A's lose third straight game, fall 7-5 to St. Louis

It's been a week since the Oakland A's won a game in front of a five-digit crowd. The Athletics lost their third consecutive game on the road, this time 7-5 in the series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Monday following two defeats in D.C. last weekend.

After sweeping their fierce rivals San Francisco Giants on back-to-back games in front of 37k and 27k folks inside the Oakland Coliseum, the A's went back to their losing ways when facing the pressure of playing behind more than around five-thousand lively souls.

This was a backloaded affair with only one run scored through the first four innings and all other 11 scored starting in the fifth frame, one that saw the A's take a 2-1 lead only to relinquish minutes later allowing two runs to the Cards.

This game was rather odd. So much so, that Esteury Ruiz (of all men) hit a homer for the first time since mid-May to put the Athletics ahead. It was Esty's second career homer.

Zack Gelof, who is now seemingly adept to keep racking up accolades, hit another one on Monday to add to his already-sublime rookie and first-MLB season.

This time, Gelof bagged a double after hitting two singles and two homers on Sunday.

That hit brought fellow rookie Lawrence Butler inand kickstarted a half-inning that would see your superheroes re-take a commanding 5-3 lead thanks to another run scored later by Nick Allen off a single by Seth Brown with two batters out.

No great news after that, folks. The Cardinals put up four runs of their own to finish the A's and blast them with a humongous "WASTED" proverbial sign on their collective forehead.

Angel Felipe got things started in the bottom of the seventh replacing Lucas Erceg and getting things going with a walk handed to Paul Goldschmidt. Two more walks loaded the bases for the Cards and that brought an end to Felipe's short sting on the mound, with Francisco Perez stepping coming off the bullpen.

And that was it. Perez gave up another walk forcing Goldschmidt in. Then Jordan Walker tripled off him bringing home all baserunners to put St. Louis up 7-5 in what would amount to be the final score.

Second game of the series on Tuesday, followed by a series finale on Wednesday. If the A's can win at least one of those then they'd have escaped their second swept in a row.

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