Kevin Gausman certainly pitched well enough to win on Monday night on the road against the Oakland Athletics, but his misfortune away from Camden Yards continued.
The Orioles right-hander has not won a start on the road in nearly two years, dating back to Aug. 17, 2014. That draught continued with the Orioles’ 3-2 loss to the Athletics on Monday night on front of a sparse announced crowd of 10,407 at Oakland Alameda Coliseum
Despite holding the A’s to two runs on six hits over six innings, Gausman is now 0-8 in 12 road starts this season.
One day after scoring 10 runs for rookie Dylan Bundy in Chicago, the Orioles, with a change of scenery, couldn’t duplicate that kind of offense in the series opener. A’s right-hander Kendall Graveman flummoxed the Orioles.
“He pounds the strike zone,” center fielder Adam Jones said of Graveman. “That’s what I’ve seen out of him the first start against him, looking over tape. He just pounds the strike zone. He uses his sinker, he uses his infield, and tonight we hit some balls on the button, but right at them. We had some opportunities, just didn’t come through.”
The Orioles handed Graveman his shortest outing of the season back on May 8, chasing him from the game after 2 2/3 innings when he allowed six runs – including four homers. But on Monday night, the Orioles scraped just one run off Graveman over seven innings.
Of Graveman's 17 in-play outs -- he also struck out four -- 14 were on groundballss.
“He wasn’t sinking the ball [then] like he was tonight,” manager Buck Showalter said of the first meeting. “… If you see a lot of groundballs and everything, you’ll know he’s on top of his game, and he was.”
Gausman – who has been the victim of poor run support throughout the season – has received an average of just 2.4 runs per game.
“It’s just part of the game,” Jones said. “It’s crazy. Yesterday we scored 10 runs. Today we scored two. Sometimes you think we wished we could have used some runs from yesterday, but it’s just how the game works. He’s been throwing the heck out of the ball. Tonight, threw the heck out of the ball. He’s controlling what he can control, and that’s on the mound. As an offense, we’ve got to clean it up when he’s out there starting because he’s been giving us some really, really good quality starts.”
The Orioles' best scoring opportunity against Graveman came in the third inning, when they loaded the bases with three consecutive one-out singles, but only managed one run in the inning.
After loading the bases that inning, Graveman (8-7) retired 14 of the final 16 hitters he faced.
Gausman (3-9) took a tied game into the sixth inning before a leadoff walk to Stephen Vogt led to the go-ahead run. Gausman allowed a pair of two-out singles, the latter an RBI single by Billy Butler that scored Vogt.
Vogt tied the game a 1-1 in the fourth inning, opening the frame with a solo homer to right field on a 1-2 fastball from Gausman that caught too much of the plate.
“I was trying to throw a fastball up,” Gausman said. “I felt like I had him set up for it and didn’t get it up there. Kind of left it middle-middle, really, and I think he was looking for a fastball and obviously didn’t miss it.”
The A’s scored the eventual winning run off right-hander Logan Ondrusek, a reverse-split reliever who entered the game to face a lefty-heavy top of the Oakland order in the seventh.
But a leadoff walk to No. 9 hitter Ryon Healy hurt Ondrusek, who allowed a two-out RBI single to Vogt to give Oakland a 3-1 lead.
Machado power surge continues: Third baseman Manny Machado followed his three-homer game Sunday in Chicago with another home run in the eighth inning Monday.
Machado – who received boos from the crowd during every at-bat from fans still angry about the dustup he had with former A’s third baseman Josh Donaldson two years ago – punished a 3-2 pitch from Oakland reliever Ryan Dull and sent it an estimated 446 feet deep into the elevated left-center field of the Coliseum.
Machado, who now has 26 homers this season, homered in each of the first three innings on Sunday.
“Since he’s come up to the big leagues, he’s been quite an impressive player,” Jones said of Machado. “He’s only going to get better and better. That’s the scary part.”
Orioles score unlikely run on infield popup: It’s rare that a run scores on a popup to the first baseman, but there’s so much foul ground at Oakland Coliseum that that’s how the Orioles plated their first run in the third inning.
The Orioles loaded the bases against Graveman with three straight one-out singles by J.J. Hardy, Adam Jones and Hyun Soo Kim. Manny Machado then lifted a foul ball that Oakland first baseman Yonder Alonso tracked down in foul ground near the Orioles bullpen.
Hardy tagged from third base, beating Alonso’s throw home to give the Orioles a 1-0 lead.
OAKLAND, CALIF. — eencina@baltsun.com
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