Between them, they had precisely two career MLB appearances and one surname. Nevertheless, on 3rd May, Bryce Miller of the Seattle Mariners and Mason Miller of the Oakland Athletics combined for one of the better pitching duels of recent years.

Through five innings, Bryce - making his Major League debut, no less - was on for a perfect game. And even though he gave up two hits and a run in the bottom of the sixth inning, he still finished his debut big league performance with six innings pitched, only those two hits, no walks and ten strikeouts. He was excellent.

Mason, though, was better. Given the lead in the sixth, he went out and posted a 1-2-3 top of the seventh, including strikeouts of Eugenio Suarez and Teoscar Hernandez. Now through seven innings, he is only six outs away from a no-hitter in only his third career outing, putting him into Bumpus Jones territory.

He is, however, also at 100 pitches. And this is the modern era, where that number is not so much a landmark as a barrier. A's skipper Mark Kotsay took Mason out of the game after that, turning the game over to his - let's generously call it - extremely unreliable bullpen. Even forgetting the prospect of the no-hitter for a moment, that bullpen only needed two scoreless innings to win the game.

They did not get it. Of course they did not get it. And the worst thing about the blown save and subsequent was the sense of inevitability that preceded it.

Were the predictable bullpen collapse and yet another in-division loss to an empty stadium on their way to a historically poor record not bad enough, injury was soon added to the injury. Four days later, Miller started again and threw six innings of two-run baseball, yet was moved to the injured list the morning after with an elbow strain, and has yet to pitch again. He was removed from a potential hist0ry-making no-hitter to protect himself from injury, only to immediately get injured. And the bullpen blew it.

6-23 at the time of the Miller Squared pitching duel, the A's have since gone 6-23 in their next 29 games as well. Their 12-46 record is by far the worst in baseball - only the 17-39 Kansas City Royals are even remotely close -

It seems self-evident to say that nothing else fun has happened, either. But perhaps it could.