Friday: Colorado Rockies 4-2 Athletics

Saturday: Rockies 11-9 Athletics

Sunday: Rockies 3-2 Athletics.

Ouch. Not a great weekend, this one. Sure, the Rockies are a decent side, and have been on quite the hot streak since they replaced their manager, but still. They looked like they were in a different class to the Athletics. They’ve now lost five in a row and are on the ropes.
Before we get on to these games, some bad news. Josh Outman, one of the few bright sparks in the season so far, has been placed on the sixty day disabled list; He might also need to have Tommy Johns Surgery on his elbow. This procedure, which involves replacing damaged ligament, is pretty well established now, with a reasonable success rate, but it would take twelve to eighteen months for him to recover from. The A’s injury problems go on… and on… and on. Sigh.

Here’s one of the more frustrating things about this season. The America League West is clearly not a very strong division. The Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners both got out to decent starts, but first the latter and now the former have gone through lean patches. The Angels are ahead at the moment, but even they have not set the world on fire; their bullpen, for sure, is very shaky at best. Before this weekend, the A’s were seven games out. Whilst this is a decent sized lead, it’s not an insurmountable one. If Oakland were able to put together a decent run over the course of thirty games or so, they’d be right back in it.

But here’s the problem; only once during this season have they even showed the faintest glimmer of a possibility of doing such a thing, during their seven game winning streak. Since then, they’ve been around about .500, which is plainly not enough to even think about making a challenge.

Probably the biggest concern out of the three losses was Trevor Cahill’s inability to keep the ball down. He gave up home runs in each of the first four innings before being pulled out of the game. As a sinkerball pitcher, he’s going to have to learn to be effective in warm conditions, when the ball is really travelling. He certainly didn’t manage this in his last start, but inconsistency is something the A’s surely expected from their young starting rotation going into the season.

On a related note, it was nice (in a way) to see Carlos Gonzalez, the ex-Athletics prospect, picking up a few hits over the weekend. There are plenty of A’s  fans who still have a soft spot for him.

Next up, the A’s have a three game series as the Detroit Tigers visit; they’ll be throwing out Brett Anderson, Gio Gonzalez and Dallas Braden. It’s the first two that all the attention will be on. Anderson has been struggling of late, and Gonzalez still needs to prove that he’s capable of getting major league hitters out two or three times through a lineup on a regular basis.