Reddick leads early run barrage as Athletics beat Royals 10-4 to finish off winning series

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Josh Reddick homered and drove in four runs to cap a big series for Oakland, Jed Lowrie and Eric Sogard also went deep and the Athletics beat the Kansas City Royals 10-4 on Sunday.

A.J. Griffin (7-6) rebounded from a miserable start against the Cubs to go five innings for the A's. The only damage he allowed came on solo homers by George Kottaras and Alex Gordon.

Jesse Chavez earned his first career save with four scoreless innings of relief.

Luis Mendoza (2-5) allowed five runs in the second inning for the Royals, and was yanked to a round of boos after retiring just four batters. It was the right-hander's shortest start in exactly five years — since an outing on July 7, 2008, when he was still with Texas.

Reddick hit a two-run double during the A's big second inning, and he added a two-run homer off Bruce Chen in the third. The right fielder also had two RBIs during a series-opening win Friday night, and then drove in another run in a 4-3 loss on Saturday.

That defeat snapped a five-game winning streak for the Athletics.

They quickly got back to their winning ways.

Mendoza struck out Chris Young before another double by Sogard and back-to-back singles by Coco Crisp and Lowrie knocked him from the game. Chen came in from the bullpen and gave up another base hit to Josh Donaldson before finally getting out of the inning.

Kottaras got the home crowd energized with his homer in the second, but the A's refused to let the Royals engineer another five-run comeback like they did Thursday against Cleveland. Jaso's one-out single set the table for Reddick, who launched his fourth homer of the year.

After a breakthrough year in which he hit 32 homers, Reddick had been scuffling until he got to Kansas City. He was hitting just .210 with three homers and 25 RBIs in his first 57 games, but found the expansive outfield off Kauffman Stadium to be to his liking.

Gordon, who missed the first game of the series after a scary collision with the outfield wall earlier in the week, validated his first All-Star nod a day earlier with his homer. His ninth of the season came with two outs in the fifth inning.

Lowrie answered it with a solo shot of his own in the sixth.

Sogard's two-run homer in the seventh ended any thoughts of another Royals comeback.