A's win streak comes to an end vs. Rays

OAKLAND -- After what transpired the night before, the A’s entered the ninth inning of Friday’s game with visions of more late-inning magic, but there was no hero this time around.

Back-to-back doubles by Thursday’s man of the hour, Matt Chapman, and Matt Olson in the eighth cut Tampa Bay’s lead to a run. Marcus Semien came up in the ninth representing the tying run, but grounded out for a 5-3 defeat to the Rays. Semien’s 0-for-5 day snapped a career-best 17-game hitting streak and the loss ended Oakland’s four-game winning streak.

After receiving the news of top pitcher Frankie Montas’ 80-game suspension for PEDs earlier in the day, the A’s couldn't be blamed if their heads weren’t fully focused on the game just hours later. But A’s manager Bob Melvin did not sense that any of his players were weighed down by the surprising report.

“Once you take the field, you go out there to play and to win,” Melvin said. “We talked about that a little bit in the clubhouse. I don’t think it had an effect on anything.”

Getting on base was not the issue for the A’s offense, which recorded 10 hits and drew two walks. It was more a problem of cashing them in for runs as they left seven runners on base and went 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position.

With the Rays using seven different pitchers through nine innings, each time the A’s hitters began to feel a rhythm it was often thrown off by a pitching change.

"The Rays are tough. They never give you the same look,” Semien said. “You face a bunch of different guys. We just have to do a better job of doing our homework on each guy.”

Still, to get the game-tying run to the plate in the ninth despite not firing on all cylinders showed the resilience the A’s have displayed for most of the season, a quality that should help them in the final two games against fellow playoff contenders in the Rays and over the course of the season.

“We never think we’re out of it. Sometimes you don’t get it done,” said Semien, whose 17-game hitting streak was the A's longest since Eric Byrnes’ 22-game streak in 2003. “We’re not down in the dumps. Just move on to the next day.”

Anderson out of sync
Tanner Anderson’s night was short, but he kept the A’s in the game over four innings of work, allowing three runs on seven hits and a walk with four strikeouts. The right-hander took a liner off his left hand in the fourth inning, and though he finished the frame, it was the last one he threw after just 76 pitches.

Melvin’s decision to pull Anderson had nothing to do with the comebacker. With a string of left-handed hitters coming up in the fifth, he felt it was a better idea to go to left-hander Wei-Chung Wang.

After making his first Major League start against the Rays in Tampa Bay on June 10 and allowing just two runs over 5 2/3 innings, Anderson said facing the same team for a second time brought some difficulty with adjustments that were made.

“I don’t think I was as crisp as I was against them the first time around and they made some good adjustments,” Anderson said. “It’s just finding those times they make adjustments and adjust myself.”

Wang looked sharp in relief of Anderson as he allowed one hit over three innings, but his one mistake was a costly one that resulted in a solo home run surrendered to Willy Adames in the seventh.

Soria makes history
With his scoreless eighth inning, A’s reliever Joakim Soria made his 673rd career appearance, tying Dennys Reyes for most by a Mexican-born pitcher.

What could have been=
Trailing by two runs with one out in the sixth, A’s third base coach Matt Williams made an aggressive call to send Khris Davis from first to home on a double to left by Jurickson Profar. Requiring a perfect relay, the Rays got just that as Adames delivered a seed to Travis d’Arnaud to nail Davis at the plate. The A’s challenged the play, believing there was catcher’s intereference, but the call was upheld.

“He’s being aggressive and when it happened, I was all for it,” Melvin said. “We’re trying to get some opportunities to score a run when we weren’t really getting too many at that point in the game.”