From the 4th inning on it wasn't an easy outing for the Doc. The umpire had a relatively small strike zone and particularly inside to lefties he wasn't very kind. He seemed to breeze through the first 3 innings and it looked early like he would make a run at another shutout.

The fourth inning was difficult though as he allowed a run on two hits and a walk. He starting flipping curve after curve and working hard to preserve a 3-1 lead and by the time he came out of the frame he was up to an un-Doc like 68 pitches and was a lot more tired.

He did go 7 in a decent 106 pitch count but he had to battle. He seemed to lose his arm slot a little after the 4th just barely missing his location. He got some long outs towards the warning track in left and centre field to hold the lead and the Jays managed some add-on runs to make the bullpen's job much easier.

A few A's notes:

1. Duscherer is pronounced 'duke sure'? For the past year I've pronounced it 'Dew share rare'.

2. Nick Swisher is the new Chuck Carr.

1: Yep!

Actually, Duchscherer is prounounced "Ten times more reliable than Juan Cruz, with 1/10 the hype." Wow, that Hudson trade looks bad.

I am so glad I'm a lucky enough fan to have Doc on my team. Everytime he starts, no matter the team, you just have a feeling we SHOULD win this game. It's a cocky swagger 10 times better than we COULD win this game. It's an absolute joy just to watch him operate on the mound.

Sure, the Hudson trade is bad so far, but how do you think the Rangers, who have lost forty-six eighth-inning setup guys to TJ surgery this year, feel about this:
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March 19, 2002: Justin Duchscherer traded by the Texas Rangers to the Oakland Athletics for Luis Vizcaino.
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Vizcaino isn't terrible, but the Rangers also relesed him abou 10 minutes later and he landed in Milwuakee where, with anothe guy the Rangers released (Scott Podsednik) Doug Melvin flipped him into Carlo Lee.
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Ick.

What the? I selected "HTML," previewed it, and it still shows the tags?

Mick, I see tags opening but none closing.

True, and I am guilty of not using clos-paragraph tags almost all the time. But that in itself shouldn't have allowed the HTML to actually show after I previewed it. All I can think is that I must have somehow accidentally rolled over the dropdown and re-selected Plain Old Text by accident after previewing.