After grueling road trip, A's bringing fight home to Oakland

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A 10-game road trip is never easy, but the Athletics emerged from their grueling start to the season with a .500 record and plenty to be excited about. 

Oakland fell to the Blue Jays 4-3 at Rogers Centre on Sunday, marking the end of a three-city journey that saw them finish 5-5 against three championship-caliber teams: the Philadelphia Phillies, Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto. The highlight of the trip was the A’s series win in Tampa Bay, where they took three out of four games from the defending AL East champions.

Right-hander Adam Oller (0-1) made his second major-league start on Sunday and was credited with the loss after giving up three runs (two earned) in 3 1/3 innings. Oller surrendered five hits, struck out three and walked three. 

Despite Sunday’s loss, the A’s made it close -- something that has been the theme of the road trip, Oller said. 

“I thought we played really well on the road, honestly,” Oller told reporters after the game. “Every game, we were pretty much in. All the games we lost, we were still in it. Even tonight we were still in it all the way up until the end.

“We’ve put up runs, played defense, pitched well.”

Oakland entered Sunday’s game with an MLB-best 50 runs scored (h/t Vince Cotroneo) and three of the team’s five losses have been by two runs or less. 

The A’s added to their league-leading tally with a Stephen Vogt home run in the top of the fifth inning and sacrifice flies by Sean Murphy and Seth Brown in the fifth and eighth innings, respectively. Manager Mark Kotsay was pleased by his team’s effort, especially after 10 long days on the road.

“Ten days on the road, this being the last one, they didn’t give up,” Kotsay told reporters following the loss. “They were down early. We fought back. We grinded out at-bats. The energy was still really good for the end of a 10-day road trip … You'd look for that day off tomorrow, but I think the energy will be there tomorrow with opening day and going home.”

The A’s return to Oakland Coliseum on Monday for their home opener against the Baltimore Orioles, and fans have a lot to look forward to following the team’s road trip that was filled with special moments. 

Vogt, an Oakland fan favorite, got his first start on Sunday so that Murphy could rest his legs and made the most of it with his first hit and home run of the season, all in one swing. Rookie Cristian Pache’s first homer in an A’s uniform won the game on Saturday, and Oller saw a lifelong dream realized when he made his MLB debut last week.

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And Frankie Montas (1-1), who has been great on the mound for Oakland so far this year, is expected to welcome fans back to The Coliseum with his third start of the season on Monday.

Oller, Kotsay and the rest of the team are happy to return to Oakland for a seven-game homestand, where they’ll look to replicate some of the success they saw on the road.

“[We have] been on the road for a while, so it’s kind of crazy that Philly wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like it was,” Oller said. “... It will be nice to go back home and get after it.”

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