A’s - DLed Harden

Oakland A’s - Placed P Rich Harden on the 15-day DL.

[Opened this one up before I was supposed to.  Everything still works (I was still wrong that Watson was called up for Harden) and Setherton is now verified as the replacement]

Could be out a month depending on the severity of the strain.  This is bad news for the A’s - Harden was one of the few players on the A’s that was hitting on all cylinders.  The offense is still a disaster, enough that the A’s are getting very near to the point at which they need to throw in the towel on the season and look towards ‘06.

Either way, some of the guys have to be replaced right now, especially Hatteberg.  I don’t give a #### if Hatteberg’s a good guy that Beane looks who embraced his plate discipline principles; Dan Johnson is a better player and if Hatteberg needs a starting to job to be a leader, he can’t be much of one.  It’s nice to see Jack Cust playing well for Sacramento; he’s having his first super pretty season not at altitude.

Matt Watson’s coming up to take Harden’s roster spot for the time being - hopefully he’ll play; the A’s need people that are actually performing rather than people that should be performing.  The only player on the offense doing anything at the moment is Bobby Kielty, who’s finally getting into a groove after a bad year and a half.

Player                  May BA/OBP/SLG

Bobby Kielty               361/489/528

Everybody Else          207/276/308

The best move for the A’s rotation-wise is to bring in Setherton.  Yabu’s the other probably result, but he’s doing a lot of quality work in the bullpen at the moment and the A’s can replace a starter better than a reliever right now.