Nick Kurtz, Colby Thomas, Carlos Cortes and JJ Bleday each homered and Tyler Soderstrom went 2-for-4 with a double and four RBIs to lead the Athletics to a 17-4 victory over the Los Angeles Angels on Saturday night in Anaheim, Calif.
Thomas went 2-for-5 with four runs scored and three RBIs and Jacob Wilson and Shea Langeliers each had three hits for the Athletics (66-77), who finished with 21 hits while scoring a season-high in runs. The win moved the A’s to within a half-game of Los Angeles (66-76) for fourth place in the American League West.
J.T. Ginn (3-6) snapped a six-start winless streak dating to a July 27 victory at Houston, allowing one run on five hits over five innings. He struck out five and didn’t walk a batter.
Jo Adell and Matthew Lugo hit home runs and Yoan Moncada had an RBI triple for Los Angeles, which lost its third straight game.
Yusei Kikuchi (6-11) lost for the fourth time in five starts, allowing seven runs on six hits and three walks in two innings. Kikuchi started the game with a strikeout of Langeliers, the 1,000th of his career, to become the fourth Japanese-born pitcher in major league history to reach that milestone, joining Yu Darvish, Hideo Nomo and Kenta Maeda.
The Athletics took a 3-0 lead in the first inning on Soderstrom’s bases-loaded double, a line drive that left fielder Taylor Ward misjudged and allowed to go over his head and clear the bases.
The A’s broke the game open an inning later with four more two-out runs. Brent Rooker blooped a double down the right field line to drive in Langeliers, who had doubled. Kurtz followed with a walk and Thomas then belted a three-run homer, a 411-foot drive to left-center.
The Angels cut the lead to 7-1 in the third on an RBI triple by Moncada off the wall in center, driving in Mike Trout, who had walked.
Kurtz made it 8-1 in the fourth when he led off with his 29th home run, a 447-foot drive deep into the rock pile in center.
After the A’s added an unearned run in the sixth to extend the lead to 9-1, the Angels elected to use a position player, Scott Kingery, to pitch the final two innings. The Athletics scored five runs on eight hits in the eighth, including the first major league homer by Cortes, a three-run shot to right on a 34.8 mph curve.
Lugo and Adell hit back-to-back homers in the bottom of the eighth to cut the lead to 14-3 but Bleday answered with a three-run homer in the ninth. Lugo ended the scoring with an RBI single in the ninth.
