A's Pitching Throws Batting Practice to Texas Hitters

CT Postgame show here

The A's lost a laugher tonight 10-1 as their offense was absolutely stifled by Derek Holland's first major league start of the season. Holland's gorgeous 6 innings featured seven strikeouts and five hits (no runs). It would have taken all but a perfect game to keep the A's in this one; and Gio was anything but perfect

The Rangers smoked the ball in their half of the first inning; everything hit was hit hard. It was only a baserunning error by Elvis Andrus that kept Texas off the board. If he was on the A's, I would tell him that it doesn't matter if you lead the league in steals if you also lead the league in caught stealing, but he's on our rivals, so I'm not saying a word.

Gio danced through trouble for his first three scoreless innings, but his pitching caught up to him in the fourth. Make no mistake; he didn't have it tonight, but it honestly could have been worse.The Rangers scored their first two runs in the fourth inning; Gio made not one, but two errors himself to hurt his cause (one of his 4 runs allowed was unearned because of his own error), and the 2-run Hamilton bomb in the fifth took Gio out of the game. Gio still needs to work on not getting rattled; he was all over the place tonight.

Chad Gaudin replaced him and immediately gave up another homerun; this time to Vlad. Don't worry, it wouldn't be his only one; he would give up two additional homeruns in the sixth to Michael Young and Max Ramirez. Gaudin should be used in mop-up roles only...or following a 13-inning game. Henry Rodriguez would give up another homerun in his inning of work, and Edwar Ramirez, not to be outdone, gave up a run on two hits and two walks in his inning.

The A's offense...let's see. Eric Patterson homered. Yes, REALLY. And yes, that was it for the offense. Powell had two hits, and one deep fly ball, and there were a few scattered singles, including one by Rajai Davis, who finally got on base, and immediately got picked off. Sigh.

All in all, not one for the record books, but the A's still have a chance to win the series. However, they will go up against C.J. Wilson tomorrow, who has been awesome. Let's hope the offense was resting up.