OAKLAND, Calif. _ After getting beaten up by the Houston Astros for most of the season, the Oakland A's seem to have flipped the script.
The A's entered this weekend's series against Houston with an abysmal 3-12 record. While it took the A's five months to record three wins against the American League leaders, they've managed to match that win total in just days.
The A's picked up their third-straight win over the Astros on Saturday by sweeping a traditional doubleheader with two blowouts in front of 19,244 fans at the Coliseum.
The two Daniels _ Gossett and Mengden _ both provided something that had been missing from A's starters over the past two weeks _ length.
Gossett allowed just one run in six innings in an 11-1 win the first game of the afternoon, and Mengden also turned in six innings, surrendering only two earned runs in an 11-4 evening victory.
It wasn't in thrilling walk-off fashion like Friday night, but the A's mounted another late comeback in the second game of the day.
Trailing 4-3 with one out in the bottom of the seventh, rookie Franklin Barreto served as the spark plug by speeding all the way to third on a liner down the right field line. Boog Powell brought home Barreto on a sacrifice fly, and Chad Pinder put the A's on top with a solo shot over the wall in left-center.
After adding three more runs in the eighth, Pinder broke the game open with his second homer of the night, a three-run bomb to right turn what had been a close game into a laugher all in the span of an inning.
While Mengden did not get the win in what was just the third start in the big leagues, it was the first time the rookie had gone past the fifth inning in his career. Having battled with injuries earlier this season, Mengden displayed some of the stuff that makes the A's believe he could have a future in their starting rotation.
Khris Davis accomplished something that hasn't been done by an A's player in over a decade in the first game.
After knocking in two runs with a single in the sixth inning, Davis surpassed the 100-RBI mark for the second consecutive season.
The last A's players to register back-to-back 100-RBI seasons were Miguel Tejada from 2000-03 and Eric Chavez from 2001-03.
The six runs were more than enough support for rookie Daniel Gossett, who turned in one of the best outings of his career. Against a first place Astros squad that is full of dangerous hitters up and down the lineup, Gossett kept them off balance as he struck out a career-high seven batters through six innings of work.
By no means was it a dominant outing. Gossett allowed at least a baserunner in all but one of the six innings, but with the exception on an RBI double allowed to Alex Bregman in the fifth, Gossett managed to preserve an early 3-0 lead that was provided by his offense.
It was a nice bounce back for Gossett, who lasted only 3 2/3 innings in his previous start. Gossett was pulled after walking Derek Fisher to begin the seventh and received a nice ovation from the fans at the Coliseum as he handed the ball to A's manager Bob Melvin and walked off the mound.
"You have some tough outings when you get to the big leagues for the first time and you're pitching to stay all the time and impress for next year," Melvin said. "He's been able to bounce back a couple of times this year from bad outings and you look for that out of a young guy."
Gossett was not as satisfied with the rebound performance. Following up a bad start with a good one is a position he's often found himself in this season. The next step for the 24-year-old right-hander is to string together multiple solid starts before he could really feel good about his season.
"One game it's kind of good and then I go back to having a sub-par performance. I have to be consistent," Gossett said. "Location was a little bit better and I was able to work well with (Josh) Phegley. I beat him up the whole game with some pitches and he stuck with me and stayed in the fight to put together a pretty decent performance."
The A's tagged Charlie Morton for three runs in the second. Matt Olson led off with a double that bounced off the top of the wall in right-center and was later brought home on a triple by Matt Chapman. Friday night's hero Boog Powell followed up the triple with a single to drive in Chapman and scored himself from third on bad throw home from Morton on a grounder by Marcus Semien.
The game really got out of hand after some poor command from the Astros bullpen. Five of the A's 11 runs scored on walks, including four straight walks with the bases loaded in the eighth to put the score completely out of hand. The five bases-loaded walks on the afternoon tied the A's record for most in a single game, set on Sept. 5, 2008 at Baltimore.
