Friday Game one: A’s 3-6 Rangers

Friday Game two: A’s 2-5 Rangers

Saturday: A’s 1-14 Rangers

Sunday: A’s 5-4 Rangers

Jack Cust has back spasms. Travis Buck has a strained oblique and is on the DL. Dallas Braden left his game with a bleeding hand. Brett Anderson was tagged for six runs in four innings. Texas was within one well timed hit of achieving a four game sweep. The A’s have the worst record in the American league. The A’s are ten games out of first place, and three and a half games behind Seattle. They have lost ten more games than they have won. A reliever leads the team in wins. Only one player is hitting above .300.

These are the facts. Only the other side of the balance sheet…. Well, there’s Adam Kennedy, who is second only to Joe Mauer in average, batting .390 in 82 at bats. When I looked that up, I noticed that Joe Mauer has a .500 on base percentage. Wow. That’s pretty incredible, no?

So yes, the four game series against Texas was pretty brutal. Especially losing two in an afternoon on Friday’s double header. Neither game was much of a blow out, but equally, at no team did you suspect that the A’s would do enough to win either. Saturday… well, Saturday was a setback for Brett Anderson, who had been putting in some more mature and improved performances of late. The one chink of light coming through the darkness was Dallas Braden’s outing on Sunday; he held the Rangers to just two runs in six innings before departing the game with another blister. Can this stop happening to the A’s, please?  Homers from Adam Kennedy and Jason Giambi gave the A’s a 4-0 lead, but the bullpen gave it back. Going into the ninth, it was four runs each, when another solo shot from Kennedy gave the A’s the edge. Andrew Bailey, pitching on his birthday, got a five out save and his fourth win to wrap the game up.

So, on the team goes to Chicago, where they are going to face the White Sox in another four game series, running from today to Thursday. There’s going to be a spot start by Dana Eveland on Tuesday after last week’s double header threw the rotation out of whack. A decent performance could see him challenging Edgar Gonzalez for a position in the rotation. If he continues along the lines of his previous performances this year, then he’ll surely drop down the triple A pecking order. Sean Gallagher has put together a couple of decent starts in a row for Sacramento, so if he’s finally sorted out whatever problems he had, then this would serve the A’s well. Vin Mazzaro has also been pitching rather well, of late, but you suspect that the A’s would rather wait a while longer before bringing him up, so he can make a couple of home starts, rather than being thrown into the cauldron of an away game.

Till Thursday, then. Let’s go A’s!