OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Jason Castro homered in his first start back with Houston, and the Astros beat the Oakland Athletics 9-2 on Sunday for a four-game sweep.
Dusty Baker tied Bill McKechnie for 14th among managers with 1,896 wins.
Kyle Tucker and Chas McCormick also homered for the Astros, off to their best start since 2001. Yuli Gurriel had three hits and two RBIs.
Houston outscored the A’s 35-9 in the series with 47 hits, including eight home runs. The Astros became the fourth team in major league history to score eight or more runs in each of its first four games.
“We just had tons of momentum coming in from last year,” McCormick said. “The guys are really hungry. We just crushed them from the first pitch to the last pitch of the whole series. It was cool to watch, cool to be a part of.”
Sweeping the division rival A’s was especially pleasing to the Astros, who were taunted at the Coliseum throughout the series. Houston faces the fallout from the sign-stealing scandal in which Major League Baseball penalized the team ahead of the 2020 season, which was played in empty ballparks due to the pandemic.
Oakland won seven of the 10 games with Houston in 2020 on the way to its first AL West title since 2013.
“You can’t do much better than the start that we had,” Baker said. “You take a quick, fast start anytime. You have to enjoy it while it’s here, try to build off it and keep going from there. We’re leaving out of here mainly feeling good about ourselves with our bullpen strong.”
Mark Canha doubled, tripled and scored twice for the A’s, who are 0-4 for their first time since losing five straight at the start of 1987.
“Look, we don’t feel good about it,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “A little bit embarrassing. We played really…
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