The Oakland Athletics won their third straight game thanks to an outstanding start from Daniel Straily and a seven run outburst in the top of the fifth against the Houston Astros.
Through three innings Straily struck out seven and wound up going 6.2 innings, striking out 11 and even more impressive did now allow a walk and his only blemishes were giving up a rbi single to Jose Altuve and a leadoff double to Jason Maxwell in the seventh.
After recording a strike out and a pop out, Bob Melvin decided to go with Pat Neshsek to face Matt Dominguez. The result a rbi single scoring Maxwell and on the throw from Yoenis Cespedes, Dominguez ended up at second. Marwin Gonzalez followed with another single.
Altuve walked on four straight pitches, which meant that Neshek’s night was over. Chris Resop entered the game to face Brett Wallace and got him to fly out to end the threat. Straily’s night ended with him giving up two runs all earned. Evan Scribner pitched the last two innings and gave up a rbi ground out.
Offensively Coco Crisp opened the game with a leadoff home run. It was a seven run fifth that opened the game up for the A’s. It started with a one out double, which chased Astros starting pitcher Brad Peacock.
Left-hander Xavier Cedeno gave up back-to-back walks before inducing a hard hit ground ball by Cespedes and looked like an opportunity for a double play except Gonzalez couldn’t make the play allowing two runs to score. John Jaso bunted perfectly allowing Josh Reddick to score.
Chris Young then had an excellent at-bat and walked to load the bases again. Bo Porter elected not to go the bullpen to replace the struggling Cedeno and Josh Donaldson lined a single to score two more runs. Eric Sogard got hit with a pitch and that brought a pitching change.
In came Rhiner Cruz got Nate Freiman to line out to right field for the second out of the inning. Crisp doubled in two and Lowrie drew a walk giving Reddick the third opportunity with the bases loaded in the inning. He ended up flying out to deep left to end the inning.
There was one more threat by the A’s in the eighth inning, yet it got erased when Young hit into an inning ending double play.
During the three game winning streak Oakland has scored 22 runs that after only scoring one run in the first two games against the Seattle Mariners.
Note: The 11 strikeouts without a walk last happened for the A’s in 2010 when Gio Gonzalez accomplished the feat against the Chicago White Sox.