A's lose 3-2 to Phillies: Good to know Kyle Schwarber is finally gone

Three days, three games, and three losses in which Kyle Schwarber crushed the Oakland Athletics in their own concrete bowl. That's the best way to summarize last weekend, one that the A's (19-55) wrapped up with another 3-2 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies (38-34).

The Phillies arrived in the Bay barely above .500 but after snatching three wins from the A's they're now looking pretty though still sitting third in the National League East division. Not that the A's care that much about that, though, considering their own woes expanded to a five-game losing skid on Sunday.

Schwarber was struggling not long ago, but he's found the fountain of youth of late, and mainly inside the Coliseum. The left fielder hit another home run on Father's Day to put the Phillies 1-0, and he finished the three-game series with a spectacular 5-of-13 hitting and two homers through the weekend.

Oakland's starting pitcher, rookie Hogan Harris (2-1), lost his first game of the season but he wasn't even remotely bad allowing a couple of runs and four hits through six full innings pitched while striking out a season-high seven batters and walking just one man.

Sadly, the A's bats went hella cold on Sunday and didn't help Harris' cause at all.

It took the Athletics seven innings to finally break through and score their first run of the game, courtesy of an Aledmys Diaz 356-foot bomb to left field that went into the lower-level stands.

The Phillies were up two by then, but Diaz's homer cut that distance in half with the mighty Schwarber-Pache duo having added the other run on Philadelphia's tally back in the fifth frame.

The A's keep losing games, yes, but at least they make things insteresting these days as blowouts seem to be a thing of the past. Whether that's good or not for your anxiety and your health and heart... you be the judge.

Oakland kept things relatively tight getting into the final inning having conceded another run to former-A's Cristian Pache on a single by Trea Turner in the eighth with the run blamed on reliever Shintaro Fujinami. That started to put an end to Fuji's day, who lasted 1.1 innings and was relieved of duties after he followed up Turner's allowed-hit with a walk conceded to Alec Bohm.

Lucas Erceg (0.2) and Alec Pruitt (1.0) would pitch the remaining 1.2 innings of the game with the latter allowing one hit but none of the two conceding any run through that short relief spell.

Esteury Ruiz got a day off hitting the pine instead of starting at center field, but he entered the game in the bottom of the eighth and hit a double followed by a Carlos Perez single (also pinch-hitting) which brought Esty home and the A's within one run of the Phillies.

That would be it for both teams, as none of them did much more with Yunior Marte playing the closer role for the visiting PhiPhi club and getting the first save of his career having already played for three different MLB organizations including the Kansas City Royals, who signed him all the way back in 2012, more than a decade ago.

Your superheroes get a day off after a long seven-game homestand last week in which they went 2-5, with their next two series on the road at Cleveland and Toronto from Tuesday through Sunday.

The Guardians (58-64) will host the A's at Progressive Field for the series opener on Tuesday, June 20, with Luis Medina (1-6, 7.55 ERA) expected to get the starting call on Oakland's front going against Aaron Civale (2-2, 2.67) on the hosts' side. The first time these two franchises met this season, back at the start of April, Cleveland won the series 2-1 with those two victories coming in the 10th inning.