by Michael Duca

OAKLAND–The Houston Astros Chris Carter is the reason why the A’s didn’t want Yoeneis Cespedes and maybe why they should have got rid of him earlier and kept Carter in left field. Carter a former Athletic has beaten up on his old club pretty good. He’s swinging .234 right now so basically he’s like former Giant Rob Deer all over again. It’s not that Carter’s familiar with his former Oakland A’s pitching teammates.

Carter tagged A’s pitcher Jeff Samardzija on Friday and it might be a tad more motiviation. On Friday the Astros scored more runs while producing a total of seven baserunners in the game. The A’s scored three runs while producing a total of 12 base runners in the game. You have to begin looking at the A’s and not Carter who drove in three of the four Astro runs for the win in the first game of this three game series.

He did have the big home run, the A’s have had multiple opportunities to score behind bases loaded and nobody out, they managed to make two outs behind home plate on four pitches in that circumstance. Carter gives the offense on the Astros a little creditabilty. The Astros have had like every other team in baseball the number of good young players that haven’t been able to play.The Stros are an up and coming ball club, their going to be a force in that division in another year or two.

San Francisco Giants update: The Giants were coming off nearly a three hour wait from Friday night’s rain delay to resume the game which they won 8-2 at Detroit. Jake Peavy waited through 2 hours and 45 minutes of the rain delay and took a 6-0 lead into the delay and came back and pitched three innings and got the win for his fourth win of the season he’s now 4-4 ERA 2.36.

“He’s a competitor and he fired me up, fired up the guys up, just seeing him want to go out there and finish what he started. It definitely gave the guys behind him a little extra juice.” said Giants second baseman Joe Panik. The Giants Gregor Blanco lost his 306 game streak without commmittting an error an impressive streak. A streak always comes to an end one way or another.

300 games is a long time particularily especially for Blanco who’s not a regular player who played with three different teams without an error. Blanco is a bit player and he comes in as a replacement late in games. The thing about Blanco is you don’t see him playing to extend that streak, he makes a serious effort to go out and get every ball.

He made a brilliant play earlier this year during Peavy’s attempt at a perfect game, he made a game saving catch in Matt Cain’s perfect game. That was during the streak, you can’t say too much about having a guy available on your bench who can come in and hide the defensive short comings of a player like a Michael Morse. Morse could use his bat in the first seven innings of a game and then the Giants later could protect the lead with a player like Blanco with a glove that he has.

Michael Duca does A’s and Giants commentary on http://www.sportsradioservice.com and audio from this interview is included below.