OK that headline almost kind of worked. The A's these days are relegated to the role of "spoiler," which is kind of like being "the other woman" -- you keep hearing that you're building something for the future, but at the moment your success mostly involves making others miserable.
But at the same time that the A's are trying to make life miserable for teams, like the White Sox, who are scratching and clawing for a playoff spot, Oakland is also sending young pitchers out to the mound daily -- guys like Gio Gonzalez, who by the nature of their youth and ability will be sometimes inconsistent and at other times brilliant. We saw evidence of that again today.
Offensively, as you watch the games in this series you can't help but notice a sharp contrast between these two teams, with the White Sox sporting several hitters -- Thome, Dye, Konerko, Quentin, Rios, even Alexi Ramirez -- who would be the A's #2 HR threat if not their main one, while the new "runnin' A's" scratch and claw their way around the bases in a way that is "fun to watch but not so efficient." Of course with enough of a relentless "ground game" sometimes the rabbits outlast the mashers, but it's still hard to overlook the fact that the rabbits have to work a lot harder to accomplish what you can get done in an instant with one thunderous swing of the bat.
OK, time for me to come clean but then you need to be honest too. This was a test, kind of for fun and a little out of necessity. Unable to be around to hear the game or be sure of getting a recap up promptly, I decided to make lemonade out of lemons and run a little experiment. The question isn't, "Did the recap seem a bit odd?" but, "As you were reading, did you specifically guess or figure out, before I told you in this paragraph, that I wrote this last night?" I hope we won!
UPDATE: We didn't. :-(
(Gio Gonzalez walked 6 batters in 5+ IP, and the A's conducted a strandathon that got only 1 run out of Adam Kennedy's 5 for 5 day leading off, as the White Sox won handily, 8-1.)
