The A’s committed five errors in the first three innings against the Boston Red Sox in their 9-0 loss on Monday night to become the first team in 29 years with at least 13 fielding miscues in the first five games of the season.

The mistakes came early with catcher Shea Langeliers throwing a ball into center field on a stolen base attempt by Jarren Duran two batters into the game.

Two more errors came in the second inning with center fielder JJ Bleday dropping Emmanuel Valdez’s drive to the warning track for a two-base errors and right fielder Lawrence Butler throwing the ball away on a sacrifice fly, allowing a second run to score.

Two more miscues followed in the third with first baseman Ryan Noda throwing the ball away on an infield hit by Valdez and starter Joe Boyle making a wild throw on a pickoff attempt at second base.

The A’s have made at least one error in every game with the 13 the most in the first five games of a season since the Chicago White Sox had 18 in 1995. It’s also the most errors in the first five games of a season for the franchise since the Philadelphia had 16 in 1923.

Tanner Houck struck out 10 batters in six scoreless innings to get the victory in front of an announced crowd of 6,618 fans.

“He was excellent,” manager Alex Cora said. “Mixed up his pitches. Repeated his delivery. He was the aggressor the whole night. He was ahead in the count and induced weak contact and got swings and misses.”

Jarren Duran had three hits and three steals in the first three innings, Trevor Story added a two-run double and Ceddanne Rafaela hit two sacrifice flies to help Boston score eight runs in the first three innings against the mistake-prone A’s.

Houck (1-0) did the rest with the latest strong start for Boston, allowing three hits and no walks. Through one turn through the rotation, all five starters for the Red Sox have gone at least five innings and allowed two runs or fewer. The quintet has allowed four runs overall in 28 innings, while striking out 37 and walking only one batter.

Chase Anderson finished the four-hitter for his first save.

Joe Boyle (0-1) allowed eight runs — seven earned — and eight hits in 2 2-3 innings in his first start of the season to take the loss for Oakland.

But he got no help from his teammates with the five early errors.

“We couldn’t get out of our way the first three innings,” manager Mark Kotsay said.

“We’re going to push the envelope as a group,” Cora said. “Yeah, they struggled defensively, but we put pressure on them, too.”

Oakland also became the first team in seven years to commit at least five errors in the first three innings of a game with Seattle the last to do it on Aug, 27, 2017, against the New York Yankees.

“I wish I had an answer for the defense right now,” Kotsay said. “They’re going to have to get better. That’s just all there is to it. These first five games, if you told me we were going to play as bad defensively as this, I would have said you’re dead wrong. We’ll see how they respond tomorrow.”

Then again, it’s not every day a guy batting .429 with a 1.232 OPS (albeit over seven at-bats) gets told he’s not good enough to play on a team that lost a franchise-record 112 games a year ago.

Ruiz, who had seen spot duty through the first week of the season after setting an AL rookie record with 67 steals last year, is being sent to Las Vegas to work on his on-base skills. The 25-year-old had a below-average on-base percentage of .308 a year ago, something A’s general manager David Forst said needs improvement.

“The reality is, to use his skills, he needs to get on base. He needs to be able to do that on a consistent basis,” Forst told reporters in explaining why Ruiz was sent down to make room for utilityman Tyler Nevin, claimed off waivers Sunday from Baltimore. “I’m hoping with everyday at-bats in Triple-A, it’s not a long stay for him down there.”

His inability to get on base consistently in spring training seemed to be a precursor to Monday’s move, since Ruiz had just a .295 on-base percentage over 61 at-bats in Arizona.

The 26-year-old Nevin, Ruiz’s roster replacement, is the oldest son of former big-league player and manager Phil Nevin. The younger Nevin was a 2015 first-round draft pick by Colorado and made his big-league debut with Baltimore in 2021. Nevin can fill in at first base, third base and the outfield.

Not only did Murphy help the Braves win the NL East, he had career-high of 21 homers, 68 RBIs and .844 OPS. Meanwhile, the A’s got Contreras from Atlanta and flipped both he and suddenly top-notch reliever Joel Payamps to the Brewers to acquire Ruiz.

All Contreras did was become what many believe is the majors’ best catcher while earning an All-Star berth and winning the NL’s Silver Slugger award in 2023, while batting .289 with 17 homers and 78 RBIs.

It looks even worse when you consider Contreras has done all that and will still make just $22,000 more than Ruiz’s $745,000 contract with the A’s this season.

