A's rookie joins select group from Down Under

This story was excerpted from Martín Gallegos’ A’s Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

OAKLAND -- Growing up in Australia, Jack O'Loughlin never realized how far baseball could actually take him until he met Luke Hughes.

Hughes -- a native of Perth who played three big league seasons as an infielder with the Twins and A’s from 2010-12 -- coached a teenage O’Loughlin on the Australian junior national team. Seeing and hearing about Hughes’ Major League career showed O’Loughlin that his baseball dream was possible, even if he was in the Land Down Under some 9,000 or so miles away from the United States.

On Sunday, O’Loughlin joined Hughes in the small fraternity of players from their home country to reach The Show. Coming on in relief for the A’s in the top of the seventh inning of a 5-2 loss to the Astros, O’Loughlin officially became Australia’s 38th Major League Baseball player.

“It means everything,” O’Loughlin said. “To be able to be the 38th Australian-born player is an incredible feeling. I’ve seen some of my friends in the past do it. One of my good friends is [Rays infielder] Curtis Mead, who debuted last year. I’ve had coaches like Graeme Lloyd and Luke Hughes. … To play at the same level they did is incredible.”

O’Loughlin’s first matchup was no easy task. Digging into the plate to lead off the seventh was Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez. The 24-year-old left-hander retired Alvarez on a groundout, and though he pitched himself into a bases-loaded jam later in the inning, he escaped without damage and ended up finishing the game for Oakland by tossing three scoreless frames with two strikeouts on 42 pitches.

“I would definitely rate it as better than you could ever expect,” O’Loughlin said when asked to describe the feeling of making his debut. “So many emotions were flooding through. It was just such a surreal moment for me. … For my first time, to be able to touch the mound out there with the emotions coming over me and still being able to do my job was incredible.”

O’Loughlin was one of the more intriguing non-roster invites to A’s Spring Training. He began his professional career in the Australian Baseball League in 2016 as a 16-year-old shortly after signing with the Tigers. He reached Triple-A in Detroit’s system last season and combined for a 3.99 ERA in 27 games (25 starts) with 118 strikeouts and 52 walks across 124 innings between High-A and Triple-A.

The A’s were impressed by what they saw from O’Loughlin this spring. Though he was always unlikely to make the club out of Spring Training, they counted on him to provide Minor League depth as one of the first arms to be called on once a need arose in the Majors.

Two months into the season, that need has come. An elbow injury to Ross Stripling over the weekend left the A’s with four of five members of their Opening Day starting rotation currently on the injured list. It’s unclear if O’Loughlin, who was part of the rotation at Triple-A Las Vegas at the time of his callup on Saturday, will fill one of those rotation spots or continue in a long-relief role. Either way, he certainly made a good first impression.

“Jack did a great job,” said A’s manager Mark Kotsay. “It’s nice to see a young kid come in and not be fazed by the moment. He did a nice job. He got out of a jam and pitched two nice follow-up innings. It was a nice debut for him.”