Assuming, of course, we completely ignore the bottom of the second. After the A’s put a 2-spot on the board for Braden in the top of the inning via a homerun off the bat of Marco Scutaro (who had quite a day), Dallas Braden absolutely imploded in rather impressive fashion. His bad inning saw eight runs score, started and ended by a bookend pair of homeruns by Ordonez. I think it qualifies as a bad inning when you have the same player homer off you twice in the same inning. I don’t think that has happened since 1955. (My source for that stat is Rex Hudler; please take it for what it is worth.)
Lugo, Calero and Marshall weren’t that bad, giving up three runs between them the rest of the game, and thanks to Marco Scutaro’s banner day, the A’s managed to throw a six-spot onto the board. But thank you very much to Dallas Braden; it was only about half of what they needed. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s two pretty lousy pitching performances in one series. The A’s simply don’t have the offense to win games with more than six runs very often.
And if I was running SportsCenter’s webgems tonight, I would absolutely have to include Jack Cust in the highlight reel, simply because as our outfield watched hit after hit drop in front of them, Cust used all of his power and all of his baseball skills to dive (and successfully catch) the flare out to his field. It was a beautiful play considering all the factors.
And I must offer a correction from this morning’s opening thread: The A’s and Tigers actually hook up one more time tomorrow, so the A’s still have a chance to even this series. We’ll see you back here for all the action. Hopefully Buck will be with us.
