Just too many flubs for Davis to overcome
HOUSTON — The question during the early portion of the evening Friday at Minute Maid Park was: Could Khris Davis outpace the Astros as well as his own team’s mistakes?
In the end, the combination of Houston’s talent and Oakland’s poor defense was too much in the Astros’ 9-4 win over Davis, who hit his eighth and ninth homers and drove in all four A’s runs.
Oakland has lost five in a row on the heels of a five-game winning streak that had moved them into second place in the AL West behind Houston. Now the A’s, last-place finishers the previous two seasons, are back at the bottom of the pack.
“When we went through the winning streak, we played real clean games,” manager Bob Mel-
vin said. “Now, we’re a little shoddy.”
Oakland landed at 4 a.m. after Thursday’s night game in Anaheim and reached its hotel at 5 a.m. The A’s didn’t look particularly fresh, making three errors — and two of them in the first four innings, astonishingly, were catcher’s interferences by Stephen Vogt that put former Oakland outfielder Josh Reddick on base.
“Very strange,” Reddick said. “I’ve done it every now and then, but I’ve never heard of doing it twice in one game, much less twice in one week.”
Reddick is the seventh player to reach base on catcher’s interference twice in one game. “You don’t see it very often,” Vogt said. “That’s not really how you swing the bat typically, but he does a good job going the other way and that’s on me. I have to make sure I’m back and not reaching for the ball.”
Vogt said only Jacoby Ellsbury and Reddick ever have drawn catcher’s interferences from him, “So I’m pretty far back there. It’s one of those freak things that obviously I’m not real thrilled about.”
A balk by starter Jharel Cotton when the ball just plopped out of his hand as he was on the pitching rubber also contributed to Houston’s three-run first inning.
“I really wanted to go out and shut it down in the first inning when we got on the board, but unfortunately I didn’t do that,” Cotton said. “I let them creep in.”
Davis provided a three-run shot to right-center in the first inning, then banged a solo drive out to right in the third, both off Charlie Morton. Davis’ nine homers lead the American League and are tied for second in the majors behind Eric Thames’ 11.
Jed Lowrie’s errorless streak at second base ended at 75 games when he misplayed a grounder by Carlos Beltran with one out in the fifth. Yuli Gurriel doubled, putting Beltran at third, and with the infield in, Evan Gattis — noted A’s menace — singled just out of Adam Rosales’ reach at shortstop. Beltran scored, giving Houston the lead for the first time, and Alex Bregman followed with a sacrifice fly off reliever Ryan Dull.
Like Gattis, Gurriel had three hits. He drilled a solo homer off Cesar Valdez in the seventh to complete his night.
The A’s had a shot to cut into Houston’s lead in the eighth when, with two on and two outs, Ryon Healy hit a drive to deep right, but Reddick, on a dead run, caught the ball over his head and slammed into the wall, a play all too familiar to A’s fans from his four-plus years in Oakland.
“Frustrating,” Vogt said. “It’s hard to see him in another uniform, and I know he loved it here as well, so it’s hard to seem him make catches like that. It’s not very much fun when he’s not wearing green.”
Vogt’s two-error night was the first of his career, but he did record his first caught stealing this season in 13 attempts.
Oakland’s batters struck out a season-high 14 times. Susan Slusser is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sslusser@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susanslusser