The “resilient A’s”—the team that somehow vaulted themselves 8 games over .500 in June when they had no right to do so—is back. Coming into tonight’s game, Danny Haren had allowed 3 ER or fewer in 25 of his 26 starts. So when the A’s got that 4th run in the top of the 6th, and Haren took another gem into the bottom half, everything looked just ducky for the green and gold.
Then Haren tried to sneak an 0-2 fastball by Rios and found out that major league hitters are rarely fooled by a fastball. And then boom, boom, Wells and The Big Hurt went deep, and it was 4-4. And it looked like Haren would be denied his 14th win yet again and that the A’s might pay for all the missed opportunities to add on early on.
Undaunted, the A’s got right up off the deck and rallied in the top of the 7th, and thanks to Geren’s decision to let Haren finish the 6th after the back-to-back jacks, the A’s ace—arguably the league’s ace—got win #14 when the A’s tallied two off of Tallet to take a 6-4 lead that would stand up as the final score.
And so the team that spent too much of July finding new ways to lose is back to finding ways to win. No it’s not ideal when more than half the batters in the lineup (Scutaro, Swisher, Ellis, Hannahan, Suzuki) fail to make productive outs when the opportunity to score doesn’t even rely on getting a hit. Andrew Brown certainly could have been sharper the last two nights, and Scutaro ought to be able to find second base when it has so conveniently been planted right between first and third.
Yet this team that is missing it’s 3Bman, SS, backup SS, CFer (thank God), RFer, and so on, is now 13-7 in August having won 7 of its last 9. My only gripe: Here we sit out of the pennant race and Huston Street, coming back from a serious injury, pitches three days in a row? I just don’t see that being a good idea.
But rewarding the amazingly consistent Danny Haren with his 14th win? Great idea.
