AP Photo/Ben Margot

By  Troy Clardy

OAKLAND –

One day after rediscovering how to win in walk-off fashion, Oakland decided to take a less dramatic route to victory.

The A’s scored early, then exploded late in a 7-0 win over the Texas Rangers at O.co Coliseum on Thursday afternoon. Scott Kazmir threw eight innings of one-hit ball, and Mark Canha and Josh Reddick homered to punctuate a six-run eighth inning for Oakland. With the win, the A’s (25-37) took two of three games against the Rangers (31-29).
After going 0-4 in his previous six starts, Kazmir rebounded with a masterfully efficient performance. A one-out single by Elvis Andrus in the fifth inning was the only hit the Rangers managed all afternoon. Along the way, Kazmir struck out six Texas batters, walking only two.

Oakland manager Bob Melvin was impressed. “He didn’t get too amped up early in the game and try to force things,” Melvin said of Kazmir’s day. “He went with the flow, spotted his fastball early on, mixed all his pitches, and revved it up as he went along.”

Kazmir got plenty of help from Billy Burns, who notched two base hits, walked once, drove in a run, and made two sensational catches in center field. The first catch robbed Delino DeShields of extra bases in the sixth inning. The second catch, a leaping, twisting, crashing-into-the-wall-and-hanging-on effort was a work of art that ended the top of the eighth inning.

No one was more appreciative of Burns’ defensive efforts than Kazmir. “That gets you going as a pitcher,” Kazmir noted. “Someone makes a play like that, you just want to return the favor and get those guys back into the dugout. He had a great game.”

Burns’ all-around play earned him all-around praise from Melvin. “You see him getting deeper at-bats and making big plays,” the manager said. “He’s just getting better. To do it at the big-league level can be tough, (especially) for a guy we didn’t really envision being here until September.”

After drawing a leadoff walk in the bottom of the first inning, Burns scored on an RBI single by Ben Zobrist. Crossed up by a largely gutty effort from Texas starter Chi Chi Gonzalez, the A’s did not score again until the eighth, when Rangers manager Jeff Bannister turned to his bullpen. Texas relievers Sam Freeman, Jon Edwards, and Ross Detwiler thanked Bannister by serving up a towering two-run blast to left by Mark Canha, then letting Josh Reddick leave the yard with a three-run shot. Unlike Wednesday night’s walk-off result, there would be no late-inning drama in Oakland.

Sam Fuld rapped out three hits, including a double that extended Oakland’s half of the eighth inning. That performance gives Fuld four hits in his last five at-bats, which looks much better considering he had gone 7-for-79 previously.

With the three-game homestand in the books, Oakland heads to Anaheim for a three-game weekend series. The A’s now have back-to-back wins after losing their previous four games. But Scott Kazmir was hesitant to call his squad a team with momentum again.

“We’ll see,” he cautioned. “We don’t want to count (these games against Anaheim as wins) already. We’ve just got to go into Anaheim and take care of business.”