The Athletics scored first and early in all four games of this week’s series against the Red Sox, and still managed to lose three of four to the visiting Boston ball club.

Such comebacks would’ve been unthinkable a month ago. Even with Thursday’s 5-4 series-clinching victory, the Red Sox are just 21-37 when opponents score first.

“I just think we went through a long stretch in the beginning of the season, where games like that we were not coming back,” interim manager Chad Tracy told reporters postgame. “And once we started to play better baseball and realized after a few of them that we can do that, we finally got ourselves to a place where they feel like, ‘Just keep fighting, we’re not out of the game, it’s close. We’re not out of the game, it takes one swing.’

“Once they believe that, it doesn’t mean you’re going to do it all the time. But you give yourself a chance.”

Sonny Gray struggled to command several pitches in his expansive mix, but managed to complete seven innings nonetheless (97 pitches, 63 strikes). The veteran Red Sox starter, who began his career with the then-Oakland A’s from 2013-16, yielded four earned runs on seven hits, walked two.

A’s batters swung at 12 of Gray’s sinkers, but whiffed just once. His cutter produced seven swings, zero whiffs.

Gray found himself in hot water in a two-run bottom of the fourth, but locked down the later innings. Four of his five strikeouts in the contest came on the last four batters he faced.

“The big assignment of tonight was, keep us in the game and pitch us deep, because we were fairly thin in the bullpen with some guys down,” Tracy said, clarifying Garrett Whitlock, Justin Slaten and Tyron Guerrero were all unavailable. “So he did both those things, kept us in the game.”

Boston’s batters continued to struggle against one of the most hittable pitching staffs in the league. Rookie starter Mason Barnett turned in his deepest performance of the year, five innings that were far cleaner than the three earned runs will suggest to future perusers of old pitching lines.

Barnett yielded four hits, one walk and struck out six, but was pitching a perfect game until Ceddanne Rafaela singled with one out in the fourth.

The Red Sox falling behind early was one of several recurring themes of the series. Andruw Monasterio committing an error and atoning with his bat was another. Fresh off an error and game-winning two-run homer in the tenth inning of Wednesday’s 4-2 victory, Monasterio committed his third error of the series in the bottom of the third. The fielding miscue allowed Nick Kurtz to reach safely while Carlos Cortes advanced to third, and set the stage for Jacob Wilson to give the A’s a 1-0 lead with an RBI single.

Monasterio answered back in his next at-bat, singling with one out to score Caleb Durbin, who received a leadoff hit-by-pitch. Monasterio advanced to second on Anthony Seigler’s two-out single, and Rafaela’s 27th double of the year brought both men home to tie the game.

The Red Sox again managed a solid number of baserunners, particularly given the 4 ⅓ perfect innings by Barnett, but struggled to make the most of them. They tallied eight hits, two walks and a hit-by-pitch, but were 2 for 6 with runners in scoring position and left five men on base.

Emotions ran high evident in the sixth inning when Willson Contreras and Masataka Yoshida opened with back-to-back singles and advanced to third and second, respectively on Durbin’s sacrifice bunt.

Jarren Duran flew out 245 feet to left field on the second pitch from reliever Scott Blewett, too shallow for Contreras to tag up and score the go-ahead run. The not-so-fleet-of-foot Contreras faked home, but stayed at third. Duran appeared to be shouting “run” as he raised his arms several times in Contreras’ direction.

Chad Tracy maintained that Duran “was just cursing himself … just upset with himself for not getting the run in.”

Duran gave a cryptic answer.

“That’s nothing,” Duran said. “It’s something that, within the team, that we have, that we work on, and it’s nothing. Like, you guys don’t need to know. Nobody needs to know. That’s something between us and the team, that we know what it’s about. So that doesn’t really matter.”

Asked if he’s frustrated with himself, Duran said, “Yeah. I (expletive) suck. Of course I’m (expletive) pissed at myself.”

Back-to-back solo home runs by Wilyer Abreu and Contreras off Luis Medina re-tied and took the lead for Boston in the top of the eighth.

“Obviously we know we’re fighting back, and then Abreu electrifies the dugout with the first swing, and then while you’re doing congratulations there, you turn your head and you see another one going out,” Tracy said, “and that was, between the two of them, the dugout was as electric as, it was huge.”

The Boston bullpen was the glue all week in Sacramento, pitching to a combined 0.73 ERA over the quartet of games.

“Second day in a row in big spots,” Tracy said of Greg Weissert, who closed Wednesday’s extra-inning victory and a scoreless eighth on Thursday. “Huge, huge contributor to two wins for us the last two days.”

For the second night in a row, Aroldis Chapman pitched around a threatening extra-base hit in the ninth. No extra innings necessary this time around.

The Red Sox are 57-51, including 20-4 in July, and have won seven consecutive series for the first time in over four years. Their 25-5 record in their last 30 games matches the best mark over a 30-game span in franchise history, most recently matched by the 2018 championship team.

“We’re resilient,” Contreras said. “We’re not giving up, and we’re finding a way to win games, which is important.”

“We lost that streak, but it feels like we’re about to get in another one,” Contreras continued, referring to the 15-game win streak that ended last week, one victory shy of breaking the 1946 team’s franchise record. “This is a really good group, a special group, relentless, resilient, and it’s about keeping that energy from now on.”

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