TEXAS 11, A’S 3
The Rangers put together five-run innings in the fifth and sixth and routed the A’s 11-3 Thursday night in Oakland.
Exhausted from the first three sleepless nights of his newborn Brody’s life, Brett Anderson wasn’t himself Thursday evening.
The A’s lefthander pitched around some hardhit balls for four innings but was shelled in the fifth inning of an 113 loss to the Rangers in front of a crowd of 11,854 at the Coliseum.
Anderson, who was reinstated from the paternity list early Thursday — three days after he and his wife, Morgan, welcomed their first child — gave up hits to five of the first six batters in the fifth inning in squandering a threerun lead.
“In the fifth, I wouldn’t say I ran out of gas, but I couldn’t finish them off,” said Anderson, who gave up five runs on seven hits in 42⁄3 innings. “There were too many strikes in the middle of the plate. They did a good job of squaring some balls up. Even if they didn’t, they found some holes.
“It was kind of death by a thousand cuts.”
Anderson played catch and did his usual lifting and cardio regimen Sunday, and he then flew to Phoenix for the birth of his son and traded in his ball and glove for a bottle and diapers.
Waking up every three or four hours, though, he found perspective.
“Under different circumstances, I’d be a little more upset, but I can’t be too upset because I just had a kid who is healthy and a wife who is healthy,” he said. “Obviously, you’d like to win a ballgame and pitch better and give your team a chance, but at the end of the day, things change once you have a kid.
“Thirtyone years of living, breathing, dying baseball kind of goes out the window now, with a newborn.”
It was a surprising turn for Anderson, who was 20 with a 2.36 ERA in his previous four starts. He had lost once since June 1 and appeared primed to extend the trend after being spotted a threerun lead in the first inning.
The A’s jumped all over starter Ariel Jurado, lighting up the righthander for three runs in the first. Marcus Semien led off with a double into the leftcenterfield gap, and after walks to Matt Chapman and Matt Olson, Ramon Laureano smacked a tworun single. Olson scored on Khris Davis’ sacrifice fly to right.
The Rangers knocked Anderson out of the game in the fifth. After four singles, including an RBI hit up the middle by Delino DeShields, Danny Santana hit a tworun double down the firstbase line. Elvis Andrus’ sacrifice fly gave Texas a 43 lead and brought Yusmeiro Petit out of the bullpen.
Things got worse from there. Lou Trivino allowed three runs on one hit, one walk and one hit batter, and WeiChung Wang gave up a grand slam to Santana as the Rangers extended their lead to 103 in the sixth inning.
It was the first time this season that the A’s allowed at least five runs in backtoback innings, and they did not threaten to get back into the game. Coming off an arduous 34 road trip through division leaders Minnesota and Houston, the A’s managed just one hit after the first inning.
“It was surprising, because usually when we get off to a good start like that, it ends up being a really good game for us,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “It just had that feeling early on when we scored some runs. We do that, we can be pretty relentless. …
“We just couldn’t follow up a good first inning, and typically we do.”