Luckily, or hopefully, the A's aren't pinning their 2011 hopes on Guillermo Moscoso, who gave up a 4-spot in a super-rocky 2nd inning to help Oakland get blown out 10-2 today. Other lowlights included Fautino De Los Santos being greeted by three extra-base hits and Conor Jackson going 0 for 4 to drop his "bingo card" looking batting average to .067, while highlights had Kevin Kouzmanoff banging out another 2 hits to boost his average to .550, joined in the two-hit brigade by Ryan Sweeney and Mark Ellis.
In other swell (or swelling) news, I'm still looking for the link but Susan Slusser reports that Joey Devine was shut down after nine pitches today when he felt tightness while throwing to hitters.
I also want to use this post to give a "heads up" about a Comcast ad that will run Monday on AN, along with running on most other SBN blogs. I'm only mentioning it because my experience with the AN community is that direct information is good, surprises bad. On Monday, an ad will run in a spot where ads often run now: Below the main post on the front page. The difference, as I understand it, is that the ad will look more like a post than ads generally do, though it is not a "sponsored post" like the ones I once told readers to expect occasionally (those are in fact posts that allow comments, but one has yet to appear on AN).
Apparently, the "blogfather" for each site, i.e., me on AN, will be paid $25.00, which creates an interesting dilemma. The earlier discussion on "sponsored posts" led to a consensus that if/when these stipends come in, they should be shared amongst front page writers, which sounds great to me. The problem? AN has 6 writers covering 7 days. Even when you subtract me, as someone who already gets compensated, and Zonis, for being brand new, you're left with 4 writers. To divide $25.00 amongst 4 people puts me in the position of sending an amount probably more insulting than anything! ("Hey, thanks for handling game threads, recaps, and analysis every week throughout the year -- here's about $6.00!")
The one idea I had was to give the whole amount to one person, then the whole amount next time (whenever there's a next time) to another, and so on, going in order of seniority. If you have a better idea (ideally one that doesn't involve just sending it all to you), I'm all ears. Also, if you have a better idea of how Guillermo Moscoso can get batters out, you're more than welcome to chime in.
Update, 9:04pm PST: Based on the comments so far, I'm leaning towards donating the stipend to the A's Community Fund. However, no decision has to be made immediately since the stipend won't even arrive right away, so as long as this post gets comments the topic will remain open for discussion.
Update, 12:15pm PDT on Sunday: Now I'm hearing that the ad won't run Monday, but will probably appear later in the week. This doesn't change anything except the day you'll see the actual ad.
