A’s road trip now historically bad
BOSTON — Well, the A’s certainly don’t do things by halves this dreadful month.
When they stink, it’s franchise-record-level reek.
Oakland’s string of poor outings by starters kept right on spinning along Wednesday.
Eric Surkamp, recalled to pitch against Boston, failed to make it out of the third inning in the A’s 13-3 loss to the Red Sox.
Boston scored 40 runs in sweeping the three-game series and shoving Oakland a season-high seven games under .500.
[...] the A’s — who are 1-9 in May — tied the Oakland record for runs allowed in a four-game stretch (51).
“It’s certainly embarrassing,” A’s right fielder Josh Reddick said.
Three games in a row, the A’s starter hasn’t made it to the fifth inning, as Sonny Gray, Sean Manaea and Surkamp combined for nine innings in the series at Fenway Park.
A tough series for us.
In the first 17 games of the season, A’s starters had a 2.88 ERA.
Over the past 18 games, Oakland starters have allowed 80 earned runs in 852/3 innings.
Overall, A’s starters are 9-18 with a 5.47 ERA, the most losses and the highest ERA in the American League.
To see them struggle like that — usually one out of the five is going to pick you up, but we couldn’t find that right now.
Surkamp gave up a two-out, three-run homer to Jackie Bradley Jr. in the second inning and another run in the third on a two-out double by former A’s outfielder Chris Young.
Surkamp left with runners at second and third, and Ryan Dull intentionally walked Travis Shaw and got Christian Vazquez to fly out.
Dull gave up a two-run homer to Dustin Pedroia in the fourth, Marc Rzepczynski allowed an RBI by Bradley in the fourth and Mookie Betts’ grounder off Andrew Triggs sent in another run.
Hanley Ramirez added a two-run double off Triggs, and Betts drove in a run in the sixth with a single off Zach Neal, making his big-league debut.
Bradley hit a two-run homer off Neal in the eighth as the Red Sox finished with 17 hits for the night, 48 for the series.
Bradley was 8-for-14 with three homers, 13 RBIs and four runs in the three games.
The 1929 Phillies allowed 11 runs or more in six consecutive games, and since then, like your current Oakland team, the 1951 Pirates, 1986 Brewers and 2007 Astros allowed 11 runs or more in four straight games.
Susan Slusser is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.
Email: sslusser@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susanslusser
Not fantastic 4
A look at the sad, the bad and the ugly of the pitching in the most recent four losses:
Day, Opponent
Monday, Red Sox
Tuesday, Red Sox
Wednesday, Red Sox
Totals
