The A's had a glorious opportunity to gain a game on the Yankees and Angels tonight. Yet, they let it slide away and not just because of the poor Kotsay defense.
I 100 percent agree with baseball girl in that Ken Macha took this victory, rolled it up into a ball and chucked it into the garbage can. Kennedy had pitched brilliantly tonight. He had gone six strong innings and the A's had the lead. Yet Macha got greedy and tried to get him deeper into the game rather than using the A's bullpen which was well-rested and ready to go. I understand the thought process behind leaving Kennedy in. He was cruising, but if you had told me that he would go six innings and the A's would have the lead, I would've taken it and left it at that. Remember, this is a guy who has only started once since July 7.
But the bigger picture continues to be the lack of offense. The good news is that the A's quite possibly have the best pitching staff in baseball. They regularly (minus the occasional slip here and there) give quality outings day after day. It's infinitely frustrating watching a team that can't score because we've seen this team go through streaks when it was the highest scoring team in the majors. But we've also seen an Oakland team that has been shutout more often than any Oakland team ever. We should start calling this team Sybil...either that or Forrest because you never know what you're gonna get.
It's so frustrating to be so close...to have climbed all the way back and for us to give away a victory like we did tonight. I'm usually the first one to defend Macha's decisions, but tonight was a poor one to me. The team needed this win in the worst way. But instead, it's just slip sliding away.
