Sox lose 7-5 to the Oakland A’s. The A’s came in having lost 10 straight games, most of their starting pitchers, and Wednesday they dismissed their manager, Bob Geren, but they sure do play the Sox tough.

The teams have split their 8 games, with 4 of them decided by one run. And even more surprising, three of them went in to extra innings. The A’s never give up against the Sox. 3 of the wins against Chicago coming in their final at bats. That was the situation on Friday. Sox led by 2 in the 9th with Sergio Santos pitching. Santos has been just short of automatic this year. He has had 2 bad outings. 1 against the Dodgers. The other, 2 days ago against the Mariners. Make that back to back horrible outings for the Sox closer. In his last 2 outings he has given up 2 hits, 7 earned runs and 5 walks, in just an inning and two-thirds. In4 days his ERA has gone from 1.24 to 3.23…YIKES!! Santos has been no where near the plate. He will get it all ironed out, but right now he stinks. His suckage comes right after Input him on the All-Star team. Good move by me, again.

Unfortunately, Santos has gone wild right when the Sox offense appears to be heating up. They lit up one of the AL’s best, Trevor Cahill, on Thursday. The Sox knocked him around for 6 runs in just over 2 innings, making that his shortest outing of the year. Well, let me correct myself, the Sox actually pecked him to death. At least 5 of their hits never left the infield. I think 3 didn’t even make it back to the pitcher.

Story time: 2 years ago, spring training, I am with the A’s, I ask the media girl if she could get me an interview with Cahill. As pregame ends, all the players run past, and I can’t find Cahill. A minute or two goes by, and she comes up to me with a player. I look at her, and ask, “Can we get Cahill after this?. She says, “He’s standing right in front of you”. 90% of the time I recognize the player, this time I didn’t. I looked at Cahill and the girl and said, “I know, I’m joking, how you doin’ Trevor?”.

Back to business. Give Adam Dunn 2 days off and he comes back a different player. 2 for 6, with a home run and just 2 strikeouts. He looks refreshed, and confident. Same goes for Alex Rios, who has gone 5 for 13 since taking a couple games off a few days ago. Maybe there is something to giving a guy a couple days to clear his head.

Paul Konerko and Carlos Quentin going back and forth, each battling each other to see who can lead the Sox in home runs and RBI. Quentin has him by 2 bombs, but trails by 3 in the RBI department. Konerko wants the home run lead, as he has hit one in each of the past 2 games, and 4 in the past 5 contests.

Have you noticed the Sox batting averages are continuing to rise. 6 of the 9 batters are now hitting .250 or better. A few weeks ago, 7 of the 9 were hitting .250 or less. Just going to get better, I think, for the Windy City boys.

I’ve never seen a player call himself out until Quentin did it on Thursday. He asked for an appeal before the catcher or umpire did, and was rang up. I don’t even know if either of the 2 would have asked for an appeal, but Quentin did and, paid the price.

I tell ya what, the Sox have had some tough days, but sure am glad they don’t have Brian Fuentes. Fuentes only gave up 3 runs in the bottom of the 8th inning Wednesday in a game that was still in doubt. How he continues to get million dollar contracts is beyond me. At least he can’t blame Geren any more.

Sox and A’s go at it again tomorrow.

Go Sox!