by Michael Duca

OAKLAND–To review the first two A’s pitching performances at the Coliseum versus the Texas Rangers the A’s pitcher Sonny Gray on opening night had a no hitter going through seven innings. Gray is a quiet young man with a confidence that is well placed. When you look at young pitchers you look at two things you look at their attitude and you look at their mechanics.

I’m not as impressed with stuff as other people are, the world is full of pitchers with great stuff who are earning a living on the sidelines on the DL or whatever. He’s got very solid repeatable mechanics he’s very compact and he’s the leader on the mound and the leader on the mound is somewhat in charge of his control and expected to win and he’s got those and those are two excellent things.

If you throw six or seven innings and you give up three runs your team expects to be in the game and they expect to win. Nobody was really disappointed by A’s pitcher Jesse Hahn’s performance on Tuesday night except maybe for Jesse Hahn. I told people when the A’s pulled off that trade they had stolen another great pitcher and I firmly believe that.

The disappointment came from the offense that seemed to muster essentially nothing in five or six innings. Your not going to win games if your not hitting no matter who’s out on the mound for you. Clayton Kernshaw gave up three runs in his first start and I don’t think anybody is standing around saying he was disappointing. Jesse Hahn will work out just fine and again he was a steal getting him in the off season from San Diego.

San Francisco Giants update: My concerns about Ryan Vogelsong who got touched up for six runs and seven hits in four plus innings on Tuesday night in Phoenix is that he didn’t have a great year last year. There is just no way to get around it he’s getting on in age and skills erode as you get older.

Vogelsong is able to get the ball around 90 MPH there is not as much late movement as before but then again their playing in an altitude in Arizona. People don’t realize that Arizona is over 2.500 feet in altitude. It’s half the distance up from sea level as Denver and the ball is effected by that and the movement is effected by that.

So the ball will rise for pitchers and you have to have a different grip on the ball, it’ll be interesting to see how he comes back from that. He was mentally concerned about how he was going to make the adjustment to the bullpen and of course his first outing is a scheduled start and he should be in the rotation for a little while due to injuries to pitchers Matt Cain and Jake Peavey.With Peavy and Cain out Vogelsong will be expected to stay in the rotation and pitcher Chris Heston will be in Arizona tonight to start after getting called up from Triple A Sacramento on Tuesday.

Brandon Belt the Giants first baseman has a groin pull and groin pulls tend to be outrageously bad our mutual friend and reporter Dave Albee managed to pull a groin while playing basketball and explained what it’s like to have a groin pull. First he was blue and purple from the pull, it effected his walk and when he did walk it was painful and that was two weeks after he got the injury. It takes about a month to recover and for Belt he may not be back well into May.

Michael Duca does A’s and Giants commentary each week on http://www.sportsradioservice.com listen to his podcast below