The offensive struggles that have recently hindered the Gainesville A’s may have reached a climax.

The A’s (8-12) managed only four hits in a 11-1 loss to Dawsonville Post 247 on Monday in American Legion baseball action at Ivey-Watson Field.

The loss makes Gainesville 0-3 against Dawsonville this season. The two teams meet again Thursday at part of the A’s seven-game home stand.

“We’ve struggled a lot lately with hitting the ball and can’t seem to figure out what’s wrong with our batting,” A’s coach Clay Haynes said. “We’re not sure what the deal is.”

Gainesville kept Dawsonville scoreless through five innings before giving up seven runs in the sixth inning without responding to the deficit. Dawsonville finished the game with 15 total hits.

“It’s embarrassing to come out here and get beaten like this,” Haynes said. “It has nothing to do with physical ability, we have the physical ability.

“It’s in our head. We have to try to figure something out.”

Gainesville continues its home stand against Alpharetta at 7 p.m. Wednesday. Haynes hopes the home-field advantage will help his team erase its current hitting woes.

“We have a long home stand coming up, and hopefully the guys will get tired of being embarrassed,” Haynes said. “But the good thing about baseball is that there’s always tomorrow and the guys will be fired up to play.”

Gainesville’s lone run of the game came in the first inning off Trey Pinson’s RBI single that scored James Wilson. Pinson was 2-for-4 on the night and had half of his team’s hits.

A’s starter James Mills kept Gainesville ahead by a run after five scoreless innings, but gave up the first four runs in the sixth inning, when Dawsonville batted around the order and sent 11 batters to the plate. James Wilson came in for relief halfway through the inning, but allowed three more runs.

Blake Sargent tied the game at 1 after scoring from third base on a wild pitch. Dawsonville then took its first lead of the night when Shawn Baker, Jacob Barr, Devin Dunson and Austin Lark each had RBI singles, and batted in a total of seven runs.

Barr and Baker, Dawsonville’s first and second hitters in the lineup, had seven combined hits. Dunson, Sargent and Lark each had two hits on the night.

Lark scored another run with a double in the eighth inning, bringing his RBI total to three.

In addition to a solid night at the plate, Lark also pitched a complete game with eight strikeouts for Dawsonville.

Dunson finished the night with four RBIs after hitting a three-run home run in the ninth inning off A’s reliever Matt Pilgrim.