BY PAUL GACKLE

OAKLAND — Sonny Gray’s campaign for a third American League Pitcher of the Month award is getting off to a choppy start.

Gray, who was named the American League’s Pitcher of the Month earlier this week, lasted only 4 1/3 innings on Wednesday — his shortest big-league start — as the Tampa Bay Rays thumped the Oakland A’s 7-3 at the O.co Coliseum.

“We probably haven’t seen a game out of [Gray] like this,” A’s Manager Bob Melvin said.

By giving up six earned runs, Gray (12-5) snapped a streak in which he’d allowed one earned run or fewer while tossing six or more innings in six straight starts.

Gray, who went 5-0 with a 1.03 ERA in July, is now 0-2 with a 5.56 ERA in two August starts. He lost his first start of the month last Friday, despite allowing only three hits to the Kansas City Royals over seven innings of work.

The 24-year-old right-hander ran into trouble early, putting two runners on base in the first, two in the second and he walked the bases loaded in the third.

“He was just erratic with his fastball today,” Melvin said.

But Gray, who was also the American League’s Pitcher of the Month in April, escaped the first three innings relatively unscathed. He left six runners on base while surrendering only one run.

But the floodgates collapsed in the fourth.

Kevin Kiermai

er stretched the Rays lead to 3-0 by hitting his ninth home run of the season with Jose Molina aboard. The Rays added another run later in the inning when Evan Longoria singled in Ben Zobrist.

Gray left the game in the fifth after the Rays scored three more runs thanks to a hit by pitch and an Eric Sogard error on a potential double play ball.

“I thought I was close,” Gray said, referring to his fastball. “It just didn’t have that extra life today.”

As Gray struggled to find his location, the A’s bats continued to slump.

Rays starter Jeremy Hellickson was perfect through three innings and he retired 16 of the first 17 batters he faced before Sogard put the A’s on the board with his first home run of the season in the sixth.

“When you put your team in a hole like that, it puts a lot more pressure on the offense and it’s kind of hard to climb out of,” Gray said.

The A’s have struggled to score runs since they traded Yoenis Cespedes to the Boston Red Sox last week.

Melvin said the pitching needs to pick up the bats.

“It’s going to happen over the course of a season — that’s where you have to be better on the defensive end and hold them down and, like last night’s game, score just enough to win,” he said. “We certainly have the pitching to do that.”