It wasn't a good day to be an A's pitcher. With the exception of Andrew Bailey, every other pitcher the A's sent to the mound gave up at least one run today. Of the other five, Edgar Gonzalez fared the worst (8 hits, 7 runs allowed), while Brad Kilby fared the "best" (1 IP, 1 run allowed). The other three pitchers, Jerry Blevins, Derrick Gordon and starter Dana Eveland, were all varying degrees of bad. All in all, they combined to give up an astounding 23 hits and 20 runs total to the Cubs.

The A's offense, meanwhile, squandered some early game opportunities and only pushed out two runs until a garbage-time rally in the bottom of the 9th plated 3 more for the Green and Gold.

All in all, the A's drop their 6th straight game and at this point have to be just a little bit concerned about the state of their pitching staff. "Opening Night" starter Dana Eveland certainly didn't improve his stock with his early inning drubbing and Edgar Gonzalez, who many thought had a good shot at grabbing a rotation spot out of Spring Training, looks to have worked his way out of that conversation with his latest mound misadventures. In the bullpen, Jerry Blevins continues to look very shaky. As Nico pointed out in the Game Thread, we all know it's Spring Training and all, but it would still be nice to see the JerBle occasionally get a few batters out consecutively.  We can see now why Beane was trolling for some left-handed relief help on the open market as recently as a wekk ago.

Well, with another rotation hopeful seemingly dropping by the wayside, it seems increasingly likely that at least one and maybe both of Cahill/Anderson will break camp with the big league team. Read into that what you will. Jason Giambi at least thinks it's a good idea.

In other news, I just wanted to let everyone know that this will be the last day that I officially appear as a front-page writer on Athletics Nation.  In the past few weeks, I've had a bunch of developments in my personal life (engagement, graduate school stuff) that I've come to realize will take a lot of my free time over the next few weeks/months/years. I simply cannot continue to commit quality time to this blog, and in fairness to the community and the other front page writers, I thought it would be best to surrender my Monday slot to someone with more time to share with all of you. So, without further ado, please welcome 67Marquez when he takes over the Game Threads next Monday! I'll still be around as much as I can on the community and will be sharing my thoughts with the everyone as often as I get the chance! Cheers and go A's!