Big hit still missing despite lineup change
A’s struggle without Davis, lose again to Rays
OAKLAND >> Chad Pinder slammed his bat against the dirt near home plate in frustration after swinging through a 1-2 slider from Blake Snell for strike three to end the sixth inning with Jed Lowrie on third base. That’s just the way things are going for the A’s offense these days.
A lineup shakeup didn’t help much as the A’s continued to struggle without slugger Khris Davis in a 4-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night in front of just 7,521 fans at the Coliseum.
The A’s did manage to scratch across two runs against Sergio Romo in the ninth inning on a pair of ground outs after Matt Olson and Stephen Piscotty led off with a single and double.
“We were better,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “We rallied at the end and got some really good at-bats. I was encouraged by what I saw at the end.”
Melvin moved up Matt Chapman, who has just two hits in his past 26 atbats, to bat second while Mark Canha, who usually hits lower in the order, was moved up to the cleanup spot, where Matt Olson has usually been hitting with Davis out. Olson was moved down to sixth.
Pinder’s inability to bring home Lowrie from third in the sixth wasn’t even the most frustrating failure of the night. That came in the eighth. Marcus Semien drew a leadoff walk and moved over to third after a bad throw from Carlos Gomez on Matt Chapman’s single, putting runners on second and third with no outs. Trailing 3-1 at the time, it was yet another golden opportunity for the A’s. But as has been the norm on this home stand, the A’s failed to bring home a run.
Lowrie and Canha struck out, and Pinder grounded out to end the inning. The A’s left seven runners on base as they went 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position.
Through eight games of their current 10-game homestand, the A’s (28-27) have scored just 15 runs in 73 innings. They’ve hit just two home runs on this homestand after hitting 16 in their previous 10-game trip to New York, Boston and Toronto.
The way the A’s offense had been going, Daniel Gossett was going to have to be nearly flawless on the mound. He wasn’t bad, but a nightmarish sequence in the third put him in a deep hole.
After striking out the first two batters of the inning, Gossett surrendered consecutive home runs to C.J. Cron, Joey Wendle and Wilson Ramos to put the Rays (27-26) ahead 3-0.
“This is a pretty tough game we play. Sometimes it comes around to get you, and sometimes you skate out,” Gossett said. “It was just a few bad pitches in a row, and they were ready for them and on them.”
Gossett finished his outing allowing three runs on eight hits and two walks with three strikeouts over five innings. Gossett is now 0-3 with a 6.05 ERA in four starts this season after starting the season in the minors.