The inevitable has happened: Rich Harden will miss his next start. Brad Halsey will apparently pitch in his stead.

No analysis is needed to show that this is a bad thing.

At least Chad Gaudin has emerged as a viable starter in Esteban Loaiza's absence, right? Six starters and all.

UPDATE: Susan Slusser has since updated her post to reflect that Milton Bradley could be hurt with a recurrence of his hamstring problem. If he went on the DL, as she noted, that'd make it easy to bring up Halsey for a quick start without worrying about which reliever the A's are going to send down to make room (since Harden won't go on the DL - the A's hope to have him back sooner than they could get him on the mound if he had a DL stint).