OAKLAND, Calif. _ The A's haven't back down from their most potentially grueling homestand of the season, posting a 5-2 win behind Jesse Hahn and Ryon Healy Saturday to take the first three games of their four-game set with the Yankees.
Hahn pitched five innings and stumbled only in the second inning in improving to 3-1 at home this season. It was the A's third consecutive win over New York, which came into the series with the second-best record in the American League.
After the Yankees leave town, Houston, which owns the best record in baseball, is on tap for four more games.
Healy, who finished the day with three hits, hammered his 16th and 17th homers in his first two at-bats. In the second inning, he crushed Masahiro Tanaka with a bolt to left field that tied the game at 2-all. Two innings later, Tanaka still in the game, Healy again went deep to left to give the A's a 3-2 lead they would not relinquish.
It was the third multiple-homer game of Healy's career, and all three of them have come this month. He has eight homers in June so far, and at least temporarily that gave him a share of the Major League lead for the month with Kansas City's Lorenzo Cain and Los Angeles Dodgers' rookie Cody Bellinger.
The A's went on to add two more runs in the fourth inning on RBI hits from Adam Rosales and Jed Lowrie as Oakland improved to 30-38 for the season and 21-13 at home.
Hahn left after throwing 105 pitches in his five innings, half of those in the first two innings. He allowed just one hit and one walk in his final three innings. For the game, he was touched for four hits and walked three while striking out six.
The bullpen help he got was superb, perfect innings from Liam Hendriks in the sixth and Josh Smith in the seventh. Ryan Madson allowed a two-out single in the eighth before Sean Doolittle collected his second save in three attempts in the ninth.
The Yankees swept Oakland in New York earlier this month, but for whatever reason, the A's are a different team playing in the Coliseum. While the A's are the only American League team not to have reached double digits in wins away from home (9-25, in the Coliseum they have won 19 of their last 27 home games.
Oakland will be looking for a series sweep in the finale Sunday with Jharel Cotton pitching. The A's have played 26 consecutive series without a sweep of any size, the last Oakland sweep coming in a four-game set in Kansas City last Sept. 12-15.
The A's got a big offensive contribution from right fielder Matt Joyce, who homered to lead off the game and finished with three hits and two walks in five plate trips, scoring two runs. He is on an 11-game roll in which he is 13 for 33, .394.
