Game #68: A's 7, Dodgers 3

June 16, 2006 | A's vs. Los Angeles (N)

Barry Zito was the star of the show tonight. Big strikeout pitchers are fun to watch. Zito is particularly entertaining because he makes guys look absolutely foolish with his Bugs Bunny curve ball and change up. Most impressive to me was that after walking 7 in his last outing, he walk no one tonight while throwing a comfortable 110 pitches.

Offensively, Melheuse and Payton had three hits with Chavez and Kielty adding two each.

Payton is now offically on fire. Jay is hitting 382/400/618 for the month of June. In the last 10 days he has added 30 points to his batting average and is hitting 277 for the season.

Nice to see Chavez go deep. He only has two extra base hits this month, both homers.

Winning streak explained...
On TV they threw up a graphic that explained the hot streak pretty clearly.

• Since May 31, the A's were 12-2 with a team ERA of 2.89 and they were scoring 4.8 runs per game.
• Prior to May 31, they were 23-29 with a team ERA of 4.59 and they were scoring 4.5 runs per game.

Although I am feeling much better about our hitting, the improvement is not too dramatic. However the pitching has been outstanding.

2006 A's comparison...
These numbers and the way the A's have been scoring runs made be think of them as being comparable to last year's Chicago White Sox, a team with great pitching and a mediocre offense that hit plenty of home runs.

* Ahead of Boston, New York and Texas.
** They were 3 runs allowed out of 1st.

While I am not saying that this is a World Series winning team, I do think that we have a style of play that can go far. The A's are playing classic Earl Weaver baseball: pitching, hitting and three run homers.

I am optimistic we can improve on our pitching. We have only had two good Loaiza starts and very little Harden and Duchscherer. There is room to improve there. Yes we need a little luck with Harden.

Offensively, Swisher is the the only positive surprise but we don't really know where his level is yet in the majors. So I am hopeful for some upside in the runs scored department.

Tomorrow is another day...
The matchup is Saarloos versus Derek Lowe. Lowe has great numbers this year: 2.83 ERA, 1.18 WHIP. He is also a sinkerball pitcher so you will see the A's beating the ball into the ground all day long. Saarloos is also gets a lot of ground balls so I predict a long day for the worms in the Oakland infield.

If Saarloos doesn't give up any home runs and we play good defense, we have a shot.

(Game experience: TV)

A's record: 36-31 | streak: W-8