[The Elephant Walk is my weekly wrap-up of Oakland Athletics baseball. Results, performances, transactions or other thoughts I might have about the A’s]

I hate it when I’m right
I was pretty certain that playing centerfield was not going to be good for Milton Bradley. Now Bradley has missed three straight games nursing a hamstring injury. On the better side of injury news, 1B Dan Johnson’s hip injury seems to be less severe than once thought, and once the A’s get him back in the lineup, they will have a lot more flexibility.

Buck wild
I think I have a man-crush on Travis Buck. Not so much Travis himself, but with his plate approach and attitude:

“I basically made that decision coming out of the box.. Damon doesn’t have that strong of a throwing arm. I wanted to test it.”

Over this past week, Buck has cut back on K’s and started walking. Buck’s triple in Friday night’s game against the Yankees also was the key play in their 11th inning victory. I know its only been a week, but I think Uncle Buck can get the job done.

I hate moral victories
But I’ll take what I can get. The A’s 11th inning win over the Yankees and then subsequently playing with the Yanks for 13 last night shows that although I don’t think the Yankees make the playoffs, that they can beat that damn pinstriped monkey off their backs.

Pitching
I don’t like Dan Haren’s walk counts. Plain and simple. The rest of his numbers are pretty much in line with his career totals, but he is not the kind of pitcher who should be having a K/BB rate of nearly one after three starts. But for the most part, even Chad Gaudin is pitching well, and that is the way the A’s win ballgames.

My only concern is that the A’s managers still aren’t up to speed with the whole idea that if you have thrown 100 pitches, your pitches start to lose something.. not to mention the fact that its not great on a pitcher’s arm to be asked to throw 100 or more pitches a lot during the course of a season. So last night’s game was really disappointing, when that nice “I told you so moment” happened because the A’s left Joe Blanton in for the 7th inning, when at the end of the 6th his pitch count was over 90. Just as the numbers might have suggested, Blanton could not hold the lead and allowed the tying run.

It’s not rocket science though, Blanton’s ERA jumps from 4.14 for pitches 91-105 to 7.36 after pitch 105 (last night his total before being removed was 110). I know that managers have access to this stuff… do they just not believe it? Last season the same thing happened repeatedly with Esteban Loaiza, who’s numbers also shoot up at a certain pitch count - but they still think they can squeeze just one or two more outs out of their arms. I understand leaving Blanton if he has a three run lead, but one run against the Yankees? Try again.

Mr. Reliable
Or Mr. OBP… whatever you want to call him, Nick Swisher gets on base… every game so far this year. It will be interesting to see how long he can keep this up.