BY GEORGE WATSON l AVALANCHE-JOURNAL

Brett Anderson slumped in the chair outside his locker in the visiting clubhouse at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. He was already dressed, his night having ended well before any of his Oakland A’s teammates, and not in a fashion which brought on smiles or handshakes.

He fumbled with his iPhone for a few moments before acknowledging the group of reporters that had assembled a few lockers down waiting for their chance for a few quick words, and those words would pretty much back up what the statistics that night showed — six earned runs allowed on eight hits, two of which were home runs to dead center field, and two walks over just four innings.

“It was my worst game I’ve had in the big leagues,” said the 21-year-old Anderson, who was a second-round selection by the Arizona Diamondbacks and traded to Oakland in 2007. “I didn’t have my good stuff and didn’t have my command, and they scored on pretty much everything.”

Welcome to Major League Baseball.

Going green
Such is the education of a rookie pitcher. After just two years of minor-league ball, Anderson, the son of former Texas Tech pitching coach Frank Anderson who grew up in Lubbock through age 11, has landed on the A’s roster and in their rotation. It’s a young rotation, filled with pitchers possessing few if any years of experience at the highest level, and sometimes the struggles show as much.

Through June 12, Brett Anderson was just 3-6 with a 5.25 ERA. He lost four of his first six starts before winning two straight, and then came the short night in Texas on May 30.

Since then, he is 1-1 with a 3.55 ERA, blanking the Chicago White Sox for seven innings in his next outing before getting hammered by Minnesota on Tuesday.

“It’s crazy,” said Anderson, who moved to Austin from Lubbock and later to Stillwater, Okla., when Frank Anderson became the head coach at Oklahoma State five years ago. “Being such a young guy and having the ups and downs — being 21 in the big leagues — it was rough in the beginning adjusting to the big-league level. But with each start, it’s getting a little easier.”

It helps having someone with common experiences in the locker two seats down.

That’s where fellow left-hander Dallas Braden, 26, sits. The one-year Texas Tech wonder, who helped lead the Red Raiders to their last NCAA playoffs appearance as a junior in 2004, is considered the ace of the Oakland staff, serving first as the opening-day starter and now as the team leader in wins (5), innings pitched (81) and strikeouts (54) while compiling a 3.33 ERA.

“The whole opening-day thing, that’s just stipulations,” Braden said. “When you get an opportunity like that you just want to run with it, and I never considered myself a No. 1 starter. I was just the guy with the turn in the lineup. But you have to take advantage of every opportunity when they’re here, and I finally feel like I’m starting to do that.”

Unlike Brett Anderson, who was on the fast track to the Bay Area, Braden had to spend more time in the minor leagues. From 2004-06 he languished between Single-A and Double-A, including the A’s club in Midland. In 2007, he went from Double-A to Triple-A Sacramento before making 20 appearances for the A’s in the second half of the year. Last year, he floated between Sacramento and Oakland, making 30 combined appearances and 19 total starts.

Finally, though, the light seems to have come on for the crafty lefty. Braden is 5-5 on the year, and in his last five starts is 2-0 with three no-decisions and a 2.65 ERA.

“It’s tough when you don’t know exactly what your role is or exactly what’s going on,” Braden said. “At the same time, it’s just baseball and you just play and pitch and hope everything you’ve done in preparation for your outing will take care of itself.”

Diamond cuts
Braden spent just one year in a Tech uniform after transferring from American River College in California. But it didn’t take long for the Stockton, Calif., native to become a crowd favorite with Red Raider fans, whether it was his competitive fire on the mound, his ability to get batters out while regularly hitting 85-88 mph on the radar gun, or with his antics both off and on the field — he once tried to distract a fielder by flapping his arms like a bird while running to first base.

Braden said he still likes to cut up and have fun, but has toned it down a little.

“Here your personality is allowed to shine through a little more and everybody can be themselves,” Braden said. “A lot of the guys here are weird just like me.”

One keen observer in the stands while the A’s were in Arlington said he could still see the same Braden even while shagging down flies in the outfield.

“We thought he was the heart and soul of our team,” former Tech coach Larry Hays said. “This guy, he knew when to be serious, and the rest of the time he was going to have a good time. Chasing down balls during batting practice and playing with the fans in the stands and throwing balls to different kids, that’s Dallas Braden having a blast. He’s proved everybody wrong who didn’t believe in him.”

While Braden spent just one year at Dan Law Field, Anderson literally grew up there.

“When we were in Lubbock, day care costs were crazy. The baseball field was his day care,” Frank Anderson said. “We’d have somebody pick him up from kindergarten and drop him off at the field, lock all the outside gates where he couldn’t get out and just let him roam.”

Hays joked that his main worry was that Brett Anderson would fall off the backstop or dugout as he had a propensity to climb just about everything. But it was evident early on that Anderson and baseball were meant to be together as he became as much a part of the Tech teams as the players, even appearing in the 1995 Red Raider media guide.

“He was more than just a batboy. We tormented him like he was one of the players,” said former Red Raider infielder Jason Totman, who played at Tech from 1994-95. “I remember walking in the clubhouse and hearing cries for help … and he’d ended up on top of the lockers and couldn’t get down.

“But he could dish it out as much as he could take it, and that was cool. The thing about Brett was he was always in the baseball game. He wasn’t there just to pick up bats. That’s why I think we treated him like one of the guys.”

Anderson said that even at an early age those experiences have stuck with him.

“It was an awesome experience,” Anderson said. “You couldn’t ask for a better guy to lead a program than coach Hays, one of the greatest guys to ever be around in college baseball. It was fun being around that field and a great experience overall.”

Taking steps forward
For both, however, baseball is now a business, a job as much as it is a game, and both treat it with the due amount of seriousness and respect, enough to be considered a part of the Oakland rotation for now and in the future. And if not for an elbow injury that has sidelined him all season, former Coronado standout Justin Duchscherer, a two-time All-Star, would be right there with them.

“Both are young and still learning and getting better. They’re giving us a chance,” A’s manager Bob Geren said. “Duchscherer, when he’s healthy and pitching every fifth day, is very good. We sure miss him, but we have some young guys who are getting better every time out.”

For Braden, the next step is continuing to improve on the mental side of baseball now that his physical skills have reached the major-league level.

“I need to become more of a student of the game at this point in my career,” Braden said. “It’s about understanding why I’m having the success I’m having and being able to differentiate between mistakes and the things that have gotten me the success that I hope to achieve.”

Anderson, who said he still talks to his father every day — and not always about baseball — said the acclimation process to the majors will be ongoing.

“I felt like I was a college-type pitcher coming out of high school because I’d been around college baseball all my life and I knew the inside of the college game,” Anderson. “(In the big leagues) I knew I’d have to throw strikes and get outs by keeping the ball low, and I feel like I’ve done that. So far I’ve been able to follow through with it. The more I pitch and the more comfortable I get and trust my stuff, that’s when I’ll get outs.”

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