CHICAGO -- It’s tough to evaluate the type of pitcher the A’s received in Homer Bailey after last month’s trade with the Royals.

On one hand, Bailey has been stellar in all three of his starts at the Oakland Coliseum with a 3.38 ERA in those games, which all resulted in A’s wins. But pitching on the road has been a challenge for the right-hander, a trend that continued in Wednesday afternoon’s 10-1 loss to the Cubs at Wrigley Field.

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After breezing through three scoreless innings, Bailey was given a one-run lead in the top of the fourth and struggled to find his command in the bottom of that frame. He hit a batter and walked another, loading the bases for Ian Happ, who proceeded to club a first-pitch fastball into the left-field bleachers for a grand slam. Bailey managed to get out of the fourth, but after running into more trouble in the fifth, he was pulled with two outs. Bailey has now surrendered four home runs in two road starts with the A’s, compared to zero allowed in three home outings.

The backbreaking five-run fourth inning really came down to two bad pitches in Bailey’s mind, which resulted in an RBI single by Javier Baez and Happ’s grand slam. Both were first-pitch fastballs.

“The pitch to Baez caught a little too much of the plate and the one to Happ went higher than I wanted to,” Bailey said. “Outside of those two pitches, you could look back and say you want to change the pitch, but those two beat us. The [fifth] inning where [Anthony] Rizzo reached, the ball never made it to the dirt. Those are tough to swallow, especially when the majority of the pitches you make are solid.”

It wasn’t as bad as his first road start with Oakland, when Bailey allowed nine runs over two innings on July 22 in Houston, but it was another outing that saw him dig his club an early hole. Bailey was ultimately charged with seven runs on six hits and one walk over 4 2/3 innings.

While Bailey was doomed pretty much from the beginning in the Houston start, A’s manager Bob Melvin said Bailey looked more like the pitcher he’d seen during his Oakland outings early on in Chicago.

“Those first three innings, he was sailing along like we’ve seen him when he’s been good,” Melvin said. “It comes down to two at-bats.”

Known to be a strikeout pitcher when he’s at his best over the years, Bailey failed to record a punchout for just the second time in 23 starts this season. That may have been a product of Bailey being without his putaway pitch, the splitter, which Melvin said “may have cost him” as the game went along.

Bailey threw the splitter for 17 of his 73 pitches on the day, but only generated one swing and miss and one called strike.

“I think there were some good ones that were thrown and they laid off them,” Bailey said. “Just under the zone. I wasn’t exactly given the low strike, and that makes it hard for a guy like me who depends on the split under and slider to righties.”

It was a rare poor outing by a member of the A’s starting rotation, which entered the day posting a combined 2.65 ERA (16 earned runs in 54 1/3 innings) over its previous nine games.

But for as poor as the A’s pitching was on Wednesday, it might not have mattered with the way Cubs starter Jose Quintana flummoxed the offense. Oakland collected just three hits, two of those against Quintana, who tossed seven innings of one-run ball.

“We didn’t have a very good time with him,” Melvin said. “Marcus [Semien] had a couple good swings and that was about it. You don’t win very many games when you get three hits. He threw the fastball to both sides and just enough changeups and curveballs to keep us off balance.”

With the Rays losing to the Blue Jays earlier in the day, the A's remain a half-game back of the second American League Wild Card spot.

A bad first

Lou Trivino and Blake Treinen have struggled to regain their 2018 forms this year, and the woes continued on Wednesday as the duo combined to do something that had never been done before in a game that featured both right-handers.

With Trivino surrendering a three-run homer to Kyle Schwarber in the fifth and Treinen a solo shot to Victor Caratini in the eighth, Wednesday’s loss marked the first time Trivino and Treinen have allowed a home run in the same game. The two appeared in the same game 40 times last season, with Trivino often bridging the way for Treinen as the setup man.

After a sensational rookie campaign, Trivino finds himself in a bit of a sophomore slump as his ERA now sits at 5.14 over 50 appearances. He ran into some bad luck before the home run by Schwarber, as Baez blooped a single to right just before it, but Melvin said Trivino’s issues right now emanate from a lack of fastballs. Of his 13 pitches Wednesday, he only threw the fastball three times.

“He made a good pitch to Baez, who bloops a ball, but doesn’t make a good pitch to Schwarber,” Melvin said. “We’re trying to get both he and Blake back to where they were, but we’re not there yet. I think in Lou’s case, maybe he needs to have a little bit more faith in his fastball.”