The A's and Joe Blanton with a 4-1 record and a 3.32 ERA takes on Jose Contreras and his 3-4 record and a 3.64 ERA. It's funny how baseball works sometimes. Blanton has the best record of any starter and he has the worst ERA of any of the guys not named Braden. Course with the A's starting pitching this year, that is sort of like saying you're the ugliest lingerie model at a Victoria's Secret fashion show. Even though you aren't the best, you're still pretty damn good. It's also deceiving because Blanton has a pretty darned good K:BB ratio.
It also shows how ridiculous the win statistic is to measure a starting pitcher. Any way, if you think the A's offense has struggled this year, welcome to the South side of Chicago where they've scored 35 fewer runs than the A's and the team batting average is .226 and the team OBP is .305. Don't let that lull you to thinking it'll be an easy win though. They still have good sluggers and Dye has three home runs in his last four games.
The A's offense for tonight's game looks like this:
Stewart
Swisher
Johnson
Cust
Chavez
Crosby
Buck
Ellis
Kendall
I've just got to say, I love Bob Geren. He's willing to make the adjustments to the lineup to reflect performance on the field. I really like this lineup a lot and Chicago can be a good hitter's park. Let's hope our boys get to Contreras early and often. Chavez and Crosby have had some success against Contreras in the past, so we'll see if that continues tonight.
The White Sox lineup looks like this:
Erstad
Iguchi
Thome
Dye
Konerko
Pierzynski
Ozuna
Mackowiak
Cintron
AssJack and Dye have hit Blanton well in the past.
LET'S GO A'S!!!!!! Please let it not be Hawk on MLB.TV, pretty, pretty please????
