I'm getting a little sick of Jason Berken to be quite honest. In just 5 innings he put on 10 base runners, giving up a three run shot in the fourth, and a sac fly after a throwing error by Matt Wieters, although it looked like Cesar Izturis could have handled the throw. Berken played with fire all night, putting runners at first and third in the first, loading the bases in the second, and giving up 4 in the fourth. Hendo would later give up 1 in the 8th and Cla followed giving up one in the 9th. Gotta give a quick shout out to Brian Bass for pitching a couple of scoreless inning. I'm just glad that this series is over, Guthrie and Berken in the same series. David Hernandez has actually emerged as our number two starter behind Bergesen.

via a.espncdn.com

 A dormant offense sprinkled one single in the first four inning before finally "busting out" in the 6th inning. Aubrey Huff left the yard for the 13th time this year, with nobody out and Nicky Boy on first. With one out Luke Scott doubled, then Matt lined a shot into center that Rajai Davis miss played, coming up on the ball, it then hopped past him for a run scoring triple. Then, surprise, Wigginton flies out and Cizzy goes down swinging. Most likely, the most important play of the game came in the bottom of the 7th. With Roberts at second and Markakis at first the O's tried to pull off a double steal. Now Roberts would have been safe easily, but Kakes was gunned down by a mile, leaving a runner at third and two outs. Lightning never strikes in the same place twice and Huff went down looking, putting the kiss of death on this game.

Quite honestly I fail to see where Jason Berken fits into this teams future with continual outings like this. I hate to be a pessimist, but the A's have one of the worst offenses in baseball, and he just looked bad out there. He did two things well in this game: he didn't walk anyone and he coxed the A's into  FOUR double plays today. To counter that of the 86 pitches he threw, he only threw 50 strikes, that's not good at all.

Just another day in Birdland, I hear we could be challenging the Royals for that second pick soon. WE'RE NUMBER TWO!