Texas Rangers' Martin Perez celebrates at the end of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Wednesday, April 23, 2014, in Oakland, Calif. Perez pitched his second consecutive shutout to extend his scoreless innings streak to 26, giving Texas a 3-0 win. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
OAKLAND, Calif. — Over the course of a 162-game season, every team will go through some rough stretches.
It’s just been a long time since the Oakland Athletics have endured one at home.
Martin Perez pitched his second consecutive shutout to extend his scoreless innings streak to 26 and the Texas Rangers wrapped up a three-game sweep of the A’s with a 3-0 victory Wednesday.
“You’re going to have your little lumps in the road,” A’s third baseman Josh Donaldson said. “Everybody knows that here. We just have to come back.”
The A’s lost three straight for the first time since last August and were swept at home for the first time since September 2012 against the Angels, ending a streak of 32 straight home series with at least one win.
Texas’ first sweep against Oakland since September 2012 moved the Rangers into first place in the AL West, a half-game ahead of the A’s.
“They just beat us,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Not much you can say about that. They played better than we did and deserved to win. We just have to put it past us and get on the road and get a win under our belt and start rolling again. They just beat us. Give them credit.”
Perez (4-0) outpitched Sonny Gray (3-1) in a heralded matchup of emerging stars, allowing just three hits and two walks in his first start since throwing a three-hitter against the White Sox for his first career shutout.
“I don’t want to think too much about my ERA and the games that I’ve thrown before,” Perez said. “I’m going to focus on my game today. We had a great game.”
Donnie Murphy homered and Michael Choice scored one run and drove in another for the Rangers.
Perez, who also threw eight scoreless innings against Houston on April 13, is the first Rangers pitcher to have three straight scoreless starts since Kenny Rogers had four straight over 30 innings in 2005. Perez also joined Charlie Hough in 1983 as the only Texas pitchers to have three straight starts of at least eight scoreless innings.
“He knows how to pitch,” manager Ron Washington said. “He has weapons and he can throw them all for strikes and he has poise. He does a great job of staying with the game plan and that’s something that he’s learned from last year, how to study, how to go out there and just execute his pitches.”
Oakland got leadoff singles from Jed Lowrie in the fourth and Derek Norris in the fifth for its first two hits off Perez. But Perez followed each of those hits by getting the next batter to hit into a double play, giving him a major league-leading 11 groundball double plays.
Donaldson doubled with one out in the seventh, but was stranded there when Alberto Callaspo grounded out with runners on first and second to end the inning.
“He keeps the ball off the barrel of the bat,” Melvin said. “He’s pitched really well this year. The reason he can get deep in games is he’s not striking a lot of guys out, he’s just keeping it off the barrel of the bat.”
Gray allowed three runs and five hits in seven innings to end a six-game winning streak in the regular season dating to last September.
He fell behind when Choice led the game off with a walk and scored on Alex Rios’ triple. The Rangers were poised for a possible big inning when Rios was originally ruled safe at home on a grounder Lowrie at shortstop. But Melvin challenged the call and Rios was ruled out on instant replay.
Choice, traded from Oakland to Texas in the offseason, added an RBI single in the fifth and Murphy hit his first homer of the season in the sixth to make it 3-0.
NOTES: The A’s were shut out for the second time this season. ... Scott Kazmir (2-0) will take the mound against Brett Oberholtzer (0-3) today when Oakland opens a four-game series in Houston.
