It's a scintillating pitching matchup between Setherton for the A's and Doug Waechter for the Devil Rays tonight. It's already 3-2 (A's up) after one inning, with Scott Hatteberg contributing a two-run bomb.

The last time the A's were this bad after 43 games was when they were also 17-26 in 1997. That team went on to win just 65 games while featuring almost none of the talent that would drive them to a successful half-decade run in a few years. Jason Giambi played left and Miguel Tejada and Ben Grieve got into a combined 50 games. The pitching staff was young (nobody over the age of 30 made even a single start), but not good: the ace, in terms of ERA, was Jimmy Haynes.

In other words, we have to hope that eight years from now, we can look back on this A's team and see the seeds of far more talent than we saw in 1997.

Thank god that Tampa Bay is one of just two American League teams with a worse record than Oakland at the moment.