'Really bad luck' foils Montas' strong start

OAKLAND -- It was tough to foresee the ending that befell Frankie Montas in his start Thursday night, based on how it started. He looked unhittable through six innings, showing off some of his filthiest stuff of the year.

Then, the right-hander encountered some plain bad luck.

Three runs allowed in a seventh inning that featured a catcher's interference call and a two-run single on a ball hit just 69.2 mph off the bat was enough to sink Montas and the A’s in a 6-1 loss to the Royals at the Coliseum.

“Really bad luck,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said of what transpired late in the game. “That might have been some of the best stuff he had all year. I thought he pitched really well. I thought he had good stuff and kept it up throughout the course of the game.

“But when you don’t have a whole lot going on offensively, unlucky stuff like that can beat you.”

Jed Lowrie’s solo homer against Royals left-hander Mike Minor to lead off the fourth -- his first homer off a lefty since 2018 -- was all the A’s offense could muster on a night in which it collected just three hits. Minor, a midseason acquisition by Oakland last season, exacted some revenge on his former club with seven strong innings of one-run ball.

Obviously, the A’s entered the game with an understanding of how Minor likes to mix up his four different pitches from the time he spent with the club in 2020. However, one pitch in particular -- the changeup -- made life particularly tough on A’s hitters this time around.

“He had a really good changeup and was able to throw it for strikes and out of the zone,” Lowrie said. “He had just enough on the heater to get guys to swing and foul it off or just miss. But the changeup stuck out to me tonight as being better than I’m used to seeing it from him.”

Still, Montas was getting the better of Minor for most of the duel between the two starters. The right-hander displayed supreme command of his heater as he painted both corners of the strike zone with a fastball that maxed out at 99 mph. He racked up eight strikeouts, drawing six of those on either the sinker or four-seam fastball as the putaway pitch. But after a dominant stretch in which he retired 13 in a row to get through the sixth on just 79 pitches, Montas recorded one out in the seventh before the Royals plated three runs and chased him from the game.

Most frustrating for Montas was the sequence that led to those three runs for Kansas City. In the span of three batters, Jorge Soler was awarded first base on a catcher’s interference call after his swing struck the glove of Sean Murphy and was confirmed upon replay review, Hunter Dozier hit a grounder that took an awkward hop over the glove of Matt Chapman at third for an RBI double and Kelvin Gutierrez tapped a single up the middle against a drawn-in A’s middle infield to plate two more runs.

Twice Montas produced the result he wanted with ground balls, but by the end of that stretch, the Royals had three runs and Montas could only shake his head in frustration as he handed the ball to Melvin.

“It was just bad luck,” Montas said. “I’m not happy with the result, but it’s baseball and stuff happens.

“You can’t think about that stuff while you’re pitching. You still have to make good pitches. Catcher's interference, Murphy doesn’t want to do that. It’s just part of the game.”

The tough-luck loss dropped Montas to 6-6. However, he continues to encourage, with sharp command and the ability to maintain high velocity late in games. Allowing three runs (two earned) on five hits against Kansas City, Montas got through a start without issuing a walk for the second time this season. His fastball was also still hitting as high as 95.5 mph in his final at-bat of the night against Gutierrez.

“I feel like this was the best I’ve looked so far, to be honest,” Montas said. “I felt like I had everything working. I’m just happy that my starts keep getting better and better.”

Though the game was still in reach after Burch Smith finished off the seventh to keep the deficit at two runs, Jesús Luzardo struggled to keep it close with a rare tough outing out of the bullpen. The left-hander was tagged for three runs in the eighth on a pair of homers allowed to Andrew Benintendi and Soler.