As Torgen said, in the game thread, you don't need to get hits off the lefty starter if you can hang a blown save on the righty closer. Two wins in a row get us over .500 again. It would be nice to win a couple or three more to give us a little cushion between us and .500.

We really can't hit even crappy lefties. In 6 innings we could only get 4 hits off Greg Smith and two runs.  One run was Barajas scoring on a one out triple by Adam Lind, course with Lind on third he wasn't available to bat so there was no one to drive him in. Then in the fifth Mench singled, Mac bunted him to second and Scoot drove him home. Eck quickly lined into a double play to speed up the process of not scoring another run that inning.

Brad Ziegler pitched a hitless 7th and 8th for the A's. Why isn't Ziegler a bigger story? He's pitched in 26 games for 34 scoreless innings! He set the record for scoreless innings to start a career 9 innings ago!

The only mistake the A's made was bringing Street in in the 9th for the save. Rios singled, Overbay flied out then Rod hit a double to score Alex. Barajas was awful in July but the calendar turns a page and he's hot again, .375/.444/.563. Of course that's only 16 at bats but still, is amazing what a new month will do. Wilk pinch ran for Rod, Street intentionally walked Lind, Rolen ground out. Then Mench, batting against a right-hander, which isn't supposed to be his strength, singles home the winning run. The funny part is Mench likely wouldn't have hit had Wilk not run for Barajas.

The Fangraph....a thing of beauty:

Just your typical back and forth game till the bottom of the ninth, with the walkout. Going into the bottom of the 9th there was an 89.1% chance that the A's would win and that's not even considering how bad the Jay's have been hitting. Rod's double improved our chance of winning for 21.7% to 70.2%. Walking Lind made it a 71.2% chance. Rolen's ground out brought us down to 63.8%, but Mench's single game us the win adding that extra 36.2%.

Jays of the Day? Well obviously Rod (.473 WPA), Mench (.351), Lind (.128) and League (.108). Suckage Jays Lyle (-.212), Rolen (-.199) and Stairs (-.151). All three were 0 fers though Stairs was just an 0 for 1 as a pinch hitter.

Scott Richmond's score start was almost an exact copy of his first start: 5.2 innings, 7 hits, 1 walk (one more than last time) and 3 earned runs again. Until the bottom of the ninth it looked like he'd have his second hard luck loss. He was only one out away from a quality start. I'm sure he has earned another start.

And, yet again, our bullpen was terrific. Parrish pitched an inning and a third scoreless, his second great relief appearance since moving to the pen. Then League pitched his 1.1 scoreless then Cy came in to finish the game and pick up the win. It is hard to believe how good our pen has been, I've been waiting for some 'regression to the mean' but isn't happening. We are one game above .500 but if the pen had been merely good instead of amazing we'd be well below.

Tomorrow the A's are calling up Gio Gonzalez to make his first major league start. Unfortunately for the Jays, he is a lefty.  Gio was 8-7 with a 4.24 ERA, 61 walks and 128 k's in 123 innings at AAA Sacramento. Shawn Marcum starts for us, making his fourth start since coming off the DL. He has a 9.82 ERA since returning, but I think it is mostly because his endurance hasn't returned yet and Cito has been slow to remove him when he tires. I think leaving a fellow, just off an arm injury, out to pitch when he is tiring is asking for more arm troubles. Am hoping Cito has learned something from the last 3 starts and will move quicker at the first sign of fatigue.

Anyway I get to watch tomorrow, hoping they make it three in a row. Mostly because I don't want to start the recap tomorrow night by saying 'We are at .500 for the 18th time this season'.