Brett Anderson Rising as A's Are Falling

OAKLAND -- In a sense, the A's might look back at this as one of the most successful last-place seasons in recent baseball history.

Brett Anderson provided yet another appropriate chapter to this season on Sunday, taking a perfect game into the seventh and allowing only two hits over eight scoreless innings.

The sheer brilliance of the 21-year-old lefty was more important, in the big picture, than the fact that the A's lost, 1-0, in 10 innings to the Angels.

You certainly couldn't find anyone in the A's clubhouse to say this was a moral victory of any kind, but you know that upstairs, the team's braintrust must feel a sense of satisfaction that they are developing what is the key to any rebuilding project: quality young starting pitching.

"It's good, because when you see a performance like that or like [Vin] Mazzaro's [shutout] in Chicago, when you see dominating starts like that, you know that the ability is there to do it, it's just a matter of repeating it," manager Bob Geren said.

Anderson, Vin Mazzaro and Trevor Cahill -- three of the rookies the A's have introduced to the majors this season -- have had bursts of the type of baseball that can make you dream.

Even Angels manager Mike Scioscia has taken notice.

"It's like in the late '90s what they had with Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito," Scioscia said on Friday. "Now they have the same thing brewing again. These guys have the potential to do that."

Of course, there are two significant differences between the rebuilding A's, circa 1999, and this club. First, that team had some talented young position players -- Miguel Tejada, Eric Chavez, Jason Giambi -- to support the pitchers and generate runs. This team has a fairly anemic offense.

Also, Hudson, Mulder and Zito were college pitchers. They were older and more polished than this crew, all three of whom were drafted out of high school. As a result, they are each prone to more inconsistency.

Anderson, who came from Arizona in the Dan Haren deal, looked the best of the bunch in spring training, but he was fairly wobbly once the season began. He's mixed bad games and good ones. Over his past three starts, though, he hasn't allowed a run in 21 innings. He pitched a two-hit shutout on July 6 at Boston.

He said about a month ago he was mostly a one-side pitcher, staying away to righties and in to lefties. Now he's using the whole plate.

Anderson used all of his weapons to slice and dice the Angels for most of the afternoon on Sunday. He retired the first 12 hitters without a breaking a sweat. Mike Napoli then smoked a one-hopper toward third, but Adam Kennedy made a nice backhand play and throw to keep the perfect game going. Anderson ended up retiring the first 20 Angels before Abreu poked an opposite-field ground ball between shortstop and third, a clean hit.

"It's every kid's dream to throw a no-hitter or perfect game, but if I'm going to give up a hit, you want it to be to one of the best guys in the lineup that day," Anderson said.

While the game gave the A's something positive for the future, the Angels took a big positive for the present. Aside from the victory, which helped them maintain their lead in the AL West, they saw John Lackey pitch his best game of the season. The Angels ace' had struggled this season, carrying a 4.93 ERA into the game.

"He looked pretty good today," Angels catcher Jeff Mathis said. "The ball was coming out well. He was locating well. He was getting a lot swings at the breaking ball. Looked pretty darn good to me."