Game 20 Recap or The Return of Chavvy (for one game)

Oakland 11, Cleveland 0 (WPA Graph from Fangraphs)


A's Current Record: 12-8

An interesting stat popped up on the A's broadcast today when they scored their 4th run of the game in the 4th inning.  With the win on Sunday, the A's are now 11-0 this season when they score 4 or more runs, and 1-8 when they score fewer.  Obviously, it's an artificial cutoff where most teams will have similar splits, but I do think it speaks volumes about how well the A's have pitched this season that they've won every single game thus far in which they've scored 4 or more runs.

And the A's again pitched quite well today, though probably not well enough to deserve the shut out.  It's often awesome to watch Gio Gonzalez pitch, because his stuff is really excellent and when it's all working you can see the makings of a future ace, but his inconsistency also makes it often frustrating to watch him.  He had one tough inning when 2 walks helped to load the bases (and the game was still 2-0 at the time) but got out of it and then retired his final 9 hitters.

While I haven't been a proponent of the Eric Chavez experiment, I must admit it's really nice to see it when he's contributing (and he's been pretty bad so far this year) just because of how good he used to be and how hard it's been for him to get back to this point.  That being said, it's just that type of thought process that's going to keep him on the team for longer than he should.  But for one day, it was pretty great to see him hit well.

Clearly a very solid game overall (and I have to mention Eric Patterson showing some legit power with a deep HR to CF and an opposite field 3B off the wall) but there was some bad news after the game --- Daric Barton fractured a finger on his diving catch into the Indians dugout.  While I love the effort and it was a great play, it was when the game was already essentially over and Barton is definitely now the A's best hitter -- he has a .488 OBP for crying out loud -- and they cannot afford to lose him.  He may not miss very much time, but that combined with the injury to Brett Anderson cast a dark cloud over an otherwise solid 6-4 homestand.