Can We Take a Mulligan on That Game?

Oh goodie, baseball season's back. I'm so happy. So how did the A's do last night?

After reading all Spring about how the team is going to work so hard on avoiding those slow starts that have plagued them in recent years, they're down 7-0 before the beer can even get flat. When is that team going to give up on the notion that Barry Zito is a #1 starter. Yeah, he eats up a lot of innings and never misses a start, but since winning the Cy Young in 2003 he's 2 games over .500 on a team that's 63 games over during the same period. Ray Fosse noted last night that although he was 0-4 last April he got no run support. His freakin' ERA was 6.60 last April. Run support had nothin' to do with it. This guy's going to pitch another 10 years and make millions of dollars because he's a leftie and had one spectacular season. Don't believe me? 10 years ago Shawn Estes won 19 games for the Giants. He's 1 game over .500 since, but there's always another team willing to take a chance on him because he's a leftie who had the one good season.

Don't even get me started on Ken Macha's decision to pull Zito after the grand slam. The four bases on balls wasn't enough to convince him that Zito didn't have it. No, Macha had to wait until the game was out of reach and then throw in the bullpen.