OAKLAND -- Brett Anderson was absolutely cruising through the first four innings.
The A's left-hander had held the Rangers scoreless, allowing just two hits, with four strikeouts. Oakland led 3-0 and appeared well on its way to a seventh straight home win.
But then came the fifth inning. Anderson surrendered singles to Logan Forsythe, Asdrubal Cabrera, and Delino DeShields to load the bases with nobody out. Tim Federowicz lined out to left to keep Texas off the scoreboard, temporarily.
The next batter, Shin-Soo Choo, laced a base hit to left to cut the A's lead to 3-1. Danny Santana followed with a two-run double, and just like that, the game was tied at three.
The Rangers weren't done. Elvin Andrus notched a sacrifice fly to make it 4-3 and knock Anderson out of the game. Hunter Pence then greeted new Oakland pitcher Yusmeiro Petit with an RBI single to center, a run that was also charged to Anderson.
Texas added five more runs in the sixth inning and breezed to an 11-3 win over the A's, snapping Oakland's season-long six-game home winning streak.
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"I wouldn't say I ran out of gas, but I couldn't finish them off," Anderson said of the fifth inning. "There were too many strikes in the middle of the plate and they did a good job of squaring some balls up, and even if they didn't, they found some holes. It was kind of a death by a thousand cuts."
The 31-year-old ended up allowing five earned runs on seven hits in just 4 2/3 innings, his shortest outing in more than a month.
"Some two-strike hits," A's manager Bob Melvin assessed. "He got some balls up. They took advantage of them. For four innings, he looked really good. The velo(city) looked pretty good. After going through what he went through, he skated through four pretty quickly and then they put some really good at-bats together, and it happened really quickly."
What Anderson "went through" was actually the birth of his first child on Monday, a son named Brody. Anderson's wife Morgan and their newborn are both healthy and resting comfortably in Phoenix, where Anderson makes his offseason home.
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"Physically, everything felt okay -- a little tired," Anderson smiled. "The sleep schedule's been a little shaky the last couple of days. ... I think, under different circumstances, I'd be a little more upset. But I can't be too upset because I just had a kid who's healthy and a wife who's healthy after the fact."
