That’s my short version, Kiwi. If you have thoughts, I’m interested.

I knew it was going to be an absolute foot-on-the-neck game when Reddick climbed the wall to get Snider’s long fly. Losing Arencebia, the best remaining power bat not named E5, was just just a kick to the corpse of this season.

Romero had NOTHING . . . actually, I wish he had nothing. What he had was middle of the plate, straight as a ruler FBs and hanging curves, when he threw strikes. If he’d just missed the plate with everything, he might even have had a better line.

A’s have hit A LOT of HR’s this month. They added to their totals yesterday.

And Coco is certainly no Albert Pujols, but he’s been pretty hot at the plate for a month plus.

As to the question of whether the Nats’ rotation is the best, consider their current records:

Strasburg: 11-4, 2.76
G. Gonzalez: 13-5, 3.13
Zimmermann: 7-6, 2.31
E. Jackson: 5-6, 3.73
Detwiler: 5-3, 3.01 (includes bullpen duty)

Of course, wins and losses are not the true measure of a pitcher (note the lack of teammate support behind Zimmermann’s and Jackson’s records), but show me another rotation that is better at preventing earned runs, and I will reconsider.

Follow that up with “I’m Not Rod” Beck and the game was well and truly over before the Jays came to bat in the second inning. Wow, Cur, how you must be suffering. I know, I’ve been living the nightmare for the past six years.

Until now. Sure, there is a huge element of luck in a streak like this. Fosse was pointing that out last night during the broadcast. But the non luck elements:

- A’s team ERA is # 1 in the AL, and they are doing it on the road also
- Much better power this year. They will hit mistakes out of the yard
- Terrific team speed
- Sound defense (Weeks and Cespedes are suspect, but not horrible)
- Sensible field management. Nobody is right all the time, but Melvin does a good job
- Terrific coaching. I cannot say enough good things about Curt Young, and hitting coach Chili Davis is having a positive impact as well

AJ Griffin was good, not great yesterday. He walked 2, which is borderline by A’s standards lately, and only went 6. But the Jays helped him out, striking out 9 times in those 6 innings.

Griffin’s mirror image, Tommy Milone, goes today. And therein lies the A’s cautionary tale. Milone went through a period on the road where was absolutely shelled: 5.69 ERA and 4.34 of that in day games. He, like most of the other A’s pitchers, has to be absolutely perfect with location. He simply does not have the stuff to miss his spots and get away with it. But lately, he has been great with location.

But if things finally start to go wrong with the A’s, that’s how it will happen. A little tight shoulder will lead to a few more misses in the zone, those will get hit hard, just as the offense cools a little bit (Cespedes is not really a .479 hitter, as he has been showing since the All-Star break, nobody is), and somebody will boot a play, just at a critical moment.

For now-this is really fun. I’d love to see it last. Reddick’s catch, the smile on Carter’s face, who are these guys?

Part of it is that Washington went more than 3 decades without a baseball team–not even the bad teams they had and lost. Part of it is that the Redskins won a lot (including 3 NFL championships) while there was no baseball. Washingtonians have too many memories of football success and no memories of baseball success.

The Nats have just begun to penetrate the consciousness of Redskins Nation. The process is going to take a long time, and many winning seasons. Hang in there.

Only consolation I take from this is Mathis didn’t appear to blow out his UCL pitching. How did Scioscia not know he could pitch? He’s thrown some quality innings for the Beav. . .pity The Beave haven’t played some quality ball for him.

Oh well: game 3 in about an hour. Can’t get any worse, right? Right? Yeah, right.

I noticed that with the start of training camp the Football Fundementalists were getting a little fiesty on twitter yesterday. Deriving their self worth from watching a sport in which most of them can’t play. So I must remind my Seamhead Bretheren to not take any crap from them. After all the MLB season has 2400 games to enjoy, and the NFL, while very cool only has 244.

I saw RG3 play in Manhattan last season. He’s athlete for sure. However, The NFL doesn’t take a meaningful snap for 6 more weeks. We’re still talkin about practice, not the game that we love and die for, we’re talkin about practice. What are we talkin’ about? (ten years later and that’s one of my fav sports quotes and I won’t apologize for using it at any opportunity)