The Houston Astros (64-35) landed in the Bay Area riding a big wave after defeating the best team in baseball, according to the records in the New York Yankees and the hottest team at the time with the longest winning streak in the Seattle Mariners.

Houston was 5-0 to start the second half of the season, rolling into Oakland (38-63) to play the A’s, who was 30 games of first place in the American League West Division.

As they boarded the plane headed back home, they must be scratching their heads, wondering how they were swept for the first time this season by a team who is 25 games under .500.

“It’s discouraging, but it’s not concerning,” said Astros manager Dusty Baker. “Every team in America is going to lose three in a row, it just didn’t happen here in a while. You don’t want panic to set in on three games. I don’t like it, you don’t like it, nobody likes it, but you’ve got to wear it and you’ve got to live with it.”

Somewhere along the way, the A’s have become the problem that the Astros cannot solve. Since July 8, Houston has had a 3-6 record in nine games against Oakland. They lost the series 2-1 at Minute Maid Park heading into the All-Star break.

Getting swept in the three-game series coming out of the break is not so concerning for Houston, who still has a ten-game lead over Seattle, who will be visiting Minute Maid for a four-game series starting Thursday. The way they were defeated may cause Baker to reassess some things after looking at the series footage with his coaches.

Houston’s starting pitchers were not as stellar as they had been against the Yankees and Mariners. Combine that with the fact that they left a lot of runners in scoring position and only scored ten runs against one of the worst pitching staffs in the majors, and you must wonder if the Astros played down to their competition.

Or did they come into the series thinking that having Astros on the front of their jerseys would win them at least two games?

Either way, Houston must regroup and make sure they left whatever bad vibes they had during the Oakland series in the Bay area. If not, they will face massive criticism from the local media and fanbase if they allow the Mariners to fly out of Houston trailing the Astros by single digits in the standings for first place in the A.L. West.

“You’ve got to be ready to play,” said Astros third baseman Alex Bregman after the final game in Oakland. “We didn’t play our best baseball the last three days, but we’ll go home and look forward to doing that tomorrow.”