Yasiel Puig left last night’s game with hamstring tightness

A’s manager Bob Melvin said Chavez has “been on a mission” to prove he can stay strong for an entire season. He also threw a career-high 116 pitches.

Mark Canha had reason to celebrate.

Billy Burns went 3-for-4 with a double and an RBI and scored three times for the A’s.

Canha opened the 10th with a double off Yimi Garcia, his fourth hit of the game.

In what started out as a pitcher’s duel turned into a battle of bad bullpens and culminated in the A’s sixth walk-off victory of the season. What a twist! From there, the A’s took the chance to manufacture a run – Josh Reddick sacrificed the runners over, and Marcus Semien knocked one in with a groundout. Chavez can be part of the A’s starting rotation next year, but not if he wears down like he did in 2014, when the A’s replaced him with Jon Lester at the trade deadline. Oakland recalled OF Smolinski from Triple-A Nashville and placed 1B Ike Davis on the 15-day disabled list with a strained left hip. First, he slammed the ball into the ground.

With one out in the third inning, Joc Pederson worked a walk. This is really the best time of year to be playing and especially to be in a race. Doubront seemed to get a lot of swings and misses on balls in the dirt, and indeed his 14 whiffs overall add up to an excellent 13.5% swinging strike rate (league-average is 9.8%).

It looked for a while as though Rollins’ hit might be enough. Bullpen foibles have become numbingly familiar to this team, not only in 2015, but when it mattered the previous season, too.

Meanwhile, Chavez retired 15 of 16 batters following Rollins’ homer before giving up the Dodgers’ only other hit, a two-out double by Kiké Hernandez in the top of the eighth. Prior to his strain he had a five-game hitting streak going on. Sounds about right. With the score 4-1, the game looked over for all intents and purposes. It was not something Chavez wanted to have happen again. The normal shutdown inning didn’t follow. With Canha and Butler coming up, the smart money was on a strikeout and a GIDP, but instead Canha came through with a shot into the gap in right-center to plate both runners. This time, it only took four pitches. It was Butler’s first walk-off hit since homering against Seattle on July 18, 2012, with the Royals. “It was not a great feeling, and then we have the all-night flight and come here and play last night, then an early one today”.

Fiers (1-0) needed little help from his defense until Jake Marisnick had to sprint to catch a long flyball by Jimmy Rollins just in front of the bullpen in right field for the first out of the ninth inning.

With an MVP award, three Cy Youngs and five All-Star game appearances to his name, it’s no surprise that Clayton Kershaw holds himself to a high standard.