According to ESPN and ABC7, officials are prepared to offer the team a five-year, $97-million extension on the A’s lease at the Coliseum that would keep them in Oakland for at least three years, with the option to opt out after 2028, when the A’s ballpark in Las Vegas is expected to be ready for play.

It represents a huge rent increase for the A’s, who have paid about $1.5 million in rent and would start paying $19.4 million per year next year. If the team opts out after three years, it still has to pay the full amount, bringing the average rent to $32.3 million per year.

ESPN reported that the A’s wanted a two-year deal worth $17 million to remain at the Coliseum.

In addition, Oakland officials are hoping to agree with MLB on at least one of three stipulations: getting a one-year window with exclusive negotiating rights for an expansion team in Oakland; voting to leave the A’s branding and colors in Oakland; or aiding in the sale of the team to a local ownership group.

And perhaps most notably, Oakland is asking the A’s to sell their 50% share of the Coliseum to allow for redevelopment on the property.

Aiding in the difficulty is MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, who has said repeatedly that he cannot grant any guarantees as it relates to expansion, seeing as the 30 owners would first need to vote on expansion. That vote isn’t expected to take place for years, not until the A’s and Tampa Bay Rays start playing in new ballparks. And Oakland would have to join a competitive pool of cities who are also hoping for an expansion team, among them: Nashville, Portland, Salt Lake City, Charlotte, San Antonio, Montreal and perhaps Sacramento.

Sacramento officials have talked openly about their desire to add another pro sports team. Kings owner Vivek Ranadive said last week he’s friends with A’s owner John Fisher and is hoping, if the A’s come to Sacramento, it would prove to MLB that Sacramento is a viable option for expansion. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said recently that he’s hoping the A’s remain in Oakland, but if they don’t, Sacramento would welcome the A’s on a temporary basis.

Neither the A’s nor the Oakland mayor’s office responded for comment on Monday, but both sides have offered amicable remarks over the last two months as they’ve come back to the bargaining table to see if they can keep the team in Oakland a little while longer.

For the A’s, it’s simple: They need a temporary home.

Staying in Oakland would be the easiest move. It’d require no new negotiations with the A’s broadcasting partners, NBC Sports, and they would retain their reported $67 million in local media rights compensation by keeping the team at the Coliseum.

If they move to Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park, the Triple-A home of the San Francisco Giants, the A’s would have to renegotiate a media rights deal that could see their annual compensation take a big cut. Sacramento is the 20th-ranked media market in the country, according to Nielsen, making it the largest one-team media market in the country.

Sutter Health Park, built in 2000, has one of the largest capacities of any minor league ballpark. It seats just more than 10,000, then fits another 4,000-plus people in standing areas and grass berms in the outfield.

Of course, it’s uncertain whether or not the A’s would need that much seating.

They averaged just 6,680 during their first homestand of the season against the Cleveland Guardians, when they went 1-3 while being outscored 29-11.

They had fewer fans show up for the entire series (26,722) than they had at their Opening Day game last year (26,805).

A’s fans have clearly become disenchanted with a team that only recently took down its “Rooted in Oakland” signage that had been up since 2017, when the team announced its “commitment to building a ballpark in its longtime home city.”

Fisher ended that idea last spring, when the team announced it was moving to Las Vegas after the city promised $380 million in public funding for a new ballpark. At least some of that money is in question, though, as the Schools Over Stadiums political action group will find out April 9 if it can begin collecting signatures for a referendum that would give voters a say in November.

Schools Over Stadiums spokesman Alex Marks believes the group has raised enough money — largely thanks to A’s fans in Oakland — and signed up enough volunteers to collect the necessary signatures in time.

Marks said if they’re able to get any of the $380 million in public money revoked via a vote in November, or via a lawsuit that ruled Senate Bill 1 as unconstitutional for raising taxes without a two-thirds supermajority, Fisher’s deal with Las Vegas would fall apart.

“It’s a house of cards,” Marks said.

To protect themselves, the A’s could sign a long-term lease with the Coliseum that would give them time to figure out a next step.

In the meantime, they’re off to another horrible start on the field and in the ticket office.

MLB is hoping the A’s will figure out where they intend to play next season as soon as possible so the league can release its 2025 schedule sometime in the early summer.

He throws batting practice, coaches third base, chats with parents while scribbling the lineup onto a notepad, empties trash cans and locks the gates.

