Oakland usually goes with a 12-man pitching staff, but with the addition of Frank Thomas, the A's are using 11 pitchers and now have an extra position player to work with.
Sometimes that's good: Manager Bob Geren said he feels as if he can employ almost National League-type strategy, as he showed on Saturday, when he used three pinch hitters and a pinch runner. (All the maneuvering left him an outfielder short, so if the A's had tied or gone ahead, Geren said, he would have had rookie first baseman Daric Barton in left). So Geren has plenty of options, but he also must try to apportion playing time -- an especially tricky proposition at first base and DH. Thomas and Mike Sweeney are both right-handed hitters and they're both better suited to playing DH than defense, plus the A's don't want Barton, their 22-year-old potential Rookie of the Year candidate, on the bench. Sweeney has started twice at first since Thomas was acquired, however.
Another issue: Jack Cust is also best suited to playing DH, and he will now be in left when he is in the lineup. Cust is barely adequate as an outfielder, and unless Rajai Davis is playing, the A's don't have any center fielders who can make up for some of Cust's lack of range.
One interesting thing to note: Oakland can now trot out a completely right-handed hitting lineup, something that seemed improbably in the lefty-heavy Billy Beane era. The A's have gone all righty twice in the past week, the first time they've done so in nearly 13 years.
A'S 4, MARINERS 2: Oakland came back from a two-run deficit by scoring four in the eighth inning against Felix Hernandez, who had beaten the A's in each of his five previous starts against them. He'd been dominating to that point, but a 10-pitch walk to Daric Barton loaded the bases in the eighth, and Emil Brown provided a broken-bat single to left to tie the game, and Jack Cust and Ryan Sweeney added RBI singles off Brandon Morrow. Brown is batting .476 with men in scoring position and his 22 RBIs are the second most in the league.
