Lots of curse words for this guy today.

Orioles:  5  Athletics:  2

Bartolo Colon had entered the 9th inning with a 2-0 lead, he gave up a lead off single to JJ Hardy, struck out Nick Markakis and that’s when the whole game began to fall apart.   The very next batter singled and a throwing error by Colon put runners at 1st and 3rd, after that he was pulled and Grant Balfour entered the game.

Balfour immediately gave up a double to Matt Wieters that tied the ball game.  Chris Davis was intentionally walked, which brought Wilson Betemit to the plate and on a 3-1 count he hit the 3-run home run that ended the game.

This was a hard loss, instead of taking their 2nd series in a row and being 1 game over .500, they are now on a 2-game losing streak and back to a losing record.

Lines of the Day:

• Bartolo Colon:  8.1 IP, 7 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 5 SO.  Despite falling apart a bit in the end, Colon threw another solid game for the A’s, he threw 106 pitches and 72 of those pitches were for strikes.
• Seth Smith:  3 AB, 2 H, 1 BB, 1 HR.  Nice day for Seth Smith today who reached base 3 times and had a solo home run (his 2nd of the season) in the 7th.

Ugly Lines of the Day:

• Kurt Suzuki:  4 AB, 0 H, 0 BB.  Suzuki now has a .221/.228/.299 slash line on the season.  Along with Suzuki, Eric Sogard also went 0-4 today.
• Grant Balfour:  0 IP, 2 H,  3 ER.  Balfour blew his 2nd save of the season and also gave my fantasy baseball team a big fat “INF” under ERA & WHIP today.

• I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again until it improves, but the offense is what is losing games for this team, yes Colon and Balfour fell apart in the 9th, but you can’t win games only scoring 1 or 2 runs per game.   This team is now last in the entire league in batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage and 28th in runs.
• Jemile Weeks was not in the lineup today, but according to Melvin it was just a routine day off (his first of the season).

 For more on the Baltimore Orioles please check out Charm City Yakyuu.