The son of Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants star pitcher Vida Blue grew up around America’s pastime, and he’s all-in as a first-year softball head coach for the Hayward school’s program.

“I love being on the field,” Blue said. “Sunflower seeds, chewing gum and hitting some balls around during batting practice.”

To many, Derrick Blue, 54, is the son of the late Bay Area baseball legend and forever the kid who spent part of his childhood wandering the Coliseum’s clubhouse and expansive foul territory.

To Mt. Eden senior Andrea Toledo and the rest of the Monarchs, he’s just “Blue,” their upbeat former assistant coach and the obvious choice to succeed longtime leader Nick Sanchez when the 69-year-old retired in December.

“I was thrilled when I heard that he was going to become our head coach,” Toledo said. “I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s laid back, because he pushes us to be the best we can.”

Blue described himself as a so-so ballplayer, and chuckled as he recalled the memory of his fifth-grade baseball coach in Alameda telling him, “I can’t wait to see you coach.”

Vida agreed with that prediction.

When Derrick moved back to the East Bay from Sacramento a few years ago and was mulling over whether or not to get back into coaching, the elder Blue was his biggest supporter.

Derrick, who works as a transportation analyst for the state, had coached softball in different East Bay rec leagues and then at San Leandro High when Sanchez asked him to join the Mt. Eden staff.

“I remember he was like, ‘Do you like coaching?’ And I would be like, ‘Yeah, I do,’” Blue remembered.

“Do it, and do it the best that you can,” Vida told his son.

Derrick threw himself into his role as an assistant at Mt. Eden, but had to take a step back last spring with his father’s health ailing. Vida Blue died on May 6 after a long battle with cancer.

After Derrick gave so much time and energy to the team, the Monarchs were there for the grieving coach when he needed them the most.

“We wanted to be a support system for him,” Toledo said. “We just wanted to be sort of a community that he could come back to and count on.”

Blue vividly remembered the day he returned to the team.

He said the players stopped what they were doing when they saw him standing by the fence, ran up to the man and then embraced him in a team group hug.

“That was probably the closest moment I came to crying, because they wore these blue wristbands for me,” Blue said. “That really got to my heart.”

He had a short but poignant message for the teenagers after that.

“Make sure you hug your parents tonight.”

Blue said his father had become his “best friend” over the last 15 years, the two sharing an obsession with both LSU football and Major League Baseball.

“We’d go to dinner a couple times a month, and I remember the last time we went to dinner, I had to go to the bathroom, and he says, ‘I’m paying for dinner, man. You don’t have to hide,’” Blue said. “He always had that sense of humor, and I’ll miss that.”

Though Vida played on both sides of the Bay, where the former MVP and Cy Young winner’s allegiance lay was clear during their conversations.

“I remember he would text or call me when he was out golfing asking, ‘Did we win?’ And I knew who he meant,” Blue remembered. “‘Did we win’ meant ‘Did the A’s win?’”

Blue said he hopes the A’s will stay in Oakland, but that he understands the chances of that are slim. He added that he will represent his father regardless of where his favorite team ends up.

“My dad and I did discuss this,” Blue said. “It is a business. Unfortunately, whether you believe that the A’s did enough to build a fanbase, or the fanbase didn’t do enough to support them, it is a business.”

As the younger Blue noted, Vida wholeheartedly supported his son as both a young baseball player and later as a softball coach. However, he did so from afar and was only able to watch a small portion of one of Derrick’s games as a player.

Fans mobbed the ace pitcher shortly after he arrived at an Alameda diamond back in the 1980s.

While holding a bag with the McDonald’s fast food he and his son were going to eat after the game, Vida Blue had to leave after just a few minutes while his son watched from the field.

By the time Derrick became an assistant at Mt. Eden, his father’s poor health prevented him from attending any games.

“One of those things I wish he had the opportunity to do was to watch me coach, and say a few things to the girls,” Blue said. “He loved softball.”

Derrick’s similar love of the sport is obvious when he coaches and was one of the reasons Sanchez felt comfortable stepping away at the end of 2023.

“He has that energy and that sweet disposition that kids love,” Sanchez said. “He’ll be a good coach. I’m proud of him. He’ll ask me for advice from time to time, and I’ll give it to him because I want Derrick to do well.”

One of Blue’s goals as head coach is to continue Sanchez’s mission of instilling a sense of pride in the Mt. Eden program.

