OAKLAND -- As the A’s seek to build confidence in the many young players on their roster in the final month of their rebuilding 2022 campaign, the most promising sign of a brighter future has come within the starting rotation.

The past month has seen the promotion of A’s top pitching prospect Ken Waldichuk, who is rated the No. 70 overall prospect in baseball per MLB Pipeline. Fellow rookie starters JP Sears and Adrián Martínez have also shown real capabilities of arms that could develop into future mainstays of Oakland’s rotation.

Of course, for any rookie pitcher, rough outings come with the territory. This current four-game series against the White Sox is providing a harsh reminder of that learning curve. Two days after Sears was tagged for six runs in just two innings, it was Martínez who struggled in Saturday’s 10-2 loss to Chicago, allowing seven runs on 14 hits in 3 2/3 innings.

Containing a potent White Sox offense has proven to be a difficult task for A’s pitchers in general, as Saturday marked the second time in three games in which Chicago has notched at least 20 hits. You’d have to go back to Sept. 15-17 of 1920 to find the last time the A’s gave up 20 hits twice over a three-game span.

“When you have young rookie starters, it’s not just difficult to pitch in the big leagues, but it’s difficult as a young player to continually have success,” said A’s manager Mark Kotsay. “You’re going to have outings like this. The only way to look at this in a positive manner is, let’s take the results and learn from them. Let’s see what we can be better at and go out the next start trying to build off that.”

For Martínez, who entered the day having allowed just one run in 11 1/3 innings over his previous two starts, Saturday’s outing was much more of a grind. Though he kept Chicago scoreless in the first inning, the White Sox sent nine men to the plate in a four-run second that featured a three-run homer by former A’s shortstop Elvis Andrus.

The end of that second inning also brought a scare to the A’s dugout when Martínez was struck by a comebacker that was scorched 106.7 mph off the bat of Gavin Sheets. Initially going down in pain after the ball hit his left shoulder, Martínez took a breather while getting checked on by A’s trainer Nick Paparesta and remained in the game.

“For him to get hit in that shoulder and stay in the game, that shows his character,” Kotsay said. “That shows his competitiveness. I think we all appreciate that. But overall, stuff-wise, just not his best day with commanding the fastball.”

While the toughness was there, Martínez continued to be overpowered by the White Sox, who collected 10 hits through the game’s first three innings and later knocked him out of the game in the fourth on Andrew Vaughn’s two-run double.

It had been over a decade since an A’s starter had been hit around to this extent, as Martínez’s 14 hits allowed were the most since Brandon McCarthy’s 14 hits allowed against the Angels on April 26, 2011.

“I was lacking with my pitches,” Martínez said in Spanish. “It wasn’t a very good start for me. My breaking balls weren’t functioning like I wanted them to and this was the result.”

Shortly after the game ended, Martínez conferred with A’s pitching coach Scott Emerson to dissect the outing. Among the things discovered was a mechanical issue in his delivery that attributed to the poor location.

“He was coming off the ball from a mechanics standpoint,” Kotsay said. “He’s trying to go glove side down and away to those righties and keep the ball on the outer third, but it leaked back over in the middle. The changeup had some swing-and-miss, but he couldn’t really land that consistently, either.”

Keeping Martínez on line with his mechanics is an ongoing process. Saturday saw the right-hander out of sync, finishing far off the mound and moving toward the first-base side upon finishing his delivery.

In preparation for his next start on Friday against the Astros, getting back to a more centered and down-the-line delivery is the goal for Martínez.

“Keep working on my mechanics and watching the batters who are a bit more aggressive here in the big leagues,” Martínez said of what he needs to improve. “This was a really good hitting team and unfortunately things didn’t come out the way I wanted. But I’m going to keep working on what I have to improve.”