The good news is that the Oakland Athletics are still performing very well as of late. On Tuesday night, the A's opened up a short two-game series against the Texas Rangers at O.co Coliseum and were handed just their second loss in their last 11 games by a final score of 6-1.
Elvis Andrus hit a two-out RBI single in the top of the third inning to open the scoring and stake the Rangers to a 1-0 lead. Adrian Beltre led off the fourth with his 17th home run of the year and RBI singles from Mike Napoli and Craig Gentry made it 4-0 Texas.
Josh Reddick hit his 21st home run to lead off the bottom of the seventh inning and get Oakland on the board, but he would be the last A's batter to cross home plate.
Oakland starter Bartolo Colon finally came out of the game after seven innings and reliever Jordan Norberto gave up a leadoff home run to Josh Hamilton in the eighth inning. The solo shot was Hamilton's 28th of the year. Hamilton would add a sacrifice fly in the ninth inning to give Texas their final insurance run.
Texas starter Roy Oswalt improved to 3-1 by allowing just one run on three hits and no walks in 6.1 innings, also striking out six Oakland batters. Colon gave up four runs on eight hits and a walk in seven innings of work, striking out five and taking the loss to fall to 6-8.
The A's will attempt to secure the series split with a win on Wednesday's getaway day.
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