Oakland trailed by three runs leading into the seventh inning and was headed for its 11th straight loss whenRamón Laureano began to yell at his teammateson the bench.
“Ramon is passionate,” Oakland manager Mark Kotsay said. “That’s the Ramon I’ve always talked about.”
The A’s teammates responded.
Seth Brown hit a grand slam to cap a five-run seventh inning, and Oakland snapped a 10-game losing streak, the longest in 11 years, by beating the Cleveland Guardians 10-5 on Saturday.
“The most important thing is to let the guys be themselves,” Kotsay said. “That’s Ramón being himself: his energy, his passion, his frustrations, came out. That was heard loud and clear on that bench.”
Laureano was ejected in the middle of the seventh by first base umpire Paul Emmel. Kotsay said Laureano had complained to the umpire about Cleveland’s Zach Plesac throwing fast.
Steven Vogt, Christian Bethancourt and Sean Murphy also homered for Oakland, and Vogt had three hits and was hit by a pitch.
Ramón Laureano went blank in four turns.
For the Guardians, the Dominicans Amed Rosario, 4-1, with a run scored; José Ramírez, 4-1, with a run scored.
Dominican pitcher Frankie Montás, from Oakland, worked 6 innings, allowed 8 hits, allowed 5 runs, struck out two and gave a transfer. It was his third win with six setbacks this season.
Oakland was outscored 60-20 during its longest streak since the A’s lost 10 in a row from May 30 to June 9, 2011. Oakland lost nine in a row this year from April 29 to May 8, giving the A’s a pair of losing streaks of nine or more games in the same season for the first time since 1978.
Frankie Montas (3-6) allowed five runs on eight hits in six innings to win for the first time since April 18 against Baltimore. He had gone 0-5 in his previous nine starts despite posting a 2.87 ERA in that span.
Brown’s home run came on a full-count fastball by Eli Morgan with two out as Oakland rallied from a 5-2 deficit. Brown took a close 2-for-2 pitch that saw Morgan bounce off the mound thinking it was strike three. Brown sent the next pitch into the right-field seats for his first career slam.
Brown received a standing ovation from his teammates when he spoke to reporters in the Oakland clubhouse after the win.
“Bases loaded, I have to put something on the line,” he said. “Once I got to 3-2, I was sitting completely red on that fastball. I didn’t want to walk with anyone. I’m trying to get a good at-bat and put something on the line pretty strong.”
The A’s took a 2-0 lead in the fourth, but that quickly disappeared thanks in part to another key hit by José Ramírez, who followed up with a run around the bases. Cleveland scored four times on a throwing error, an RBI groundout, a sacrifice fly and a touchdown bunt.
Vogt and Matt Davidson singled off Plesac to start the seventh. Morgan (2-2) struck out, but first baseman Josh Naylor made a throwing error on Tony Kemp’s grounder that scored a run and cost the Guardians an out.
Bethancourt’s infield hit with two outs kept the inning going before Brown responded, silencing the crowd and causing Oakland players to jump out of the dugout in celebration.
“We haven’t had a comeback like that this year,” Kotsay said."It was good to see, obviously, where we are in this stretch to come back and win a game against a good team, a hot team.".
Cleveland had won nine of 11 but allowed eight runs and had one hit in the final three innings.
“The way the game ended, it’s hard to accept because we feel good about things,” manager Terry Francona said. “But we have to recover quickly.”
Plesac converted the play of the day when he ousted Cristian Pache at first. Plesac caught the slow blow to the right of the mound with his bare hands.