Well, the good news/bad news dichotomy that is the Oakland Athletics organization wrote it's latest chapter last night as the Green and Gold (errr...Black on Black?) boys actually strung some hits together for the first time in over a week and protected a lead well enough to come out with a victory. Of course, in the process, they lost a promising starter (Duke) for at least a week and a former Gold Glove winner (Chavez) for at least a month with various ailments. What else is new? No need to get frustrated though...we're rebuilding right?

Today's matchup features a couple of portly southpaws (Sabathia for the Tribe and Dana Eveland for the A's) whom, when combined together, tip the scales at around 510 pounds. Just for some perspective, that's roughly the weight of the box-tail apparatus of this Cold War-era nuclear weapon:

Vallejo-native C.C. returns home to the Bay Area as the reigning A.L. Cy Young-award winner, although throughout his career he's been anything buy Cy-ish when pitching in the friendly confines of McAfee Coliseum, as he's gone 1-3 with a 7.17 ERA in 7 career starts in the A's home park. Eveland, on the other hand, has a sparkling 0.00 career ERA inside the Coliseum...partly because he's never pitched a regular season game there in his life. For his part, Dana has vowed to take advantage of the Tribe's unfamiliarity with him by promising to, "Pitch to my strengths rather than lean toward their weaknesses. I'm better that way." Sounds good enough for me, since leaning in any direction could be a major logistical problem for either of the two starters today.

Travis "0-for-17" Buck gets the day off today, replaced by Mark Ellis in the leadoff spot, who, although he's struggling to find holes in the defense (1-for-17) is at least drawing the walks (tied for the team-lead with 5 so far this season). I'm gonna go ahead and predict that Emil Brown has a big day against big CC today, as he is very familiar with him after several years of AL-Central battles and since he went 7-for-17 against him last season with a 1.059 OPS.

Lineups

OAK

Ellis - 2B

Barton - 1B

Brown - RF

Mike Sweeney - DH

BoCroz - SS

Cust - LF

Suzuki - C

Murphy - 3B

Denorfia - CF

CLE

Sizemore - CF

Cabrera - 2B

Michaels - LF

Hafner - DH

Peralta - SS

Garko - 1B

Gutierrez - RF

Blake - 3B

Shoppach - C