An Attempt At Optimism

Duke is down. Suzuki hasn't played in days. Anderson, Buck and Ellis have gone on the DL recently. Rajai is swinging at everything and losing at-bats. Jake Fox is going to be eligible at Catcher in fantasy leagues soon and Eric Patterson has been starting games. Ben Sheets can't seem to decide if he wants to pitch well this year. This is not good news, any of it.

We've dropped three straight and are only two games out of the cellar in the AL West as the offense has been mostly as advertised (lousy singles parade with a chance of doubles) and the pitching is starting to look a bit shaky.

Oh, and the M's are getting Cliff Lee back tonight. Sweet.

But it really isn't all bad. At least I'm trying to tell myself that.

We just called up Cahill and Mazzaro to replace our injured starters. Even though some of the shine has come off of Cahill a little, the dude's still only 22 and even if I'd like to see him get more time in AAA, he should be okay. Vin was at least a serviceable back-of-the-rotation guy last year, even though he was often wild and/or hittable. This year (month) in Sac he's been striking out more than a batter an inning, which is encouraging, though his walk rate is still pretty ugly. However, the beauty of this optimistic exercise is that I can discard the walk rate as a sample size issue and believe the K's. And seriously, Ollie Perez iswith a chance of n't a bad guy to have....as long as he's your 7th starter.

Crisp should be back soon, and while I'm not a huge fan of the guy, our outfield should improve elevenfold if we push Patterson back into the preferred "versatile pinch-runner" slot on the bench and replace him at left field with either Gross or Davis. 

Barton looks great and just hit his first homer. More taters in the future? God, I sure hope so.

Pennington is looking like a major league player. He's showing some power and has silenced any talk of a position battle at short.

Adam Rosales is fun to watch.

We have position player reinforcements aplenty in AAA, from Cust (who bends the definition of position player) to future standbys of Carter, Cardenas and Taylor.  

We're still tied for first in the West after dropping three straight. We've had some rough luck, but I don't think the wheels are coming off just yet. This is a winnable division for every single team in the West and there's a lot of baseball yet to play.

Lets go Oakland!