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The Oakland Telegraph
13 October 2025
Late comebacks help magnificent A's sweep Twins in American League divisional series
By Nev Ergiveup, comebacks correspondent
Oakland advanced to their fourth consecutive American League championship series after yesterday's 5-4 victory completed a shock 3-0 clean sweep over the hot favourite Minnesota Twins. They will now face the Toronto Blue Jays, who themselves completed a sweep over the Texas Rangers. Both the American League's 100-win teams have been eliminated from the postseason without winning a game between them. Yep, the playoffs are a crapshoot, all right. But the three-peat is still on.
The A's traditionally strong starting pitching seemed to take a leave of absence during the divisional series. Karl Dickson, Rodney Stewart and Jose Fernandez all had difficult outings as Oakland allowed 4 runs in each of the games. But the lineup came to the party, giving their colleagues the run support they needed. The first two games were both won thanks to late comebacks. In the first game, the Twins led 4-2, but Oakland scored 2 runs in the 7th and then what proved to be the winning run in the 8th. In game two, Rodney Stewart dug the team into a 4-1 hole after 6 innings, but 2 runs scored in the 7th then 3 more in the 9th gave the A's an unlikely victory.
General manager Paulie Beane said, "It's fantastic being an MLB Manager. What a great game. And what a turn up for the books. We didn't pitch well at all, but kudos to the batters who have seen us home. Credit too to Phil D'Manager who for once did not seemingly try to throw it away with his bizarre decision-making. That annoying Computer AI software he uses has a lot to answer for. Thank goodness all the other teams use it as well."
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