They finally won again and the Angels lost! Oh, happy day! And now Oakland is only down 11 games! Wait, that isn't a good thing...

Will they come back from this enormous deficit? Well, there is one thing you can expect: they're going to get close.

Nick's concentration might have been somewhere else...

When you look at the A's you think: "Good pitching but bad hitting," which is completely correct. If you look at the team at the beginning of the year.

Through 95 games the A's are 45-50, their the only team other than the Red Sox that have given up less than 400 runs (391), and have players like Mike Piazza, Huston Street, Rich Harden, Justin Duchscherer, and Esteban Loaiza on the DL. Fortunately, they are all supposed to be coming back soon.

Mike Piazza has gone 7-17 on his rehab stint with AAA Sacramento River Cats, with one homer, two doubles, and 2 RBIs. He is supposed to return to the A's later this week.

Huston Street has one more pitching appearance on Saturday in the minors before he retuns to the A's bullpen on Monday, assuming all goes well.

Ditto with Huston

It seems that Rich Harden will be gone for a while, but what else is new?

Justin Duchscherer, too, shouldn't be returning any time soon (60 day DL).

Esteban Loaiza, who hasen't played at all in the MLB this season, is scheduled to make his first rehab start on either July 30 or 31. For Esteban, it will probably take three minor league starts before he is ready to start in the MLB.

So as you can see, the A's have 3 out of these 5 guys returning some time soon. Not to mention Kurt Suzuki (left) finally being able to start in place of Jason Kendall, bringing a better bat to the A's much-needed lineup.

The A's have statistically been the best team in the second half of the season for the past five seasons, so they will eventually make a big run. The biggest factor in the second half of the season is how the Angels and Mariners do.  

And finally, the trade deadline is approaching, which means that Billy Beane gets to do what he does best: trade. The same guy that traded away Mark Mulder for Kiko Calero and a guy named Dan Haren. The same guy that drafted Nick Swisher, Barry Zito, Joe Blanton, Tim Hudson, and Eric Chavez, just to name a few.

If you ask me, Oakland doesn't have much of a chance, with the Angels and surprisingly the Mariners. But you can expect them reach within 5 games of Angels some time during the season.