Blue and the players put up blue and gold Mt. Eden banners around the recently repainted softball field. The outfield is still uneven, and the fence is bent out of shape, but the coach said the facility is in far better condition than it was a few years ago.

“When I first got this job, I wanted to make this look like the other schools,” Blue said. “Let’s put some paint on this thing and make it playable. The girls take pride in it.”

Mt. Eden consistently shows why it’s one of the best teams in the West Alameda County Conference Shoreline Division when it takes the field.

The Monarchs haven’t had a losing season since 2014, and Blue said that making it back to the North Coast Section playoffs is all he wants.

With talented players such as Toledo, Annelise Burgos and Jasmine Cruz on the roster, that’s well within the realm of possibility.

“My biggest goal is to get us a NCS game, because I want them to be able to line up on the baseline and hear their name being called out,” Blue said.

And nobody should be surprised if that happens.

After all, winning in the East Bay runs in the family.

“It’s hard to win here, so to put those three games behind us, we can come out here with a good taste in our mouth and get ready for Boston,” said A’s starter Paul Blackburn, who took a perfect game into the fifth inning and a shutout through seven.

Indeed, as the Red Sox (2-2) arrive in town for a three-game series, the A’s won’t be wallowing in a winless start to a still very suspect season, one that could end a 57-year residency here unless negotiations with Oakland officials keep them longer before a planned move to Las Vegas in 2028.

“Nobody wants to start 0-4,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said. “I was proud of the effort there, and the fight-back we showed after the eighth inning. That’s a good sign of this club not folding or not having the energy to bounce back from what was pretty ugly, to turn things out to a positive day.”

Blackburn was intent on delivering that victory, exiting with a 3-0 lead. The Guardians promptly scored three runs in the eighth off A’s relievers Lucas Erceg and Austin Adams, setting the stage for a ninth-inning nail-biter.

Abraham Toro’s bases-loaded, four-pitch walk brought in Darell Hernaiz for the game-winning run in the bottom of the ninth.

The A’s loaded the bases in the ninth, behind Ryan Noda’s walk and back-to-back singles from Shea Langeliers and Lawrence Butler. Hernaiz, pinch-running for Noda, got a bad jump on Butler’s hit to center field, thus delaying the A’s walk-off celebration. Eli Morgan entered for the Guardians and didn’t throw a strike to Toro, who watched a 90-mph fastball sail high to essentially end the 2 ½-hour affair.

The season-opening series attracted a total of 26,902 fans, not counting the thousands who stayed in the Coliseum parking lot on Thursday’s Opening Night as a protest of the A’s planned move to Las Vegas by 2028.

The official crowd count for that 8-0 opening loss was 13,522, or about half of last year’s home debut, when 26,805 saw the A’s beat the Angels and eventual two-time MVP Shohei Ohtani. But that A’s team stumbled to a 3-16 start and lost 23 of their its 28 games.

“Getting this first (win) out of the way, you can relax, get the edge off, have fun and go play baseball,” said catcher Shea Langeliers, after the A’s first Easter-day win in 10 years.

Blackburn said he and Langeliers stuck to their game plan inning after inning, up until Blackburn got pulled before the eighth. He allowed three hits and one walk in 88 pitches, with three strikeouts.

“You have to kind of realize it’s still March. I wanted to go all nine (innings) today but in the big scheme of things, this is a marathon,” Blackburn said. “My pitch limit was 85 to 90 my first time out and that’s about right where I landed.”

Josh Naylor broke up Blackburn’s perfect game in the fifth with a leadoff single to right field. Blackburn soon found himself in a bases-loaded jam after allowing an infield single to former A’s star Ramón Laureano and a four-pitch walk to Estevan Florial. The shutout stayed intact, however, when Blackburn got No. 9 hitter Gabriel Arias to fly out to shallow right field, where second baseman Zack Gelof battled the sun to snare the third out.

In the seventh, Laureano reached on a two-out single, and with Erceg up in the A’s bullpen, Blackburn got Bo Naylor to pop out to Gelof to end that threat.

Blackburn didn’t allow a base runner through four innings. His day opened with a 92.1-mph fastball for a called strike against Steven Kwan, who eventually lined out to right.

Blackburn’s dominance shouldn’t have been too stunning after his 4-0 showing in spring training. That ended with six no-hit innings against the Chicago Cubs on March 20, then just two hits by the Giants over 5 2/3 innings last Tuesday.

