By Morris Phillips

Chris Bassitt wasn’t himself on Saturday, and it was apparent from the start.

Absent the normal velocity on his fastball, and struggling with location, Bassitt needed more than 30 pitches to finish the first inning. By the end of the second inning, and after Josh Donaldson’s majestic drive landed behind the center field wall, Bassitt was effectively done, trailing 5-1 in a game the A’s would go on to lose to the Blue Jays, 9-3.

“It’s a starter’s job to make them feel uncomfortable, and that was the very last thing I was doing,” Bassitt said.

The loss ended what the team hopes is a defining run, a six-game win streak, and a seven-game road winning streak that made the A’s the last big-league club to lose away from home in 2016. With the rest of the AL West experiencing early-season struggles, Oakland was able to maintain its perch atop the division—tied with Texas with a 10-8 record.

Bassitt had pitched effectively in each of his three previous April starts, but after the game he complained of arm fatigue. His fastball, normally 95-96mph, topped out at 94mph on Saturday, and that along with his body language and his poor track record in the first inning, had the Toronto lineup salivating.

The first two Blue Jays reached, but Bassitt had a chance to put the dangerous Jose Bautista away after starting him 0-2. But the right hander missed with his next three pitches, the last of which ended up at the backstop for a wild pitch, allowing the two baserunners to advance. When Bautista then grounded out, it was an RBI sacrifice tying the game 1-1, instead of an inning-changing double play.

Three batters later, the A’s fell behind when third baseman Chris Coghlan couldn’t cleanly field Russell Martin’s grounder, allowing Josh Donaldson to score. Curiously, the official scorer ruled Martin’s grounder an infield hit, but in the real world, it was an instance of the Oakland defense letting its pitcher down at a critical juncture.

In the second, Bassitt again let the first two hitters reach. Then on a 2-0 pitch to the reigning AL MVP, the ball grabbed too much the strike zone and Donaldson, true to form, sent it soaring. After hitting a career-best 84 extra-base hits in 2015, the former Athletic is at again this season, with 13 extra-base hits and a major-league best seven homers already.

Toronto snapped a three-game losing streak, and did what they could to change the tenor of the conversation away from the 80-game suspension for PED use handed down to their first baseman, Chris Colabello. Justin Smoak, an experienced veteran replaced Colabello, but the Blue Jays murderer’s row of Donaldson, Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Troy Tulowitzki remains intact.

Tulowitzki missed Friday’s game against the A’s, but returned in force with a pair of solo shots, the first of which came off Bassitt in the fifth.

Mark Canha got the A’s off to a fast start with a home run in the first. And Coco Crisp and Josh Phegley came up with timely, two-out RBI singles later in the game. But the A’s lineup was largely ineffective, drawing just one walk, and grounding into three double plays.

J.A. Happ pitched seven innings and picked up the win. The veteran was plenty familiar to the A’s, but they couldn’t damage him, outside of Canha’s blast. Happ’s doing something right; he placed himself on a very short list of Toronto starters to begin a season with four consecutive quality starts in the last 20 years.

The A’s turn to Eric Surkamp in Sunday’s series finale. Surkamp will be opposed by Drew Hutchinson, who was recalled from the minors for the assignment, a move, according to manager John Gibbons, made to give his entire rotation an extra day of rest.