FanPost

A Dose of Reality

compared to baseball girl's "incredible feat" of winning three of four in Fenway, which would have been a more pedestrian split but for Mark Loretta.

  1. They did, on the whole play well. Pitched well with one big exception-- Haren-- fielded well, hit well. Give credit where credit is due.
  2. Did their standing in the division improve? Depends on how you measure it. It did over two teams, but not vs. the team I, and i suspect most A's fans are most worried about. angels came out of three straight vs. us with a sweep of the DRays-- sure, the competition was much weaker, but they've won 11 of 12. Escobar going on DL may or may not be good news-- he appears to be the one starter who's pretty hittable these days;
  3. What is the deal with Eric Chavez?? hopefully he's going to go on the DL. This offense has been powered largely by four players (assuming the word "powered" is even appropriate, which seem dubious): Thomas, Kielty and/or Payton, and Swisher. To see Ellis, Kendall and Kotsay all start to ring the bell-- plus Bradley's reemergence-- takes some of the pressure off the "play Chavy, even though he's subpar, because we can't afford not to" chorus. Sit him down-- even if it's for a month-- to get him strong for the stretch.
  4. Blanton did pitch a very nice game. The starters were adequate in this series; Zito survived for 5 innings, thanks to Bradley; same for Loaiza; Haren did not. The real story of this series was the pen, which was absoutely stellar when it had to be. We may be about a week or so from saying it is "deep and healthy"-- two words which simply couldn't be used as we ran every single RiverCaT in and out of here for most of the past three months;
  5. Nice to see Swisher "up in the lineup"? I don't get that reference. he batted 4th subbing for Thomas. Most of the time he hits higher in the lineup-- 2nd. Maybe baseballgirl meant "down", not up;
They won a nice series, but that's all it is. When they've won four or five in a row like this-- then we can start getting more confident. as for now, we wait to see what the LA doctors think is the solution for Richard the Lionhearted/, and we wonder just how good we can reasonably expect Jason Windsor to be.