By Kahlil Najar

Oakland – Behind a seven run first inning the A’s (11-5) easily beat the Houston Astros (5-12) 11-3. Yoenis Cespedes and Alberto Callaspo provided the bulk of the offense tonight as they both contributed with one home run each and six combined RBI. Josh Reddick who’s been struggling from the plate for the last couple weeks broke out of the slump and went 3 for 4 with a home run and two RBI. Lead-off man Coco Crisp appears to be back as well as he went 2 for 3 and had two RBI.

Sonny Gray (3-0) who started for the A’s tonight gave up a career high nine hits in six innings but only gave up the three runs and struck out four. Francisco Abad and Ryan Cook came in for relief and pitched three scoreless innings and struck out five Houston batters.

“He got behind some guys but we’ve seen him recover. He continues to be good and we haven’t seen his best yet,” said Athletics coach Bob Melvin.

“We gave Sonny a lot of breathing room early even though he doesn’t need it,” said Josh Reddick who was able to grab two singles and the home run tonight.

“I actually helped in the game for once, it felt good. I went straight into batting practice today and skipped the cages and it just felt good.”

On Reddick, Melvin said, “It was good for him to get some hits. He’s been going through a rough stretch. It was good for the team to get off to a good start.”

The A’s really did get off to a great start when they scored seven runs in the first inning coming off of home runs from Alberto Callaspo and Reddick and a RBI single from Cespedes. In the bottom of the first, Jed Lowrie was up and he attempted to bunt the ball over to the third base side but was eventually thrown out at first.

The Astros didn’t take to kindly to that bunt attempt that in his next at bat, Lowrie was thrown to and almost hit.

“They were giving me the shift (in the first inning) so I went for it. We’ve seen teams before come back from seven down so each run in the beginning of the game is important. I would never do that if we were up by seven in the seventh or eighth inning.”

After getting thrown at Lowrie gave a menacing stare to the Astros pitcher. “He definitely tried to hit me on that second pitch,” said Lowrie.

For Houston, Jarred Cosart (1-2) had a night he wishes he could forget. Cosart only went for 1/3 of an inning and gave up seven runs on three hits and walked four. Paul Clemens who came in for Cosart gave up three runs on five hits in a little over four innings of relief. Offensively the Astros were able to scatter 10 hits but left 12 men on base.

The A’s and Astros go head to head again tomorrow afternoon when Scott Kazmir (2-0) takes on Brett Oberholtzer (0-3).