win came at an opportune time, as Seattle had closed to within one game in the wild card race. As of Tuesday's results, Oakland leads either Detroit or Kansas City (the two are tied for first place in the Central) by 1 1/2 games with Seattle two back. Further back, six games out, is Toronto, winners of three straight, having bypassed the Yankees and Cleveland in the race for the wild card spots.

Petit: 4H, CG, W

With the four-game series tied at a game apiece, Oakland and the White Sox go at it Wednesday at 8:10 pm EDT and finish up Thursday with a day game, scheduled for 2:10 pm EDT.

National League

Winners of 10 of their last 13 games, the San Francisco Giants continue to hound the first-place Dodgers in the NL West, their 5-1 victory over Arizona Tuesday, combined with LA's 6-3 loss to San Diego, has them just 2 1/2 games off the front-runner's pace.

Yusmeiro Petit threw his first complete game of the season, having started just nine times this year. Petit allowed four hits and one run - that coming on a fourth-inning solo homer by Arizona's Ender Inciarte - struck out nine and issued no walks, completing the nine innings with a judicious 84 pitches, 68 of them thrown for strikes. Petit improved to 5-3.

The Giants got most of their production from the top of the order. Leadoff hitter, Angel Pagan, was 4-for-5 with three runs. Joe Panic went 5-for-5 but only kept rallies going, neither scoring nor driving in any runs. Buster Posey went 0-for-4 but drove in two, increasing his RBI total to 81 on the year.

San Francisco hosts Arizona in the second of their three-game series on Wednesday, 7:00 pm PDT, and hosts the Dodgers in a crucial three-game series over the coming weekend.