Athletics Back Home After an Up-and-Down Trip Ending in 10-1 Loss

Frankie Montas' return to the Oakland rotation did not last long. He got just five outs and allowed a career-worst nine runs as Diamondbacks get a mini-sweep of Athletics.

The A’s will be back at the Coliseum Wednesday after an eight-game road trip that saw Oakland play some of the most inspiring – and most perplexing – baseball of the season.

Coming off a nine-game winning streak, the A’s head on the road to lose two in a row in Anaheim, win the final against the Angels, sweep the Giants, then get swept by Arizona, including Tuesday’s 10-1 blowout at the hands of the Diamondbacks that wasn’t nearly as close as the score might suggest.

Frankie Montas, who was supposed to start last Friday against the Giants in Oracle Park, was scratched in that one. He reappeared for the road trip finale in Phoenix Tuesday and got clawed in this one – five runs in the first inning and a career-worst nine runs in 1.2 innings total.

“He was jumping a little bit at times, trying to find the right arm slot,” manager Bob Melvin said. “He was spiking some balls and hanging a couple of pitches. I think it’s a product of not pitching in a while.”

The good news from Melvin’s point of view is that Montas didn’t seem to have any physical problems with either his neck or upper back, the problem that cost him the start in San Francisco. The manager expects him to be back on the mound in five days as per usual.

“I was fine,” Montas said about the back/neck problem. “My mechanics were a little off today. I had a really good bullpen, but when I got to the mound … It was just a rough day, and now I have five days to get back.”

The A’s return home for two more against the Diamondbacks Wednesday and Thursday in the Coliseum owning a 16-8 record and still in ownership of the lead in the American League West, but that lead is down to 2½ games with the Astros having won seven of eight since being swept in Oakland, including winning the last six in succession.

The four-game mid-trip Oakland winning streak included rallying from five runs down in the ninth on Friday, then three runs down in the ninth on Saturday, in wins against the Giants. The four losses included a couple of one-run losses and two games in which the A’s offense was a virtual no-show, including Tuesday.

What the A’s need to do now is to find a way out of the big inning. In the eight games, the A’s allowed five runs twice, including the first inning off Montas Tuesday, four runs once, also off Montas Tuesday, and three runs five times.

It was Montas who stumbled Tuesday, but the trip hasn’t been Montas in a vacuum – the A’s pitching staff averaged at least one inning of three or more runs for every game they played on the trip.

The trip’s low moments haven’t all been about the pitching. The batters have struck out 51 times and are cementing their hold on the AL in that category with 242 strikeouts.

“Sometimes that just happens,” right fielder Stephen Piscotty said. It was Piscotty who singled and scored the A’s lone run on Austin Allen’s double in the second inning. “Over the course of the season that’s going to level off.”

And while the A’s came out of the eight-game split having outscored the opposition, there have been huge stretches of wasteland – three times in eight games where they went six or more innings without scoring and with two or fewer hits. On Tuesday, it was the game’s final seven innings when they had just three base runners, two walks and a ninth-inning single.

Add to that the Aug. 11 game when the A’s were shutout on just four hits, and there’s way too many stretches of virtually zero offense.

“That’s baseball; it’s a weird game,” Piscotty said. “It’s crazy how it works sometimes. Sometimes the floodgates open and sometimes you’re really grinding to get runners on base, and we found ourselves in that spot the last two (games).

“We’re going to turn the page and focus on finishing the series against them at home.”

And while the 16-8 record has the A’s ahead in the West by 2½ games, the lead was five games when Oakland left town, so pressure is beginning to be applied.

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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