Thursday, 4 a.m.
When the Oakland A’s aren’t trotting, they’re walking. The combination of the two is crushing the Tampa Bay Rays.
The A’s handed the Rays their second loss of the season Wednesday night, winning a 4-2 game when starter Shane McClanahan struggled through a 15-pitch stretch in the third inning.
McClanahan was good most of the time in his second start of the season, but he “fell out of rhythm” in the third. With two outs, he walked Jed Lowery on five pitches, then walked Stephen Piscotty on six. Four pitches later, Sean Murphy hit a three-run homer — the A’s third three-run homer of the series — that served as the death blow.
The walks have hurt the Rays in thisseries. In three games, they’ve given up 15 bases on balls.
“I thought (McClanahan) was outstanding," Rays' manger Kevin Cash said.
I really did. It’s the inopportune walks. We can manage walks at times. Ideally, we don’t do that. They had good at bats against him in that one clump, but other than that, he was lights out for us. We’re just getting beat up a little bit by the three-run homer right now.
“It’s unfortunate because that outing didn’t represent how good he was. Oakland put pressure on him to get the two walks and then they hit the three-run homer.”
McClanahan gave up only two hits in his 4 2/3 innings, but one of them went 411 feet.
“I felt really good,” McClanahan said. “I made a lot of good pitches today. I made one really bad pitch. It’s kind of a frustrating day. I thought I threw the ball well and the results weren’t there.”
The Rays could score only twice, and were one-for-11 with runners in scoring position.
Ji-Man Choi, who is nine-for-16 on the season, hit a home run for the Rays. Francisco Mejia (who is five-for-12) singled in the other run in the ninth.
The Rays and A’s play the fourth game of their series today at Tropicana Field at 1:10 p.m. Josh Fleming will start for the Rays against Cole Irvin.