I feel bad for Dallas Braden. The guy has actually been good his last few times out, but the A's have conspired to take wins away from him. He still sits at 1-6. I think Braden pitched well tonight and if it wasn't for the defensive miscues behind him, the game might've turned out differently.
Of course a game like this means the A's bullpen is essentially tapped for the next game or two. Just another night in Arlington, Texas. No lead is ever safe there, no matter who is a part of the Rangers lineup. Pray that Chad Gaudin doesn't have control issues tomorrow.
Speaking of control issues, I've got to be 100 percent honest and say that I got a nice feeling watching Ron Washington give it to the ump tonight. My rational side tells me that this doesn't accomplish much other than satiate the frustrations that all of us feel with baseball's umpires, but damn if it doesn't feel good to watch someone like Wash give it to the boys in blue.
Huge kudos to Andrew Brown who had five strikeouts in two innings and looks to be a great addition to the pen. And you can't really be angry with Embree. He's been too good this year and relatively consistent every time he steps on the mound. Michael Young is a good hitter and he's occasionally going to hit one out. The good news is that Texas wound up going through their pen as well. Course old A Mike Wood kept the Rangers from depleting their pen the way they probably should've. The A's should've been able to score more runs off a shaky Rheinecker, but they left the Rangers wiggle out of it. Thank goodness the A's pitching was good enough to get past Benoit and Wilson and get to Eyre.
Ultimately, after Dallas succeeded, Huston stumbled and Washington snapped, Oakland came out victorious which is about the way it should be.
A few final notes...I watched a bit of the Angels/Red Sox game tonight and I could barely look at the stadium without thinking about the thousands of rats just lurking and waiting to scrounge on whatever was left over. Is the plague going to break out down here? I'm just kidding, but really, it's revolting and someone needs to have a little chat with Mr. Moreno.
The other thing is that in case you ever wanted to learn more about SportsBlogs Nation and what I do with 99 percent of my time these days, check out this interview on Ballhype. It was a ton of fun to do and I hope you see what the network is all about. I don't talk about it much here, but I'm terribly proud of what we've been able to build. We had more than 10 million page views last month and now have more than one million unique users.
And finally, my nephew from the East Coast is arriving tomorrow for a visit, so I'm going to be taking him around to all the Southern California tourist destinations (the ones without the vermin). I won't be around as much as usual, but never fear that AN will be in great hands.
