WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — \u2014\u00a0Nick Kurtz\u00a0hit two homers and drove in five runs,\u00a0Jeff McNeil\u00a0also went deep and knocked in four, and the Athletics beat the scuffling\u00a0Pittsburgh Pirates\u00a011-2 on Monday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
J.T. Ginn\u00a0pitched six strong innings for the A’s, who returned to their regular temporary home in California after going 4-2 on a\u00a0homestand at their Triple-A affiliate in Las Vegas,\u00a0where the big league club plans to move into a new stadium in 2028.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
McNeil went 3 for 4 and snapped an 0-for-20 slump with an RBI single in the second.\u00a0Kurtz followed\u00a0with an opposite-field homer to left for a 3-0 lead and finished 3 for 5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
McNeil hit his third homer\u00a0to make it 5-1 in the fourth and added an RBI single in the seventh before Kurtz followed with\u00a0a three-run shot\u00a0to left. Eight of Kurtz’s 18 home runs have come in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lawrence Butler\u00a0sparked the five-run seventh with an RBI double after\u00a0Zack Gelof\u00a0reached on a two-out error by second baseman\u00a0Brandon Lowe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ginn (5-3) allowed just an unearned run and six hits with two walks, throwing 98 pitches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kurtz had the first of three straight singles to load the bases in the first before\u00a0Jared Jones\u00a0(1-1) came back to strike out the side.\u00a0Henry Bolte\u00a0hit a one-out double before McNeil drove him in during a three-run second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jones permitted five runs and eight hits over four innings in his fourth start this season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tyler Soderstrom\u00a0singled in front of\u00a0Jacob Wilson’s ground-rule double to begin the fifth against Pirates reliever\u00a0Carmen Mlodzinski. Gelof upped the majors’ longest current hitting streak to 19 games with an RBI single for a 6-1 lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jake Mangum\u00a0had an RBI single in the fourth for the Pirates, and Endy Rodr\u00edguez went 3 for 3 with a solo homer in the eighth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Athletics (36-36) moved within a half-game of the first-place Mariners in the AL West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pittsburgh (36-37) has lost eight of 10. The Pirates are 9-19 all-time against the A’s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — \u2014\u00a0Nick Kurtz\u00a0hit two homers and drove in five runs,\u00a0Jeff McNeil\u00a0also went deep and knocked in four, and the Athletics beat the scuffling\u00a0Pittsburgh Pirates\u00a011-2 on Monday night. J.T. Ginn\u00a0pitched six strong innings for the A’s, who returned to their regular temporary home in California after going 4-2 on a\u00a0homestand at their Triple-A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12903],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-416340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-12903"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416341,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416340\/revisions\/416341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}