...and damn can they make a baseball game look boring.

what were the baserunning gaffes tonight?

I had the pleasure of sitting behind home plate with Emperor Nobody tonight.

Well it was a hell of a game despite the outcome. There were definitely some bright spots.

First, let me say that Evan Longoria just killed that pitch in the 13th. I didn’t see it’s apex, but that thing took forever to come out of the sky. I mean hang time city. But the shot that Hinske hit was even more impressive. Just gone in a heartbeat, linedrive pulled out to right.

I thought Blanton looked sharp and I totally disagree with the 5 inning characterization.

The very small crowd blew up on both of Hurt’s blasts, the first of which was completely crushed to straight away center. Can’t imagine him hitting the ball any better than that.

Emil Brown looked great in at least two of his at bats. Crosby, Petit, Hannahan, Suzuki and Davis looked pretty bad in general. Davis’ has no approach, I mean pathetic. Hannahan looked crosbylike chasing stuff out of the strike zone. The team let Shields off the hook on a night when he did not have his best stuff.

And the baserunning. Ugh

thanks for pointing out that Blanton is a five inning pitcher. So many people think he is just a tough luck pitcher, and that his record is an anomaly, but he really is mediocre at best. His claim to the Ace role is the result of health (Harden), health (Gaudin), health (Duke) and a big question mark coming into the season (Eveland or Smith). Now we see he should be nowhere near the top of this rotation. In fact, despite his health, I would be tempted to send him to the bullpen and put Gaudin in the starting role (notwithstanding his crappy pitch tonight). I think Gaudin has much better stuff: better movement on all his pitches, more strikeouts, and the ability to go deeper into the games without having given up 10 hits in 5 innings.

I don’t feel like looking up the numbers this late, but last I checked Blanton’s whip was horrible. Perhaps Beane is hoping he’ll turn it around so he can trade fat Joe to some sucker NY team.

GPet fielded a hot grounder ranging far to his left, and threw out the runner from his knees, Barton caught a Cliff Floyd smash liner and Davis and Brown both made very solid running grabs. The JCOA did make one good catch at the wall, but botched several others. As someone around here said: “Jack, didn’t your Dad ever play catch with you?”

And, I heard a first-time heckle from a drunk 20-something woman - Hey Ump, get off yer knees—‘cuz yer blowin’ the game.” They’re always new to somebody, right?

It didn’t turn out well but it really was great to see the Hurt look like the Hurt. Blanton is what he is…he’s pitching like expected. I see no reason to rag on him.

as a “five inning pitcher” is that his only really valuable trait is being able to eat up innings like he eats up cupcakes. Joe Blanton saves a bullpen. He can give you 230 acceptable innings a season. That’s his value. Unfortunately, that means these kind of games happen sometimes.

Last night’s game was painful, but I fail to see how Blanton is taking the rap for it. He was victim of a terrible outfield, who did him no favors out there, even if nothing was ‘technically’ called an error, and who could have predicted the CATCHER would bunt and be on base right before a homerun. The Rays caught Hanny sleeping over at third (and really, why would you guard the line on a CATCHER), but the homerun was Blanton’s error. He did not pitch as badly as his line reflected though.

The A’s baserunning SUCKS. Suzuki really was awful at the plate and on base yesterday. Painful outcome, and wasted 2 HRs by Frank. I do love that he hit 2 homeruns though.

there were things to like, of course, such as Thomas’ two “no doubt” lined shots out of the park, nice defense by Petit, two innings of dominating 5 K pitching by Street, Barton’s blast to almost tie it in the 13th.

But there were also things NOT to like, including Davis’ awful attempt at bunting Crosby over in extra innings, ending up with a pop up out, doubling Crosby off first, and rendering Mike Sweeney’s pinch hit at bat with two away and no one on – instead of one away and a man on second – pretty meaningless.

All proceeds could go towards buying monkeyball a BIG fantasy world.

I had like 5 of those ketamine banana smoothies, and I got talked in to taking my feces resistant body armor off. The lady who does my laundry was PISSED!