Blackburn, 30, was the A’s 2022 All-Star representative, and the Heritage High-Brentwood product deserved a win Sunday that would have improved his career record as a starter to 17-24.

Dany Jimenez came on to pitch the ninth for the A’s and immediately found trouble: Bo Naylor walked, and Florial reached on a Gelof error. Langeliers picked off Naylor at third base to slow the rally, and although Jimenez had an ensuing pickoff attempt sail into center field, the Guardians couldn’t scratch across a go-ahead run in the frame.

But in the equalizing eighth inning, Erceg allowed a leadoff triple to Florial, who would score on a groundout to spoil the A’s shutout bid. Once Erceg allowed a two-out single to Andres Gimenez,  Adams entered and promptly threw his first pitch behind Jose Ramirez. The lead was cut to 3-2 when the Guardians scored off an error by shortstop Nick Allen, and Blackburn’s potential win officially vanished when Naylor’s single off Allen drove in a tying run.

The A’s jumped out to a 2-0, first-inning lead via J.J. Bleday’s RBI triple and Seth Brown’s single that scored Bleday. Esteury Ruiz scored the initial run after leading off with an infield single and stealing second. That marked only A’s second lead all season. Their first was short-lived, having gone ahead 3-2 in Saturday’s third inning, only for the Guardians to answer with three runs in the fourth inning to spark their 12-3 rout.

Sunday’s lead grew to 3-0 in the fourth, as Ruiz tripled down the right-field line and again scored on a Bleday hit, this time on a single to right.

“We need to add onto a lead to make things more comfortable,” Kotsay said, “but a win is a win.”

They’ll try for the next one against the Red Sox. First pitch Monday is set for 6:40 p.m.

“The Red Sox coming to town is always exciting,” Langeliers said. “But’s it’s the big leagues and, in my head, I’m excited to play anybody.”

NOTES

The A’s claimed infielder Tyler Nevin off waivers from the Baltimore Orioles, while designating pitcher Adrián Martínez for assignment. Martinez went 4-8 with a 5.51 ERA in 34 appearances (13 starts) the previous two seasons.

Nevin, 26, is the oldest son of former big-leaguer Phil Nevin. A 2015 first-round draft pick by the Colorado Rockies, he made his Major League debut in 2021 with the Orioles. Primarily a third baseman, he’s batted .203 in 266 career at-bats (five home runs, 29 RBI) between the Orioles (2021-22) and the Detroit Tigers (2023). He played 41 games for the Tigers last year when he wasn’t splitting time at Triple-A Toledo (.326 batting average, 15 home runs, 58 RBI).

City officials plan to propose a five-year, $97 million extension of the team’s lease with an opt-out after three years, according to documents obtained by ESPN and ABC7. Even if the team leaves after three years, the city’s proposal would require the A’s to pay the full amount.

That creates a significant gulf between what the city is asking and what the A’s have offered — a two-year deal worth $17 million, according to ESPN’s report, which stated that the current lease is $1.5 million per year. If they stay the full five years, the annual cost would be $19.4 million; if they opt out, it would be $32.3 million.

A major incentive for the A’s to stay in Oakland is the reported $67 million in annual revenue from the team’s deal to broadcast games on NBC Sports California. If the team were to leave for Sacramento, one of two cities it has targeted outside of Oakland and Las Vegas, it could potentially continue broadcasting games on that channel for at least a portion of that deal.

This week’s meeting will be the third in a series of discussions since the sides began extension talks in February.

The opt-out after three years would align with the A’s targeted date of opening their proposed stadium on the Las Vegas Strip in time for the 2028 season, though the Tropicana still sits on that site. The casino is set to close Tuesday as organizers begin preparing to demolish it, but the team still could be delayed by legal challenges to the $380 million in public funding earmarked for the stadium, which would be MLB’s smallest.

Oakland also asks that the A’s sell their 50% share of the Coliseum as part of the deal. Additionally, the city plans to ask MLB to commit to a year-long exclusive window to negotiate for an expansion team if and when the league does add franchises or a vote to leave the A’s brand in Oakland. A third alternative, per ESPN, would be to facilitate the team’s sale to a local buyer, but Fisher has said repeatedly that he does not plan to sell the A’s, despite fans’ protests.

OAKLAND — Fremont native Steven Kwan homered and reached base four times, and the Cleveland Guardians had 15 hits in a 12-3 rout of the Oakland Athletics before a Saturday afternoon crowd of just 5,425.

