Going out on a limb here, but I feel their 3rd baseman was better than ours tonight. You have to feel bad for Scutaro, who has proven that he just isn’t a third baseman—his difficulties date back to before tonight—but you also have to look at a game like this and realize the A’s really did know what they were doing when they kept trotting out Eric Chavez last year even when he couldn’t hit. A lot of balls are hit to third and it really helps to have a vacuum cleaner out there instead of a broom.
The extra outs took their toll on Danny Haren, and it remains to be seen whether the 7th inning, featuring a couple more earned runs and a loss, will affect his chances to start the All-Star Game on Tuesday.
So no, the A’s didn’t give up 32 runs today and no, they didn’t lose ground on the Angels, but it was not a good day for a team that keeps trying to start that elusive hot streak. Hopefully, Chavez will be good to go by tomorrow; if not, it will be interesting to see how Geren plays it considering that his main alternative looked, in the 9th inning, like he was muttering, “Please don’t hit it to me, please don’t hit it to me…”
I wonder how the game would have gone if Shannon Stewart’s drive had stayed fair...
