Lowrie still puzzled by Porter's tirade

OAKLAND -- A day after his strange encounter with a heated Bo Porter, Jed Lowrie remained puzzled by the Astros manager's animated reaction to a bunt.

Granted, it was an attempted bunt in a game the A's already led, 7-0. But it was also the first inning, and the way Lowrie sees it, Porter essentially invited him to bunt by activating the shift.

Still, Porter didn't like it, and righty Paul Clemens nearly hit Lowrie with a pitch in the third. Upon completion of the at-bat, which resulted in a fly out, Porter charged the field and began yelling at Lowrie to go back to shortstop. Moments later, he was still seen shouting in the dugout and knocking over a water cooler.

"I still don't get the reaction, given the situation," Lowrie said Saturday morning. "I know we had scored seven runs, but like I said yesterday, it's a Major League game, you don't know what's going to happen. They were playing a full shift. That's what I don't get. Why is it OK for you to shift down seven runs, but it's not OK for me to bunt? You're still trying to get me out, and you think you have a better opportunity to get me out by shifting. So obviously you're not waving the white flag by shifting.

"At one point they were one swing away from being back in the game. It ended up not being that way, but you never know what's going to happen."

Porter was asked about his reaction on Saturday but maintained, "Nothing happened yesterday."

"If I'm on the other side, maybe it perturbs me a little bit," said A's manager Bob Melvin, "but it's still the first inning, so that one's probably in-between, where you understand both sides of that. What happened a little later was probably more inappropriate. But hopefully we can just move on. I don't think it's that big of an issue to tell you the truth."

Lowrie, who believes he heard an Astros player yelling at him after bunting, approached Melvin in the second inning to ask if his decision to do so was OK with his manager. Melvin said it was.

"He told me, 'If they promise not to score any runs, then I don't care, but it's the first inning,'" said Lowrie, who then watched George Springer steal second base in the third inning, despite his team being down by six runs.

"How can you complain about a situation like that when you're running? Swing the bat," Lowrie continued. "It's the exact same situation. If you're down, you're not going to steal your way back into the game. You're going to hit your way back in the game."