Sonny Gray turned in another good start for the Oakland Athletics, throwing eight strong innings to lead them to a 6-2 win over the New York Yankees on Friday night.
Gray (6-2) gave up two runs on four hits and two walks, striking out five. The young right-hander has held his opponents to two runs or fewer in nine of his 11 starts this season, although the scuffling A's haven't always taken advantage.
Oakland is 6-5 when he takes the mound this season.
Brett Lawrie hit a two-run homer for the A's, who have won the first two games of the four-game series and five of their last seven overall. Stephen Vogt also drove in two runs and Josh Phegley had three hits in the win.
Chris Capuano (0-3) lost a third straight start since coming off the disabled list after missing the start of the season with a quadriceps injury. He gave up four runs -- three earned -- on six hits in 5 1/3 innings.
Brian McCann homered in his fourth straight game, a solo blast in the fifth inning that was New York's first hit off Gray.
Capuano issued two walks in the second inning and gave up a single to Phegley to load the bases, then escaped the jam when Mark Canha flied out.
But the A's rallied for four runs against him in the third, scoring all of them with no outs.
They put runners at the corners on a leadoff double by Billy Burns and a single by Marcus Semien and scored the first run when Ben Zobrist's grounder went under third baseman Chase Headley's glove for an error. Billy Butler followed with an RBI double off the left-field wall and Vogt hit a two-run double into the right-field corner.
New York's only baserunner in the first four innings came on Brett Gardner's leadoff walk to start the game, but he was erased on a double play.
McCann's leadoff homer over the right-center field wall in the fifth was his eighth of the season. In the sixth, Didi Gregorius doubled, went to third on a wild pitch by Gray and scored on Gardner's groundout to get the Yankees within 4-2.
Lawrie drove his fourth homer of the season over the wall in left after Jacob Lindgren walked the leadoff hitter Vogt.
New York put runners at the corners with two outs against Fernando Rodriguez in the ninth inning before Tyler Clippard got the last out for his sixth save.
[SportsNetwork.com]
