That is to say, not at all. And please don't tell me "Oh c'mon! It's waaaaaaay too early to panic." I think I'm going to go ahead and panic, thank you very much. Through 7 games the only player to hit a homer is Josh Willingham, who has done so twice. Unfortunately, he's also struck out 12 times in that span and is doing a great Kevin Kouzmanoff impression with a .250 OBP. Fellow off season acquisition David DeJesus is 5-23 with a whopping ONE extra base hit, while new DH Hideki Matsui is hitting .182 and looks like a corpse. In fact, of the A's regulars, only two (Mark Ellis and Coco Crisp) are hitting over .250. Of course, they can't ALL be in store for season long slumps, right? Probably not, but it's not just the bats that are killing them right now. They've also committed 9 errors in those 7 games, and 2/3rds of them have been made by their corner infielders. Daric Barton and Kouzmanoff are making my fears of a defensive regression a reality. I didn't expect them to be better than last year, but I certainly didn't expect this. And then there's the bullpen, another alleged strength of the team, where Craig Breslow, Brian Fuentes and Grant Balfour have conspired to ruin solid outings by the starters. You can't win the pennant in April, but you sure as hell can lose it. It would be one thing if the entire division was playing this bad, but there's the little fact that the Texas Rangers are 6-0. Not only have I located the "panic button", I'm pressing it really, really hard.
