Brown's 2nd MLB HR a game-winner for A's

Seth Brown hit his first Major League home run on Saturday. Surely it was special for the 28-year-old, who toiled in the Minors for most of his first five professional seasons.

But Brown’s second career homer was awfully special too, as it made the difference in the A’s 7-5 comeback win over the D-backs at Chase Field on Tuesday.

• Box score

“That’s his game: power,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “He’s starting to feel comfortable here, and he should. He’s doing a nice job for us.”

The A’s had been mostly listless on offense through six innings, drumming up only one run on three hits and two walks. At that point, Brown was 0-for-3 with a strikeout and hadn’t hit the ball out of the infield.

Jed Lowrie breathed life into Oakland in the seventh, lifting a low fastball over the left-center-field wall for a game-tying three-run blast. That marked his fourth consecutive multihit game, and his sixth in 12 games this season.

Brown took care of the rest in the eighth, drilling a middle-middle slider to the seats in right. The ball left Brown’s bat with a 103.4 mph exit velocity, one of six 100-plus mph balls hit by the A’s in the game.

• Brown among Tuesday's top rookie performers

After the A’s selected him in the 19th round out of Lewis-Clark State College in the 2015 MLB Draft, Brown rose steadily through the farm system: a year combined in Rookie-level and Class A Short-Season, two years in Class A Advanced, a year in Double-A and then his first taste of the big leagues in ‘19. He still spent most of that season in Triple-A, though, and was sent to the alternate training site for the majority of ‘20.

This season, with injuries to first basemen Mitch Moreland and Matt Olson, Brown found a spot with the A’s. He’s also finding his groove, with a homer in two of his past three games to lift his OPS to .750.

As Melvin attested, Brown’s M.O. is power. He hit 30 homers for Class A Advanced Stockton in 2017 and 37 for Triple-A Las Vegas in ‘19. He just didn’t have the opportunity to deliver that pop to Oakland until now.

But now that Brown is there -- and playing with some regularity -- Melvin is confident that he can continue to produce.

“I’ve said often, when you get big hits, you just feel that much more a part of the team,” Melvin said. “And it’s the first time in a while -- I think since a couple of years ago -- that he’s gotten an extended look. Just kind of his talent level taking over and excelling in the areas that he can.”

Oakland’s offense is starting to excel as a whole as well, compiling 32 hits in its past three games after batting .175 over the first nine games of the season.

The same such turnaround has not yet surfaced for A’s starter Jesús Luzardo, who worked the shortest start of his young career on Tuesday: 2 2/3 innings, with five runs allowed on six hits and two walks. The 23-year-old, embarking on his second season in the rotation, now owns an 8.31 ERA through three outings.

“Just a little bit off today,” Melvin said of Luzardo, who only retired half of the 16 batters he faced. “But you know what, other guys can contribute, too. He contributed [in his last start], and this game we picked him up.”

Indeed, the bullpen picked up Luzardo, led by Deolis Guerra’s three scoreless frames. After allowing a leadoff single to Tim Locastro in the fourth, Guerra retired nine in a row, with five strikeouts and a 55 percent whiff rate, per Statcast.

Oakland trailed by five when Guerra departed, but that’s when Brown, Lowrie and the offense started to roll. The A’s have won four straight games -- including consecutive road series -- and will return to the Bay Area on Thursday as one of the hottest teams in baseball.