Game 18 Recap or The King of Doublin'

Oakland 10, Cleveland 0 (WPA Graph from Fangraphs)

A's Current Record: 11-7

Well, the A's current record is 11-8, I suppose, and it's never fun to come home and see the A's lost, but I can relive the happy moments from last night's win, a 10-0 romp over the Indians.  The game was actually much closer than that for most of it --- the A's were only leading 1-0 in the 6th, and the Indians by all rights could have been leading.

Justin Duchscherer ended up with 6 shutout innings, but allowing 9 baserunners and walking 4 while only striking out 2 is not usually a recipe for success.  His command was a little off, but I (and the A's announcers) thought he was getting squeezed by home plate umpire Doug Eddings (full disclosure, I think Eddings is a subpar umpire), especially after the confrontation they had in the 1st inning.  But the Duke got through it by inducing a groundball double play in all of the first 4 innings, effectively killing all Indians rallies.  The infield defense looked slick and the Indians were definitely deflated by the DPs.

The A's got on the board in the 4th inning thanks to a well-placed 2-out Kouzmanoff RBI single and then took advantage of a rapidly tiring Jake Westbrook, putting up a quick 3 spot in the 6th thanks to a double, single and Kurt Suzuki's 2nd HR in as many days (and 3rd in 4).  The game was essentially in hand at that point and when the A's added 6 runs in the 9th (thanks mostly to very sloppy defense) the rout was on.

A very pleasant victory (Tyson Ross continues to impress and Brad Kilby looked nasty --- he should definitely stick if he keeps it up) but (spoiler alert) since the A's have already lost today, it's not all lollipops and rainbows.  Luckily for me, Zack will be writing up the recap of today's loss so I can just savor yesterday's win.