The A's and Esteban Loaiza with a 3-5 record and a 6.34 ERA take on the Orioles and Russ Ortiz with an 0-6 record and a 7.88 ERA.
Put your helmet on in the bleachers tonight. Holy mackerel, these two pitchers and their ERAs in a hitter-friendly ballpark. Ouch.
Then again, the A's faced a wild over 7 ERA guy last night and the result wasn't good. The team had baserunners all over the place, but Loewen wound up being almost "effectively wild" in that the A's couldn't seem to get any key hits off of him and wound up with only one hit off him in five innings.
The A's lineup looks like this:
Kendall
Kotsay
Bradley
Chavez
Thomas
Swisher
Payton
Crosby
Ellis
I really like this lineup. Bradley seems like the type of guy who relishes being put in a position to really impact a team and being in the three-hole is essentially telling him, you're the man. We'll see how he does. Of course, I still think that Swisher and Chavez should be flip-flopped, but we'll see.
The Orioles counter with this lineup against Loaiza:
Roberts
Fahey
Mora
Tejada
Conine
Hernandez
Patterson
Millar
Markakis
Hopefully the A's can do what they're supposed to do against a guy like Ortiz. We shall see.
LET'S GO A'S!!!!!
