Agonizing A's Offense

Not surprisingly the A's were shutout yesterday night by Scott Kazmir and the Tampa Bay Rays. Sure Kazmir is a dominant pitcher, but the A's didn't even make it hard for him. Kazmir was in control the whole night and when he did get in trouble which was only once, he was able to pick off Mark Ellis at second base. You can't really blame Ellis, seeing as though the A's never seem to have runners in scoring position all that often, they really don't know what to do once they are in scoring position.

I miss the old days when A's hitters would make the opposing pitcher work for his outs. They didn't always score many runs either, but at least they made him work. I'm tired of our guys going up to the plate without a gameplan. They seem to just go up there and swing at anything. That is not A's baseball, how about trying to work the count at least that makes the pitcher fatigued quicker. I know Kazmir is really good but there is no way we should be striking out that often. It's not always about hitting home runs (Cust) sometimes a soft single can get a team going as well. It sure as hell is a lot better than striking out. I guess I can't blame Cust too much, seeing as though he does have a gameplan of hitting a home run everytime up.

On a brighter note our bullpen was pretty solid last night. Andrew Brown went two innings and did't give up any hits and struck out three, although he did walk three. Santiago Casilla went one inning and gave up two hits and a walk, but he didn't surrender a run so that's always good. Also last night's game saw A's fans get their first glimpse of Brooks Conrad, a 28 year old infielder get his first action as a big leaguer. Although he went 0-3 with two K's, it's always nice seeing someone get thier first shot. I personally feel that Conrad will be quite successful here with the A's and is definitely an improvement over Donnie murphy. Now if only we could get rid of Emil Brown.