Happy Father's Day to you and yours, and get your brooms out dads, as the Green and Gold go for the sweep this afternoon at the expense of the punchless Gigantes. It'll be very difficult for A's starter Dana Eveland to eclipse Harden's brilliant performance from last evening, but if the A's offense can keep up the pressure on the Giants' pitching staff, the bullpen does it's thing and Eveland can find some semblance of control, then hopefully he won't have to.
Even though Dana gutted out 6 innings of 2-run ball last time out against the Yankees, he sure didn't look good doing it and he really hasn't looked good for several weeks now, mainly due to wildness. For the month of June, Dana has put up a brutal 6-13 K-BB ratio in just 10 innings. Some of those walks were due to tight strike zones, and luckily Dana's stuff has been good enough that he has limited his hits-allowed to control the damage and keep his overall ERA at a respectable 3.76 entering today's game; however, if Dana keeps walking guys, the hits will start falling and the runs will pile up. Hopefully, Dana can just follow the old pitching cliche this afternoon and, "trust his stuff and be aggressive in the zone."
Kevin Correia gets the start for the Giants today. Kevin's surely one of Sabean's Favorite Sons as it seems like he's been in the SF organization forever. He'll be making his first start since April 26th today as he's been rehabbing from strained side muscles for the last month-plus. You would think that this matchup would be a good one for the A's offense, as the lefty-heavy A's lineup might have an advantage against the righty Correia, however, that might not necessarily be the case, as Kevin's been death to lefties so far this season, only allowing 6 hits, 1 earned run, 0 homers and striking out 7 of them in about 11 innings of total work. Should be interesting how the A's lineup approaches him.
Thanks to the Atlanta Braves, the A's have now cut down the Angels' lead in the division to just 3.5 games. It would be fantastic for the A's to head out on a potentially very difficult road trip with that division lead cut down to 2.5 games, or, at the very least, kept at 3.5 games. Go A's!
