HOUSTON — The Oakland A’s were hopeful they had left the numerous woes of the 2023 season behind.
But most of this month, especially this past week, has been a reminder that the A’s remain a massive work in progress after last season’s 50-win campaign.
Rookie Joey Loperfido hit his first major league home run and Cristian Javier pitched six scoreless innings Thursday night to help the Houston Astros beat the Athletics 8-1 and complete a four-game sweep at Minute Maid Park.
The victory extended Houston’s winning streak to a season-high five games. The Astros have won seven of their last eight.
The A’s, meanwhile, have lost five straight and are 5-10 this month as they fell behind the Astros into fourth place in the American League West. While they Athletics were outscored 17-13 in losing two of three games to the Mariners last week, they were outclassed by the Astros and outscored 22-4 in this series.
Oakland (19-27) now closes a 10-game road trip with a three-game set against the Kansas City Royals (26-19), who sit in second place in the AL Central.
“Coming off the Seattle series, I thought we swung the bats well,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay told reporters. “We got here and we got dominated. We’ve got to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to get the offense going again.”
Abraham Toro doubled, and Zack Gelof hit an RBI single in the seventh for Oakland. In this horrid stretch, the A’s have given up 86 runs combined in their last 12 games.
“We’re going into Kansas City, and those guys have been throwing the ball well,” Kotsay said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us offensively. We need to do a better job.”
Yainer Diaz hit a three-run double, and Loperfido added his two-run shot off Joey Estes (1-1) in a six-run third inning that gave the Astros a big lead early.
Estes yielded eight hits, eight runs, and four walks — all career highs — in his second start this season and fourth of his career.
“You take a lot from these outings,” Estes said. “Even more than the outings that you go six innings and no runs and everything goes perfect. You learn from these, get through it, and move on to the next one.”
“If you don’t locate, you can’t get good hitters out, and that was an example tonight,” Kotsay said.
Severe thunderstorms roared through downtown Houston on Thursday, causing rain to get through a section of the retractable roof at Minute Maid Park and pour into the bullpen in right-center field as Javier warmed up.
“It didn’t really affect me, but yeah, there was a lot of water in there, which is something I hadn’t seen before,” Javier said. “So I was a little bit confused there.”
There were two outs in the third inning when Jon Singleton walked to load the bases. Diaz then lined a double into center field to clear the bases and make it 3-0.
Jake Meyers followed with a double to left field to score Diaz and make it 4-0. Loperfido’s shot to the seats in right field came next to extend it to 6-0.
Kyle Tucker walked to start the fourth before Alex Bregman hit a two-out double. Tucker scored on a sacrifice fly by Jeremy Peña to chase Estes. Hogan Harris replaced Estes, and his balk allowed Singleton to score to leave Houston up 8-0.
“We also gave up seven or eight free bases,” Kotsay said. “You give good teams extra bases, and it’s going to be a challenge to limit their runs.”
LHP Ken Waldichuk had reconstructive surgery on his troublesome pitching elbow and will be sidelined all season.
Athletics: Oakland hadn’t announced its starter for the first of three games at Kansas City Friday night.
Astros: RHP Hunter Brown (0-4, 7.79) starts for Houston against RHP Freddy Peralta (3-1, 3.63) in the opener of a three-game series with Milwaukee.
