by Michael Duca

Oakland A’s update: The Philadelphia Phillies starter David Buchanan on Friday gave up several seeing eye hits to A’s hitters and the A’s parlayed that into three runs and the A’s managed to make that into a 3-1 victory to open the series last night at the Oakland Coliseum which they desperately needed. The A’s during the Rangers series looked like they lost track of how many outs there were.

The A’s used to be able to beat up on the Rangers they were the worst team in baseball and you got to remember their former manager Ron Washington who resigned about 10-12 days ago. So the Rangers have a new manager Tim Bogar in there and the players will try to figure him out as well as Bogar trying to figure out the players and try to get guys some playing time before this season winds down, you never know what motivates the team.

On Friday night with Josh Reddick out of the line up they had to juggle the line up putting Sam Fuld in rightfield and it worked out as the A’s rallied in the second inning with three runs to put some runs up. The A’s left a runner on third who got thrown out and they had a couple of opportunities to score more runs and failed to do so.

San Francisco Giants update: For the Giants seven of their final ten games are against the Padres and no matter where the Padres play they always play the Giants straight up and very well. The biggest concern for Giants starter Tim Hudson it was his third consecutive game where he struggled this time in a 5-0 loss at Petco Park on Friday night.

Hudson has had hip problems from what he gets periodically and throughout his career and if Hudson is not available to go to the playoffs that might put a real serious threat to the Giants possibilities going forward. They don’t have Matt Cain and they don’t have Tim Lincecum in the starting rotation. If they don’t have Hudson there’s not a lot of depenable starters that have that post game experience on the staff.

Sergio Romo who is now the set up man and no longer the closer and he understands his new role. Romo is a team guy, he’s well loved in that clubhouse and he’s an important cog in that wheel in the Giants drive for number three. Santiago Casilla is closing now and manager Bruce Bochy made the decision to switch roles around for Romo and Casilla, “You have to look at the job Casilla is doing and the job Romo is doing, Romo, to his credit, set aside his ego. He’s done what we’ve asked. That’s the only way it’ll work. I compliment him for that. The eighth inning is a huge inning.” said Bochy.

Michael Duca does A’s and Giants commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com