Six Guardians stole bases off Kyle McCann, a 26-year-old catcher making his major league debut.

Cleveland’s Stephen Vogt tied Al Lopez in 1951 as the only managers to start their Cleveland careers 3-0.

The A’s, meanwhile, have lost the first three games of the season for just the second time in 28 years. Oakland started the 2021 season with a six-game losing streak.

Oakland’s woes contributed to the Guardians scoring six or more runs in the first three games of the season for the just the fourth time in franchise history.

“Everything’s kind of clicking,” Kwan said. “We’re playing Guardians baseball, taking extra bags, stealing bases. It’s been a lot of fun.”

Kwan, a former Washington High star, has been able to spend time with family this weekend, including visiting his newborn nephew for the first time.

“Those are the things that let you detach from the game,” Kwan said. “Obviously, it’s a fun game, but it’s also really stressful.”

The A’s, who have announced plans to move to Las Vegas for the 2028 season, have drawn 22,784 in their first three home games for an average of 7,595.

“From baserunning to defense to some walks, it kind of all adds up to a crappy day,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said.

There have been too many days like that for the A’s, who are now 14-53 in day games since the start of last season.

Cleveland trailed 3-2 before scoring three runs in the fourth, two each in the fifth and sixth, and then one in the sixth to burst ahead 8-3.

“Our guys punched back every time,” Vogt said. “I thought it just showed the grit. The way that these guys have battled and the at-bats that they put together, it was great to see.”

Nick Sandlin (1-0) struck out two in a hitless fifth in relief of Tanner Bibee, who allowed three runs, six hits in four innings. Bibee matched his career high with five walks.

Cleveland’s Cade Smith, a 24-year-old right-hander, pitched two hitless innings with five strikeouts and a walk in his major league debut.

Vogt praised Bibee for getting through four innings despite his command being off.

“We needed those innings out of him today, especially with the way the pen was situated going into the game,” Vogt said. “And then the offense picked us up.”

JP Sears (0-1) gave up five runs and six hits in 3 2/3 innings. Sears went 5-14 last year as the A’s finished a major league-worst 50-112.

Gabriel Arias hit a tying single and Austin Hedges followed with a sacrifice fly in the go-ahead fourth.

A throwing error by Oakland shortstop Nick Allen led to a pair of unearned runs.

UP NEXT

A’s RHP Paul Blackburn (4-7, 4.83 ERA in 2023) faces Guardians RHP Carlos Carrasco (3-6, 6.80 ERA in 2023) this afternoon.

Ramirez, an All-Star each of the past three seasons, hit a two-run homer as part of a three-run first inning for the Guardians. Giménez (3-for-3, two walks) hit a pair of RBI doubles, while Will Brennan added an RBI single for Cleveland.

“That’s why he’s José Ramirez,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said. “He’s a professional and he caught a fastball up and hooked it out. We made the error in the first that ended up leading to another run.

“But after that, I thought we played a good, clean game for the most part. Our at-bats got better as the game got on.”

A total of 17,359 fans have shown up for the first two games in Oakland this season. A crowd of 3,837 fans was announced for Friday’s game, after 13,522 fans attended opening night Thursday, with thousands more in the parking lot protesting the A’s proposed move to Las Vegas.

Guardians manager Stephen Vogt, who played in Oakland for five-plus seasons during his career as a player, said his team wasn’t affected by the small crowd.

“Obviously, there’s a lot going on here in Oakland,” Vogt said. “I feel for the fans, but we’re focused on us and we’re focused on playing our game, no matter how many people are here.”

Cleveland southpaw Logan Allen earned the win in his 2024 debut, allowing three runs over five-plus innings, after a 2023 rookie campaign where he posted a 3.81 ERA in 24 starts.

Oakland newcomer J.D. Davis hit two solo shots to record his first homers since being signed as a free agent on March 16. It marked the third two-homer game of Davis’ career and first since July 17, 2021.

“They don’t give out home runs up here,” Davis said. “To get two tonight was special, but at the end of the day, we lost, and that’s all that matters.”

“This park plays big to center, and he put a charge into both of those balls,” Kotsay said of Davis. “We know he’s got that type of power. It’s nice to see it and hopeful to keep him right where he is and locked in and for him to have a great year.”

