One Mistake

that's really all we can ask for. It sucks that it didn't work out, but this is really one of those games when you say "You can't win them all."

Even if we had every single player available and were 4 games in the lead, you sometimes lose this kind of game when you really feel like your starter deserved the W.

Poor Kirk! :(

I reserve my angry faces for: Kotsay (4 relatively poopy at bats) and Scoot. DJ also gets one for yet another bad at bat (even though no one can touch Nathan) because it's another in the long line of "Why is he still up here?" moments.

Has he gone underground? Is he even in the ballpark these days? I haven't heard anything except some second-hand mention that he might not be back till ASB. I think his injury has hurt the team the most, or at least as much as Harden's. Any diagnosis beyond tendinitis?

Disappointing loss, but you can't get your knickers in a twist  about this game. We got 25 consecutive scoreless innings out of our pitchers. Not bad.

BTW -- Caught Slusser on KNBR this afternoon when the Giants game was rained out. (I only tuned in because I was curious how the New Yorkers were greeting Mr. Potato Head. I do NOT listen to Giants' games normally.) Anyway, Ralph and Tom were bashing on the A's, saying how they weren't going to be able to dig themselves out of their hole this year, and that Thomas stinks, and Crosby stinks, and Haren stinks, and blah blah blah. Susan -- God she's a sweety, she never sounds annoyed -- politely corrected them on some of their idiocies and sounded realistically optimistic about the team. She thought things would come together, although she was most concerned about the bullpen.

Why  is everyone letting the team off of the hook, just because K.S. pitched well.  I undersrtand Santana is great, but Kotsay, Chavez, and Kendall (among others) didn't have a single good AB.  Don't get me started on Dan "small" Johnson...

However in the end, the culprit is the same:  a bad offensive team combined with a depleated pitching staff, combined with inept managing.  Ka Ka must go.  

He made one of the Cardinal mistakes while managing:  never let your starter stay in for the lose when he has pitched his guts out.  K.S. doesn't have 100 pitches in the tank.  Period.  Ka Ka leaving him in to face Morneau is indefensible.  He can't hit lefties.  Granted the bullpen is terrible these days, but a reliever should have started the 8th.  Everyone could see K.S. was figured out by then.  The base hit to lead the inning off was arocket.

Batting DJ was also a mistake.  Melhuse is a better fastball hitter, and has more experience pinch hitting.  Even the A's recent wins (not many) have not been well played.  The Twins and Royals offenses are actually worse than the A's, and save for some show of power the offense has been non existant.

Sorry for the long rant, just pissed at the game and Ka Ka, and rubbed wrong by the cheery tone of posters.

to live with excuses, but................    When your long relief guy starts a game against one of the best "Aces" i n the game (and he is) and it comes down to one run...... be pleased.   I too would have loved to see a 1-0 for the good, but I have to rank tonight with the last two days for tun around value.  Yes, we could have done more at the plate, but we didn't.  The Capt. made a single mistake against the Dr. - that's a good game folks.  Don't accept the loss, but don't overlook the performance.  

I leave him in for the eighth.  He was the best pitcher available at that moment.  He was in a groove, pitch count was low, bullpen is depleted by injuries and has been suspect.  Robot managing (starter goes 5-7 innings, bring in lefty to face lefty, closer throws the ninth; basically the GM who filled the roster ends up managing, in a way, more than the on-field manager) is boring, overrated, and has not been too effective for the A's anyway.  A "cardinal" rule that precedes the cardinal rule of "never let a pitcher who pitched well lose the game" is "don't take a pitcher who is in a groove out of the game too early."  You don't know if the guy out of the pen will be on that night.  Any pitcher with sac (which is the kind of pitcher you want on your staff) does not want to come out of a game for fear that he might lose a good performance.  He wants to finish the game.  

Santana was lights out.  The A's hitters failed to make adjustments (shorten swings, go other way, bunt for base hit, etc.).  Sarloos made one bad pitch, the Twins capitalized.  That's baseball.  You have to "give in" at the plate to a dominant starter.  That is the only way you can beat him on a night in which he is on.  

Santana's stuff is known to produce some ugly swings, but Kotsay's self-defense swing was a thing of beauty.  

might not be able to come back from 5 games out?
they just don't seem to have it this year.