I'm out of ways to describe how terrible the A's offense is. Let me sum up: The A's received a hit from Crosby, Gonzalez, and Thomas today, and received three walks. That's the offense they put up to support their brand-new pitcher on the mound, who certainly deserved better than he got tonight.
With the exception of the first inning, where he let a two-out rally and a bomb leave him down 3-0, Gio settled in nicely and pitched a gem the rest of the way, pitching into the seventh, and looking good doing it. Unfortunately, thanks to the lack of A's hitters, Casilla, not Ziegler, replaced him, so the one batter he left on base eventually scored, taking him from a 3 run outing to 4. His line finished 6+ IP, 4 H, 4 ER, 2BB, 4K. I thought he pitched better than the numbers indicated, and he may have earned a win for a different team in baseball tonight.
Unfortunately, he made his major league debut for the 2008 Oakland A's, and their offense is painful. I'm surprised that pitchers just don't burst into tears having to take the mound for this team. After all, what is the point of pitching well? What is the difference between losing 5-1 and losing 2-1? How much pressure do you want to put on a young pitcher when he knows he can't give up more than a run or he will lose?
Despite doing their best to be no-hit tonight, the A's offense finally got on the board in the sixth with their first hit of the game, a solo homerun by Bobby Crosby. In the very next inning, they loaded the bases with no one out (in horrifying shades of last night), and failed to score. Yet again. You would think that even by accident that the A's could have scored in a least one of those situations. But when you score only 17 runs on your nine game losing streak, there isn't a lot of room for lucky and good things to happen to your team.
I'm tired of this. I would have rather lost the game tonight 10-9 than have to sit through inning after inning of scoreless baseball. I'm over pitching duels. I want some offense!
Duchscherer takes the mound tomorrow, trying to avoid an A's 10 game losing streak, while the rest of us do our best to cheer for maybe the three players left that we want to actually keep in our offense. And fun fact of the day, if you need more: Cust has now struck out 53 times in his last 101 ABs.
Same game, same time tomorrow. Hopefully a different outcome.
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