A’s outfielder Esteury Ruiz and catcher Shea Langeliers each added sacrifice flies.

A’s right-hander Ross Stripling was charged with five runs (four earned) over five innings in his first start since being acquired via trade this offseason.

Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase, who led the majors in saves each of the past two seasons, pitched a scoreless ninth to pick up his first save of the season.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Guardians: LHP prospect Joey Cantillo is expected to miss eight-to-10 weeks with a hamstring injury.

UP NEXT

Guardians RHP Tanner Bibee (10-4, 2.94 ERA in 2023) faces A’s LHP JP Sears (5-14, 4.54 in 2023) on Saturday.

Stripling, then 24, was a promising prospect fighting to earn a spot as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ No. 5 starter after coming off a season with a 2.82 earned run average in 127.2 innings between High-A and Double-A.

During that recovery time, Stripling, who is scheduled to start tonight for the Oakland A’s against the Cleveland Guardians, made strides toward a backup plan if his playing career didn’t pan out – working in personal finance.

The Texas A&M graduate with a degree in business finance did not originally plan to go down that route.

After growing up in Southlake, Texas, Stripling enrolled at A&M for its highly esteemed engineering program. After a while, he decided to switch gears and pursue a finance degree. He said he enjoyed the way finances looked toward the future instead of the past.

The initial interest came from his family. Through the years, Stripling slowly gained knowledge from both of his grandfathers who actively invested in the stock market.

“I just learned about it from talking to them and picking their brains,” he said. “I invested my own signing bonus (of $130,000) when I signed. Not that it was anything crazy, but that kind of got my feet wet with investing.”

It all came together when Stripling was sidelined for the 2014 season and started making progress toward securing his financial licenses.

“The guy that my mom’s dad invested with in Houston just kind of fielded a call from my grandfather saying, ‘Hey, my grandson has a lot of free time on his hands right now. He’s maybe looking for a fallback plan if baseball doesn’t work. Do you have anything for him?’’’ Stripling said.

“I didn’t know what to expect. I walk in, like all dressed up and have no idea what to expect, and he’s just like, ‘You know, the best thing I can do is probably get you licensed. You’d have to take your Series 7 (General Securities Representative Exam) and (Series) 66 (Uniform Combined State Law Exam) to make you a licensed money manager.’”

The plan was for Stripling to go back to baseball and, whether he was successful or not, build a network of potential clients.

Stripling, who arrived to the A’s in a February trade with the Giants, has followed through on that objective. From his debut in 2016 to the present day, Stripling has worked with a variety of people and still actively manages 11 accounts.

Of course, baseball has worked out well for Stripling, a former All-Star: He has earned nearly $36 million in his career and is the A’s top-earning player at $9.25 million (plus $3.25 million from the Giants).

The issue of professional athlete money management is not new. Fifteen years ago, Sports Illustrated published a groundbreaking story that, through interviews with players, agents and others, reported 78 percent of former NFL players had gone bankrupt or were under financial stress within two years of retirement and 60 percent of NBA players were broke within five years of retirement.

And former major leaguer Jody Gerut estimates that 70 percent of foreign-born Latino players in MLB endure financial hardship within four years of retirement.

Stripling believes baseball players are generally pretty good with money. Those with large signing bonuses often seek professional advice right away, while lower-round picks look for instruction immediately on how to budget in order to survive.

In his eight years at the major league level, he has guided many of his teammates: Top-level pros may make large yearly sums, but most athletes have relatively short careers, so financial literacy is important.

“I’ve actively tried to make sure that people are aware that I have that skill set,” Stripling said. “I’ve definitely tried to make sure that there’s an open line of communication with me and a lot of guys pick my brain.”

While some fans bunkered in the parking lot to protest the A’s planned relocation to Las Vegas, there wasn’t much for the home fans to cheer amid the announced crowd of 13,522.

“I would have liked to seen all those guys inside the stadium tonight. But they’re fighting for something they believe in,” A’s starting pitcher Alex Wood said. “As long as they’re supporting us, whether it’s inside the stadium or watching the game outside, Oakland has such a rich history of baseball and you see how much it means to people.”

That was officially the seventh-smallest attendance in the A’s Opening Day history, although that includes debuts limited by the COVID pandemic in 2020 (no fans) and 2021 (10,436). Ironically, the A’s record for lowest attendance of a season opener came in 1996 when 7,294 showed in Las Vegas, where that series against Toronto got moved because of the Coliseum’s “Mt. Davis” construction for the Raiders.

