THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST. PETERSBURG - Scott Kazmir and two relievers combined on a two-hitter in the left-hander's first start since winning the All-Star game, and the Tampa Bay Rays beat the struggling Oakland Athletics 4-0 on Monday night.
Rookie Evan Longoria homered for the third consecutive game and drove in two runs, helping the AL East leaders win for the third time in four days following a season-worst seven-game losing streak that briefly dropped them out of first place.
The A's have lost six in a row for their longest skid since they dropped nine straight from July 6-17, 2007. They've been held to nine runs during the slide.
Kazmir pitched a scoreless 15th inning on one day's rest to get the win in last Tuesday's All-Star game at Yankee Stadium. The Rays gave him an extra day to get ready for his first start since July 13, and the left-hander responded with his longest outing since he went eight innings to beat Texas on June 6.
The A's were limited to Ryan Sweeney's one-out single in the first and Jack Cust's two-out single in the fourth, as well as four walks over Kazmir's seven innings. The Rays ace struck out nine before being replaced by Grant Balfour.
J.P. Howell pitched a perfect ninth, finishing Tampa Bay's ninth shutout of the season before a crowd of just 12,428. The weak-hitting A's have been blanked nine times, second-most in the AL.
Longoria had two hits off Dana Eveland (7-7), an RBI single in the third and his 19th homer in the fifth. Willy Aybar also hit a solo homer off the Oakland starter, who allowed four runs and seven hits in five innings.
Kazmir threw 104 pitches in six innings during his last start before the All-Star break, and the Rays had hoped he wouldn't be called on to pitch for the AL in New York.
The 24-year-old lefty said he felt fine after throwing 14 pitches and becoming the seventh-youngest pitcher to win an All-Star game, however the team didn't want to take any unnecessary chances and pushed his first post-break start back an additional day.
Eveland pitched a 3-hitter for his first career complete game against Tampa Bay on May 21, but wasn't nearly as effective this time. The left-hander gave up Longoria's RBI single, Aybar's homer and Akinori Iwamura's run-scoring single in the fourth to fall behind 3-0.
Longoria's homer made it 4-0. And the way Oakland has been hitting lately, that was a lot to expect the A's to overcome.
Falling to 0-4 on a six-game road trip that began with a weekend sweep at Yankee Stadium, the A's have now scored one or fewer runs in four of their last six games and 28 times overall - four more than their total for all of last season.
PITCHER SUSPENDED: Rays minor league pitcher Matthew Walker has been suspended 50 games by Major League Baseball Monday after testing positive for an amphetamine, which is on the list of banned performance-enhancing substances.
Walker was taken by Tampa Bay in the 10th round of the 2004 amateur draft. The 21-year-old right-hander has appeared in 22 games, including nine starts, for Class-A Vero Beach this season, and has record of 4-7 with a 4.86 ERA.
