Deflated.

Crummy defense, especially the plays unmade. Bad execution and squandered opportunities. Walking the hitter leading off the inning – a hitter whose offensive numbers barely register. A really questionable bullpen-engineering decision. I had a bunch I planned to write about today, but that loss took too much out of me. Not because it was a loss, which in some reasonable amount we as baseball fans have to accept, but because of how it was lost and should have been won, against a team it would have been very useful to put away for one night. Derek Holland, hope you brought a heavy dose of that efficiency with you from Oklahoma City. A solid seven out of you would be fantastic. Especially given what happened last night, when the bullpen threw as many pitches (104) as starter Colby Lewis, with every reliever being called upon other than Doug Mathis, who got loose himself. In the one start Holland has made against the A's (August 4), he gave the team only 4.1 innings in a 6-0 loss (incidentally, at the hands of lefthander Gio Gonzalez, tonight's Oakland starter). Can't have that tonight. There are lots of other things that distinguished Oakland 7, Texas 6 that we can't have tonight, either. =========================================================== To join the free Newberg Report mailing list so you can get e-mail deliveries of every edition of the newsletter, daily minor league game recaps, and frequent Newberg Report News Flashes, go to www.newbergreport.com and click the "Mailing List" link on the top menu bar. (c) Jamey Newberg http://www.newbergreport.com Twitter @newbergreport