Pit the most anemic offensive team in baseball against a future Hall of Famer and the end result is what happened to the Athletics Saturday in a 5-0 road loss to the Houston Astros.
The A’s spotted Justin Verlander a 4-0 lead in the second inning on grand slam by Martin Maldonado against starting pitcher Jared Koenig and the 39-year-old right-hander took care of the rest with relief help from Phil Maton, Hector Neris and Bryan Abreu for one inning each.
Verlander gave up six hits in six innings, throwing 106 pitches — 73 of them strikes — while improving to 12-3 and lowering his earned run average to 1.89. He struck out 10, leapfrogging Curt Schilling (3,116) and Bob Gibson (3,117) and moving into 14th on the all-time major league list with 3,121 and improved his record to 238-132.
