OAKLAND, Calif. — One thing that manager Ron Washington won’t do is admonish one of his players for giving maximum effort while trying to make a play.

That’s what Nelson Cruz was doing Tuesday night as he tried to get the Texas Rangers back in the dugout in the second inning.

A line drive was headed toward him in right field. A catch would end the inning. A dive and a miss, though, and Oakland would likely break a scoreless tie.

Cruz did miss, and the Athletics wound up with two runs on the play after an errant throw home. That sequence proved to be the key element in 9-1 loss at McAfee Coliseum.

Oakland scored five runs in the seventh to break open a 3-1 game that could have been a tied contest had the second inning played out differently.

“If we don’t make that mistake there in the second inning, it’s a 1-1 ballgame,” manager Ron Washington said. “He tried to make a play and didn’t make it.”

Washington would have liked to have seen Cruz play it safe on the Daric Barton liner with Jack Cust at first base, but the All-Star raced in and tried to make a diving, backhanded catch.

The ball glanced off the base of Cruz’s glove. Marlon Byrd backed up the play and threw the ball to cutoff man Ian Kinsler as Cust was trying to score. Kinsler’s throw home was wild, and it bounded away far enough to allow Barton to come home.

“If he stays back and lets it bounce, we keep them at first and second,” Washington said. “The next guy (No. 8 hitter Cliff Pennington) pops out, and we go into the sixth in a 1-1 tie.”

Right-hander Brandon McCarthy (7-4) and Neftali Feliz kept the Rangers within striking distance, but because the Rangers were trailing, they opted to go with Willie Eyre instead of Darren O’Day to pitch the seventh.

Eyre, though, had his worst outing of the season. Six of the seven A’s he faced had hits, five of them scored, and the only out he recorded came on a sacrifice bunt after allowing a leadoff double to Eric Patterson.

The wide final margin overshadows a better showing from McCarthy, who went 5 1/3 innings and allowed three runs (two earned). It was a nice rebound from his previous start, in which Oakland got him for four runs in three innings last week.

“Last time I wasn’t good from top to bottom,” said McCarthy, who fell to 1-3 against the A’s this season. “I threw a little better. There were some bad pitches, but I was a little more competitive.”

The Rangers’ offense, which had scored in double-digits in four straight road games, struggled again against right-hander Trevor Cahill (10-12).

The rookie allowed only one hit over seven innings six days earlier, but the Rangers collected six hits against him Tuesday. Cahill, though, yielded only one run on a David Murphy double in the sixth.

Cahill survived thanks to three double plays, two of which he induced on grounders in the fourth and fifth. The last came in the sixth, when Murphy was thrown out at third on a close play while trying to tag up and advance on a fly-out by Byrd.

“If you can’t do it in rhythm, you don’t do it,” Washington said. “He tried to make a play. It didn’t happen.”

That was a theme for the Rangers on Tuesday night.

How Rangers hitters fared: David Murphy had the Rangers’ only extra-base hit, an RBI double in the sixth. He and Ivan Rodriguez each had two hits. Ian Kinsler went 0-for-4 and has only three hits in his past 30 at-bats. He hasn’t homered in 19 games.

How Rangers pitchers fared: Brandon McCarthy and Neftali Feliz got the Rangers through six innings down 3-1, but the A’s jumped Willie Eyre for five runs in the seventh. He faced seven batters, and six of them had hits. The lone out he recorded was on a sacrifice bunt.