Seven of the A’s first nine batters struck out, and Guardians’ starter Shane Bieber totaled 11 strikeouts while shutting out the A’s on four hits through six innings.

“We didn’t have an answer for Bieber tonight,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said. “That was pretty good. We were swinging at the right pitches. Outside of JJ (Bleday, 2-for-4), he pretty much dominated tonight up and down the lineup. He has that ability and there’s a reason he won the Cy Young in ’20.”

Bieber’s exit allowed for some hope during the seventh-inning stretch, at which point the crowd also came alive trying to catch baseballs being thrown down to them by the A’s new television-broadcast crew of Dallas Braden and Jenny Cavnar.

Wood, formerly of the cross-bay Giants, threw a 1-2-3 first inning. A five-run rally in the fourth inning ended his debut, however, and the crowd was large enough to serenade Wood with boos after a two-run double by No. 9 hitter Brayan Rocchio, for a 6-0 deficit.

“It was one of those games you leave and feel your stuff was good and should have had a better result,” Wood said. “… It was super cool and it’s a big honor to take the ball on Opening Day. You wish you could win at home on Opening Day. But baseball’s back and I’m excited for the year.”

It was the A’s first Opening Day shutout loss since 2014, when Cleveland won 2-0 here. And this one made for a victorious debut for Guardians’ manager Stephen Vogt, who ended his playing career here two years ago with a home run for the A’s in his final at-bat.

“It was really a special night overall to be back in Oakland, to see people I care about and love and have been such a big part of my history,” said Vogt, who had about 30 friends and family in attendance from his native Visalia. “And then for our guys to come out and play the way they did, it was just a real special night.”

Chants of “Sell-The-Team” faintly followed in the fifth inning, just over an hour into the season. The occasional “Let’s-Go-A’s” chant proved just as futile. Some of those fans presumably ditched the outside gathering to fill pockets of seats around the Coliseum’s first and second decks.

“It was pretty awesome for what we were told was going on, to still see the Oakland faithful come out and support us inside the stadium,” first baseman Ryan Noda said, who further complemented the outfield fans who are “always going to show up and we love that from them.”

“Good for them. Good for them,” Noda added of those who left the boycott. “We just want the fans in the stadium cheering for us, pushing one way with us. That’s all we care about. Anything else is out of our control.”

The A’s anemic offense nearly broke through against Bieber in the middle innings, only to be denied. In the fifth, Lawrence Butler got tagged out at third when he slid past the bag on Nick Allen’s two-out single. In the sixth, Bleday reached on a two-out double, then designated hitter Brent Rooker flew out short of the centerfield warning track.

Back-to-back, second-inning doubles by David Fry and Tyler Freeman put the A’s in a 1-0 hole. The A’s sought to answer as J.D. Davis reached on a one-out, opposite-field single in the ex-Giants’ cross-bay debut; Bieber struck out the next two batters he faced, giving him six Ks through two frames.

No home runs were hit, but a ninth-inning, RBI triple by José Ramírez hit the right-field wall for a 7-0 deficit.

The night wasn’t without defensive highlights: Right fielder Seth Brown made a diving catch in the ninth for the Guardians’ final out; first baseman Ryan Noda made a sliding catch on Steven Kwan’s infield popup of Wood’s first pitch, and, second baseman Zack Gelof repeatedly flashed grace by cutting off a couple of grounders up the middle.

The A’s first hit of the season: Bleday’s opposite-field, broken-bat single in the first, but Rooker followed with a strikeout, the same fate that Noda and Gelof endured in the A’s opening at-bats.

The shutout was the fourth time in Oakland history the A’s were blanked at home to start the season.

NOTE: Losing 8-0 tied a team record for the most lopsided shutout defeat in Oakland history, matching the mark from 53 years ago when Vida Blue was shelled by the Washington Senators in an 8-0 loss, giving up four runs in 1 2/3 innings. It’s difficult to envision the A’s or their starting pitcher Thursday bouncing back like the team did in 1971. Not only did Oakland go on to win the American League West for the first time in its history, Blue turned in what remains one of the most dominant years in baseball history. Blue, who died at 73 on May 6, won both the AL Most Valuable Player Award and Cy Young Award in 1971 while going 24-8 with a 1.82 ERA. Blue had 301 strikeouts, 24 complete games and eight shutouts that year.