The Oakland Athletics square off with the Texas Rangers at 11:05am pacific on Wednesday in the rubber match of their three game series. The A’s will send out Gio Gonzalez to face Matt Harrison in a battle of teams tied at 19-18 in the AL West. The two teams are two games back of the division-leading Los Angeles Angels.
There aren’t many significant changes in the lineups for today’s game. The biggest change is Rangers SS Elvis Andrus gets the day off. The A’s are mixing up their order a bit with Hideki Matsui hitting sixth behind Kurt Suzuki. Andy LaRoche is bumped up to the seventh spot in the lineup ahead of Mark Ellis.
The A’s made one roster move prior to Wednesday’s game as they optioned Jerry Blevins to AAA-Sacramento. Blevins has struggled in limited work this season and was more or less at the bottom of the bullpen depth chart. He has been replaced by Trystan Magnuson who has a 1.56 ERA and 19.9 K/BB ratio over 17 1/3 innings pitched. As the bullpen currently stands, Magnuson will probably get a mix of innings through mop-up duty and when the rest of the bullpen is approaching too much work.
Oakland Athletics
1. Coco Crisp CF
2. Daric Barton 1B
3. Conor Jackson RF
4. Josh Willingham LF
5. Kurt Suzuki C
6. Hideki Matsui DH
7. Andy LaRoche 3B
8. Mark Ellis 2B
9. Cliff Pennington SS
Texas Rangers
1. Julio Borbon CF
2. Andres Blanco SS
3. Ian Kinsler 2B
4. Michael Young DH
5. Mitch Moreland 1B
6. Adrian Beltre 3B
7. David Murphy LF
8. Mike Napoli C
9. Craig Gentry RF