All four AL West teams decided to chuck it in last night. Does it have anything to do with playing the AL Central teams recently that the AL West has gone into a funk?

Yes.

The Oakland A's were shut out last night for the first time in 2004. The Boston Red Sox remain the only team in MLB that has not been shut out.

The A's left 14 runners on base last night. 14. To put that number in perspective, is the A's had driven in 15% of the runners on base, they would have scored two runs. Jermaine Dye left 7 runners on base all by himself. Scott Hatteberg left 5.

That's fairly crappy. It's borderline pathetic.

Of course Macah had to go and stat meddling with things and give up an out having Marco Scutaro bunt Bobby Crosby over to second with nobody out in the top of the 7th. Guess how many runs the A's scored?

Not being able to watch the game on TV made things even more enjoyable. You had to wonder if the A's were ambling around the bases like zombies looking for brains.

Incidentally, Mark McLemore has been taken for an MRI on his surgically repaired knee. There could be a DL stint in the near future for McLemore. Damian Miller is fighting a bad hamstring and Adam Melhuse has been coming in late in games. It should be mentioned that Barry Zito was cruising up until the 8th when he threw nearly 25% of his pitches in the last frame. Also, Zito shook off Melhuse several times, including the final pitch where Zito wanted to go with a change-up rather than the fastball curveball sequence Melhuse was ordering.