Article:Giants/A's Heading in Opposite Directions

Last month, the A's embarrassed the Giants over at the Colosseum by sweeping them and doing it in convincing fashion. However, the Giants got their revenge over the weekend at AT&T Park by taking sweeping the A's and making it look relatively easy.

It really shouldn't come as much of a surprise for A's fans though. The A's are nowhere near the team that faced the Giants in Oakland a month ago. They have fallen below .500 for the first time all season and are now in 3rd place in the AL East. At first, it was mainly an offensive issue with the A's, but now they aren't getting consistent performances out of their startin g rotation either. They're badly missing Brett Anderson and Justin Duchscherer, but they still have enough quality in their rotation that they should be able to weather the storm. Trevor Cahill continues to deal, and Gio Gonzalez has gotten a lot better, but Dallas Braden and Ben Sheets keep getting hit around pretty good. For the most part though, if the A's were getting more consistent clutch hits and playing more fundamentally sound offensively, the rotation wouldn't be so bad. However, if you give up 4-5 runs per start like Braden and Sheets have been, this team is pretty much dead in the water. They just don't have a team that can climb back from big deficits. Still though, the A's are just 4 games out of first right now and it's hardely time to throw in the towel. I'd just like to see some kind of move made to help jump start the offense. Not necessarily a trade, but maybe a promotion of Chris Carter or maybe even Michael Taylor (solid last few games) even though he's not having a great year in Sacramento. I also think it's time Jemile Weeks gets his promotion up to AAA Sac as he shouldn't be too far away either. The Giants had the same issue as the A's did with their offense all the way up until a few weeks ago. Now all the sudden the Giants have an offense that's putting up runs night in and night out and they're looking pretty darn good in the process. The addition of Pat Burrel l has done wonders, as has the promotion of Buster Posey. Also, Juan Uribe is having an all star type year. The Giants are doing all this without two of their more clutch hitters, Bengie Molina and Pablo Sandoval, doing a whole lot. Sandoval, who hit .330 with 25 homers and drove in 90 runs in 2009 has just 4 homers and 24 RBI to go with a .283 average halfway through June and it's starting to cause some concern. Sandoval has even been dropped down to as low as 8th in the batting order recently to try and jump start him. He'll have a good 3-hit game, then he'll go 1-9 over his next two. I think he's going to find his rhythm, I just hope it's while the Giants are getting this output from guys like Burrell, Posey, Uribe, Torres and Sanchez. For much more Giants talk, check out our affiliate, The Giants Baseball       By: Trevor Cole The Bay Area Sports Jounral