A’s give up early lead as Red Sox complete sweep at Fenway
The Athletics have now lost the first six games of their nine-game East Coast road trip.
BOSTON – For the second consecutive series the A’s were swept out of town, this time on the heels of a 7-3 loss to the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Wednesday afternoon.
It is the sixth consecutive loss for Oakland (14-19), who dropped all three in Toronto before doing the same in Boston.
The narrative of the Athletics’ series finale against the Red Sox was similar to much of the rest of the road trip: The bats were lacking, pitching was not up to snuff and bounces largely not in their favor.
The A’s did jump out to a 1-0 lead in the top of the second inning behind a Ramon Laureano RBI single, but with runners at the corner and only one out they were unable to push more across.
Boston fired right back and tied the score in the bottom half of the inning, spearheaded by a Michael Chavis single up the middle which caught an opportunistic hop off second base before skipping over second baseman Chad Pinder’s shoulder to put runners at first and third.
A bounce did go in the A’s favor later in the inning after a Mike Fiers fastball tipped off the glove of Josh Phegley to the backstop only to take an opportunistic carrom back to the A’s catcher, who tagged Chavis out at the plate.
Mike Fiers (2-3) made it through five innings, the only A’s starter this series to do so, but was saddled with the loss after allowing three runs on five hits, a walk and a hit batter.
Christian Vazquez's home run off Ryan Dull was far from dull. pic.twitter.com/DPffsV6fHU
— NESN (@NESN) May 1, 2019
The hosts scored six runs between the fourth and eighth innings, lowlighted by a sixth-inning two-run fly ball single from Andrew Benintendi that dropped between Laureano, Robbie Grossman and Marcus Semien in left field.
Christian Vazquez punctuated the run with a towering home run over the Green Monster on A’s reliever Ryan Dull’s first pitch of the eighth inning.
Oakland tacked on two runs in the ninth inning facing beleaguered Red Sox reliever Tyler Thornburg, but it was far too little and much too late.
The team will have a needed off day on Thursday before resuming its nine-game road swing in Pittsburgh with first pitch of the series scheduled for 4:05 p.m. on Friday.