One Bad Inning, Ill-Timed Offense, and Tim Lincecum Spoil Mazzaro’s Outing

Randy Johnson is 13-9 in his career against the A’s with a 3.05 ERA. This year at home, Johnson is 4-2 with a 4.24 ERA.

Vin Mazzaro’s ERA is now 1.37 and has a 0.97 WHIP.

Mazzaro just needs to learn the art of “throwing less hard” when he’s in trouble. In the 5th, he did what most young pitchers do and tried to throw harder to Burriss, Lincecum, Rowand to get out of trouble and had less control plus his pitches were up. In the 6th, he was back to throwing free and easy in the low 90s, with great sinking action on his pitches.

Overall, though, he really impressed me. And the A’s really missed Barton at 1B tonight.

With that lineup against Lincecum the A’s had no chance tonight. The good news is that while Mazzaro wasn’t great he still had a solid outing and so far you really can’t complain about anything he’s done.

Hopefully tomorrow the boys can get it going against the ancient unit and try and win the series Sunday.

ESPN highlighted our game. CraZy!

Very tight action, pitchers as advertised, the difference is Vin M in the 5th trying to throw too hard out of the stretch and leaving it just up enough to Lincecum to swing the game… just like our generous host Nico has already alluded to above. I thought he looked awesome, just running into a brilliant move by Pablo Sandoval to open that inning with the surprise bunt to ignite their attack (players make plays) and the aforementioned pitfall of gearing it up with guys on too much that you see young guys fall into all the time. For a third major league start it was fantastic, and this kid now owns the most-scoreless-innings-to-start-a-career Oakland record for a starter with 18.0 straight from the gate. May this be the first of many more for him where he learns to perfect the immense potential clearly on display… for me he was always gonna be the marquee headliner of the MAC Show and tonight did nothing to dissuade me from that opinion.

Let’s say something here: Tim Lincecum is sick,; his changeup would make you cry if you had to face it, and serious ML hitters just walk away questioning why they bother… they are, to quote The Boss (even though the Manfred Mann arrangement might be the best 7 minutes 5 seconds of music ever recorded by human beings) wrapped up like a deuce, another runner in the night. The way his fastball and change look so identical, it’s just not fair, it’s not… add the sick curve and the slider and the Cy Young hardware is not an aberration or a joke. Whether a small wiry guy like that, who will no doubt be required to produce ID at establishments that serve alcohol at least until he is 70 years old, can keep his arm attached to his body with a violent, whippy motion like that remains to be seen, but for now he is Utterly Devastating with the cap letters earned.

So like I said yesterday if you don’t get him early you can just forget about it at that point, and this game served up the reality of that in spades, as we had his ass a couple of times and just missed getting the runs in… everyone on TV was castigating Cabrera’s idea to bunt for the single but you’re trying to make something happen against literally one of the most unhittable studs in the world there so I am OK with it even though the classical wisdom is swing the bat with 2 outs. I have to say that the ball Cust hit was out of any other yard on Earth, and in quite a hurry; the fact that it was hit harder than a chalice at Bob Marley’s house worked against us there because the carom was so true and fast that ol’ “Legs” Kennedy couldn’t make it home in time and would up with a handful of Molina’s glove instead of the plate. I’d imagine there aren’t a whole helluva lot of balls off the wall out there like that; usually it just rolls to the fence, hence the nickname Triples Alley. Triples Alley Carom, now there’s a band name.

Anyway I thought that was a fabbo game other than the result & I can’t wait to see Mr. Unit (one of the few guys playing still older than me) and our man with the glowing 1973 socks go at it tomorrow. If it’s anything like this game I’ll be satisfied, especially if we get the desired result this time ;)

Greg and Fosse are talking about 1989.

Will Clark!

Giant’s fans apparently hate when you cheer and make any sort of noise. I had one of them ask me, “Where are your drums?” I asked: “Where is your noise?” He turned back around without anything even resembling an answer. Another guy in our group was told to “Shut the fuck up!” by a Dad with his two sons…classy! Not once did we throw a direct insult at any one person; the jokes were towards the Giant’s players and our chants were usually of the “Lets Go Oak-Land!” sort.

But for the most part, most of the Giant’s fans were reasonable and even laughed at our obnoxiousness and even told security (who warned us for being “Too Loud” three times) that we weren’t causing any trouble and were actually keeping them entertained.

They also don’t like when you get one of their orange “K” signs and paint it green. Who would’ve thought, right?

(Friend of mine)

We’ll get em’ in 18 hours.

I’m on the road..and not the AN roadtrip…in DC, and saw only the score.
Thanks for catching me up on the game. Kinda figured it might go like that.
Outman vs Johnson …that should be “interesting” too.
GO A’s!

I fucking hate tim lincecum

with Mazzaro pitching very well, once again, than have him get bombed and end up winning 8-7 or something led by Nomar, Kennedy, and Holliday.

Cust is the only key hitter in yesterday’s lineup who has any real future with the team. The key for the A’s right now is identifying and developing the pitchers who can produce in 2010 and beyond. I’m very confident about this entire rotation, and in the long run that’s the most important thing. It’s also important in the short and medium runs, because good starting pitching helps save bullpen arms.

missed the game. From what it sounds like, it was a good game except for the fact we lost.
I guess as a player or manager you always say, “that was a good game, we’ll get ’em tomorrow!”
As a fan losing is never good….PERIOD!!!

As mentioned before, I think Mazzaro was a positive in a sea of orange darkness.
Unfortunately, our inept hitting prevailed yet again. I wonder how good we would be if we had real major league players from 1-9 in our lineup instead of 3 or 4 AAAA players everyday?

But then I realized they were all in reply to our dear departed friend WHITEY. That’ll teach us.

that Adrian Cardenas has been playing 3B in Midland???

Interesting….does anyone think he’s going to be moved up to Sac and then maybe be here Sept as a tryout???

The first run he gave up in his career was against a pitcher. Well, kind of a funny story for the media.

GO MEGA-OUTMAN!