The Oakland Athletics dropped their fourth straight game Friday night as their bullpen suffered a collapse in an 8-6 defeat to the Boston Red Sox. The A’s found themselves in a game filled with offensive fireworks on both sides. Given the A’s offensive struggles it was impressive to see them putting runs on the board. Unfortunately their pitching was unable to hold up as the Red Sox snapped a four-game losing streak.
The A’s jumped on top early putting up four runs in the top of the first inning in a rare offensive outburst. The keys to the inning were two-out RBI singles by Daric Barton and Mark Ellis. Unfortunately things got ugly from there as the Red Sox bounced back with their own offensive display. The Red Sox put five runs on the board over the first three innings as Josh Outman had his first significant struggles since returning to the big leagues.
Guillermo Moscoso relieved Outman in the bottom of the third inning as the A’s were skipping his turn in the rotation. Moscoso held the Red Sox scoreless into the sixth inning before being relieved by Craig Breslow. The A’s added two runs in the fourth and fifth innings to take the lead and potentially steal a road victory over Boston.
However, the A’s bullpen struggled to close things out as Joey Devine was credited with his first runs since returning to the big leagues. Carl Crawford singled off Brian Fuentes to knock in Adrian Gonzalez and Kevin Youkilis, who had both reached base off Devine.
The Red Sox added insurance in the eighth inning and Jonathan Papelbon closed things out in the ninth. The two teams meet on Saturday in the second game of the series. Trevor Cahill makes the start against Josh Beckett at 10:10am pacific time.