'Locked-in' Toro vital as A's seek to improve approach

KANSAS CITY -- The recipe for scoring runs has been pretty simple for the A’s this season. There are only two ingredients: Abraham Toro and hitting homers.

Home runs are the most important part of that equation when it comes to putting runs on the board in a hurry, but during the Athletics’ seven-game losing streak, they’ve been hard to come by.

Seth Brown did his part with a two-run homer during the A’s 5-3 loss against the Royals on Saturday night at Kauffman Stadium, but an all-too-familiar question arose during Oakland’s loss.

How can the A’s score without the long ball?

Well, for a majority of the time, they don’t. The Athletics lead baseball with 51.4% of runs coming from homers, miles ahead of the league average of 37.9% entering Saturday.

The A’s constructed the lineup for runners to get on base for sluggers Brent Rooker and Shea Langeliers, who have 10 homers each, and for the most part, it’s worked. Oakland is fifth in baseball (third in the American League) in home runs. But when they can’t hit the ball out of the park? The A’s are 2-13.

“We’ve had success with the long ball, we’ve talked about that before we left for this road trip, that we’re an offense that can’t necessarily put an inning together with multiple hits,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said. “But we can get guys on base and hit a long ball. So tonight, unfortunately we didn’t get that second [homer]. We built some innings, but we aren’t able to capitalize and continue building them and adding on for some momentum.

“They’ve just got to hit. It’s that simple.”

The A’s had 11 hits, which were their most since the second game of a doubleheader on May 8 against the Rangers. But for the seventh time in nine games this road trip, the A’s failed to score more than three runs. The A’s have scored four of their five runs against the Royals this series on just two swings.

“We just didn’t get the big hit,” Kotsay said. “But you know, ultimately, I think the offense -- there are better signs. If we can get the offense going, there is a lot of hope in terms of getting out of this thing.

“It was a better day. Eleven hits total. That’s a good sign. We hadn’t had a game like that in a little while. It’s unfortunate to be on the losing end, but for an offense with Toro getting going, and seeing some better at-bats, that’s encouraging.”

The only run the A’s have scored without going deep against the Royals was because of Toro, who has been on a tear in May. The A’s will continue hitting homers, and they want to continue hitting homers, but they also understand the importance of manufacturing runs in other ways.

Toro, who is slashing .356/.405/.507 with a .912 OPS in May, started a two-out rally by winning a nine-pitch at-bat against John Schreiber with a single to right field in the seventh. JJ Bleday reached on a hard-hit infield single and Brent Rooker capped it off with an RBI single to left to pull the A's to within one.

It was an example of what the A’s can do, and want to do more of, with Toro at the top of the lineup.

“[Toro] is just locked-in right now,” said Ross Stripling, who tossed five-plus innings of four-run ball. “It seems like we’ve had a couple guys be locked in at different times … but Toro is on base all the time. We’re going to keep throwing him out there early in the lineup and rely on him to produce for us because he’s swinging the bat really well.”

The home run approach is also something the team isn’t actively trying to do. The strength of each player has led to this homer-happy outcome in the first month and a half, but the A’s want to score runs in any way possible.

“We have been hitting a lot of homers, but for the most part that’s not our approach,” Toro said. “That’s something that is just happening. We are trying to control the strike zone, and that’s just the result -- homers. But we aren’t really trying to hit any.”

With Toro leading the team with 24 runs scored, he’s proven he will get on base. The next step for this A’s team is to keep the line moving.

“That is my role here, to get on base so guys like Rooker and Langeliers, the guys that slug, [can] drive guys in,” Toro said. “[That’s when] we usually win games. And that’s [the goal] for our team.”