OAKLAND, Calif. _ The Oakland Athletics were efficient at the plate and Chris Bassitt and four relievers made it stand up Monday night in a 6-1 win over Texas Rangers before a crowd of 8,073 at the Coliseum.
Stephen Piscotty drove in two runs with a solo home run and a sacrifice fly, Matt Chapman had a sacrifice fly and Chad Pinder a run-scoring double as the A's had a 4-1 lead going into the bottom of the eighth. Piscotty, who hit the ball on the nose all night, singled sharply to drive in one insurance run with a second scoring on an outfield error by Delino DeShields.
Bassitt (1-0), starting in place of the injured Marco Estrada, made it through five innings before turning the ball over to Ryan Dull, J.B. Wendelken, Joakim Soria and finally Fernando Rodney to finish it off in front of what was left of the smallest crowd of the season.
The win snapped a three-game losing streak for the Athletics (12-13) after being swept by the Toronto Blue Jays. Texas fell to 12-9.
Mike Minor (2-2) was the losing pitcher for the Rangers, giving up four runs in six innings.
Bassitt pitched five scoreless innings, but it was never easy. Shin-Soo Choo led off the game with a double, and only in the third inning did he retire the Rangers in order.
However, Bassitt gave up just one more hit to go along with four walks and a hit batter, helping negate all the traffic on the bases with seven strikeouts. By the time Bassitt was lifted in favor of newly promoted Ryan Dull, he'd thrown 92 pitches _ 54 of them for strikes.
Trailing 4-0, the Rangers scored in the seventh inning when Patrick Wisdom doubled into the left field corner against Wendelken, scoring Jeff Mathis.
Mathis opened the inning by dropping a bunt single in front of Chapman, who was playing deep at third, and after Dull retired DeShields on a fly out, Choo singled to left center. Wendelken came in and gave up a drive to deep center by Danny Santana that was run down by Ramon Laureano. Wisdom, hitting for Elvis Andrus (hand contusion) doubled in the run to put runners at second and third, but Wendelken got Nomar Mazara on a comebacker to end the inning.
