WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. >> David Festa fell behind 2-0 to four of the first six batters he faced on Thursday. All four of them scored, three coming on a Max Muncy home run. But he settled down in the second inning and, it seemed, for a brief second, as if he could be on the Zebby Matthews path.

On Friday in Seattle, Matthews allowed four runs in the first inning and then absolutely dominated for his next six. Unfortunately for Festa and the Twins, that didn’t happen on Thursday and the shaky first inning was instead a sign of things to come for the young right-hander the Twins’ 14-3 loss to the Athletics at Sutter Health Park.

“I thought the command just wasn’t there,” Festa said. “I think overall execution was bad. I think I did a bad job of making a big pitch when I needed to. I think (there was) a lot of areas where I was bad today. It’s frustrating.”

The Athletics (24-40) had scored just eight runs in the first three games of the series combined and were riding a nine-game losing streak. They snapped that losing streak emphatically.Muncy’s home run was one of four on the day for the Athletics. Festa allowed three of them, including a pair in the third inning. After his departure, Jorge Alcala served up a grand slam, which was Tyler Soderstrom’s second home run of the day. All told, Soderstrom drove in six runs in the Athletics’ win.

“They hit some balls well today. We needed to be in the strike zone more, too,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We needed to attack early. We weren’t ahead of enough of them. If we’re going to work behind, it’s going to be a long day sometimes.”

For Festa, who gave up eight runs in 3? innings, it was a much different type of outing than the three he turned in during his call up earlier in the season. In those three starts for the Twins (34-28), he gave up a combined three runs in 13 innings pitched. He then returned to Class AAA St. Paul, where he battled some inflammation and missed a couple of starts before coming back and pitching well, earning the Twins’ Minor League Pitcher of the Month Award.

Festa was initially supposed to start for the Saints on Wednesday but instead was on a flight to Sacramento, taking the rotation spot of Pablo López, who suffered a shoulder injury on Tuesday night that will keep him out for two to three months.

That injury has opened up an opportunity for Festa, one of the most promising young arms in the organization and his first chance to make an impression this time around was clearly not what he wanted it to be.

“I need to be able to figure out the days I don’t have my command of things and I’m falling behind,” Festa said. “I need to find a way to still perform and I didn’t (Thursday). … A bad outing is going to happen from time to time. I need to do a better job of responding after that first inning.”

The Twins scored their first run of the day Matt Wallner’s third home run of the season and two more in the seventh on RBI knocks from Ty France and Brooks Lee. The loss caps off a 10-game road trip in which the Twins crossed the country, going from Tampa to Seattle to Sacramento and playing in two minor league parks along the way.

“We played a lot of really good baseball on the road trip,” Baldelli said. “(Thursday) was a tough day but overall pleased.”