OAKLAND, Calif. — Drew Smyly got a little bewildered when the Oakland Athletics turned every mistake he
made into a home run.
Kyle Blanks homered in his home debut at the Coliseum, Derek Norris capped Oakland’s five-homer day with
a grand slam and the A’s snapped a season-long four-game losing streak with a 10-0 win over the Detroit
Tigers on Monday.
"It was like, is this really happening?" Smyly said. "I felt good and I felt like I was
making good pitches. Then I’d just leave one up, home run. Leave the next one up, home run. Bury the
next one, home run."
Smyly (2-3) allowed the first four long balls as the Tigers opened a seven-game road trip by losing for
the seventh time in eight games.
Detroit has a 7.51 ERA during that skid as their much-vaunted pitching staff has hit a collective lull.

"I’m not really puzzled," manager Brad Ausmus said. "It’s pretty clear cut. We’re just not
pitching well."
Brandon Moss and Josh Donaldson each hit their 12th home run and Yoenis Cespedes also went deep for the
A’s, who broke out of their recent slump by getting homers from five players for the first time since
2009.
That backed another strong start from Tommy Milone (3-3), who allowed four hits in 6 2-3 scoreless
innings to improve to 3-0 with a 1.03 ERA in his past four starts after making an adjustment to shorten
his stride.
"I think it’s really helped with my command," Milone said. "I think that’s the biggest
thing I’ve seen from before and now is command with the fastball and keeping everything low in the
zone."
Oakland returned home mired in its worst skid of the season, having scored seven runs in the four losses,
to Tampa Bay and Toronto.
That led to a pregame message on the clubhouse white board imploring the team to take the "slow
torture" approach of grinding out at-bats rather than the "instant kill" of a home run
that ends a rally rather than starts one.
"Homers can be rally killers, but when you end up hitting four or five of them on the day you can
probably make a different statement," Norris said.
Oakland responded with homers from five players for the first time since Jack Cust, Kurt Suzuki, Mark
Ellis, Daric Barton and Cliff Pennington did it Sept. 11, 2009, at Minnesota.
That helped them win the first meeting of the season against the team that eliminated them in Game 5 of
the division series the past two postseasons.
After squandering a prime scoring chance in the first inning when Oakland put runners on first and third
with no outs, the A’s got to Smyly with the long ball.
Moss got it started with a drive that hit off the glove of a leaping Austin Jackson and went over the
center-field fence in the second inning.
"He almost came up with it," Ausmus said. "Unfortunately for us it snapped out of his
glove. Part of me thinks it might have changed the course of the game, but we’ll never know."
Two batters later, Blanks hit a no-doubt shot to left-center for his first home run since being acquired
before the start of the team’s recent nine-game road trip.
Oakland wasn’t done, getting back-to-back shots from Donaldson and Cespedes in the third inning to take a
4-0 lead to the delight of the third sellout crowd of the season at the Coliseum.
Norris hit his first career grand slam in the eighth off Phil Coke in a rally helped by a catcher’s
interference call against Bryan Holaday and an error by third baseman Nick Castellanos.
NOTES: Smyly was the first Tigers pitcher to allow four homers in a game since Max Scherzer did it in a
10-7 win over the Yankees on April 3, 2011. … Miguel Cabrera started at 1B for the Tigers a day after
leaving early with a right hamstring cramp. 2B Ian Kinsler got the day off. … Scherzer (6-1) starts
for Detroit on Tuesday against Sonny Gray (5-1) in a matchup of two of the top starters in baseball.