Brett Anderson hates bats
Posted By Jeff Fletcher on March 15, 2009 4:05 pm
Today was the first time I had seen Brett Anderson pitch, and he was pretty damn impressive. He pitched four scoreless innings against the Angels, and it was definitely the best outing I’ve seen for any A’s pitcher in the week I’ve been here.
“He must have broken eight or 10 bats,” manager Bob Geren said. “He was pounding them inside, using his offspeed stuff. It was a great game. If this was midseason and he could have gone 100 pitches, he’d have gone eight or nine innings.”
I just saw Vin Mazzaro pitch four strong innings the other day. Tomorrow Trevor Cahill is starting against the Dodgers (and Jason Schmidt!).
The more I see of these young guys, the more I think the A’s might have a chance to be good sooner rather than later. If those three guys can carry over this kind of pitching into the regular season — granted, that’s a significant leap — the A’s could be very interesting.
There may be room in the rotation for a couple of these young guys, too. There are some rumblings around here that Sean Gallagher’s hold on a rotation spot might be slipping. There are still three weeks to go, so that’s plenty of time for Gallagher to pitch better and the young guys to fall apart, but it will be worth watching.
I think Gallagher would have to be really really bad for the A’s to not have him in the rotation when camp breaks. He was the centerpiece of the return for Harden, and they’ll give him every chance to succeed.
With that said, Mazzaro, Cahill, and Anderson have looked awesome this spring. With the offense the A’s have put together, if the new big 3 can keep it up, it might not be a bad time to bring them up. They’ll get some run support, and definately have more upside than Gio, Edgar, and Gallagher.
A rotation of Eveland, Anderson, Cahill, Mazzaro, and Braden has a chance to be very good (despite being a risk).