The consistently solid offensive attack the A’s generated on
their nine-game road trip somehow didn’t make it back home with
them. Oakland was shut out for the first time in the 2011 season
Thursday night when unheralded Detroit left-hander Phil Coke shut
them down for seven innings and the Tigers went on to a 3-0 victory
before 11,129 at the Coliseum.
OAKLAND
The consistently solid offensive attack the A’s generated on their nine-game road trip somehow didn’t make it back home with them.
Oakland was shut out for the first time in the 2011 season Thursday night when unheralded Detroit left-hander Phil Coke shut them down for seven innings and the Tigers went on to a 3-0 victory before 11,129 at the Coliseum.
Follow Free Lance Sports on Twitter.
The A’s managed just three hits off Coke, who was matched against Gio Gonzalez, the A’s best starter so far this season. Gonzalez went six shutout innings himself, but control issues and a high pitch count kept him from going any further, and the game unraveled once he departed.
Gonzalez allowed just two scratch singles — to Casper Wells in the first and Ramon Santiago in the fifth — but exited after six innings as a result of six walks. Relievers Tyson Ross and Jerry Blevins also had trouble finding the strike zone as the A’s wound up walking 11 batters (one intentional).
Gonzalez struggled with his control throughout the night, walking at least one batter in every inning but the third. He threw 103 pitches, and barely more than half found the zone (53 strikes, 50 balls). He also uncorked two wild pitches.
When he did put it over the plate, however, the Tigers could do nothing with his offerings. They hit just three balls out of the infield and struck out six times against the A’s left-hander, who has allowed just one earned run over 19 innings in his first three starts (0.47 ERA)
But Coke was equal to and perhaps a bit better than Gonzalez. The A’s threatened in the first inning when Daric Barton drew a one-out walk, Conor Jackson singled and Barton took third on Josh Willingham’s foul out. But Hideki Matsui grounded out to second to end that threat, and the A’s didn’t get another runner into scoring position the entire game.
Coke (1-2) walked two and struck out two and was supported with a scoreless inning apiece by Joaquin Benoit and Jose Valverde to close out the game. The only Oakland base runners after the first were Kurt Suzuki in the second on a single, Barton in the third on a walk and Jackson in the sixth on his second single of the night.
Offensively, Detroit broke through against Ross as soon as Gonzalez left the game. No. 9 hitter Ramon Santiago led off the seventh inning with a single, Austin Jackson sacrificed him to second, and after Ross retired Wells on a fly out, Ryan Raburn drilled a double off the wall in right-center to finally break the scoreless deadlock.
Ross (1-1) walked Jhonny Peralta and Brennan Boesch back-to-back to lead off the eighth to end his night, and Blevins came on to load the bases by walking Brandon Inge. Santiago hit a sacrifice fly to left, and a second run scored on the play when Willingham threw to an unmanned third base and the ball rolled into the dugout for a two-base error.
The A’s, after going 5-4 on their nine-game trip, are now 1-3 at home. They missed a chance to go over .500 for the first time this season.
— Story by Carl Steward, The Oakland Tribune
