There's something purely beautiful about a baseball game that follows exactly (maybe not exactly, but pretty damn close) how career stats chart. For example, today most of the damage done to Mr. Anna Benson was done by two guys who had career OPS records of 1.127 and 1.333 OPS against him, that being Milton Bradley and Frank Thomas. Yes, those are ridiculously sample size numbers, but today small sample size won out. Thomas and Bradley had five of the nine hits and drove in four of the five runs. The fifth came on Eric Chavez's 15th home run and the first since Brendan Fraser starred in Encino Man. OK, maybe not that long.
Things also went the other way too as the Orioles only managed five hits and one walk through seven innings against Mr. Zito. That makes sense because the Orioles roster has a career OPS of .544 against Barry.
So the A's remain on top alone at least through the Angels game with Kansas City tomorrow. The team is guaranteed a .500 road trip even if they drop all three games in Detroit, and for the first time in probably a month the A's have a positive runs scored/runs allowed differential.
It's a beautiful day.
