Tag Archives: Oakland Athletics

December 28, 2011

The A’s Re-Rebuild

By chappy81

Oh the holiday’s brought up a few sports topics especially the Raiders since they played, but a lot of my hometown friends seemed to be talking about the A’s once again being in rebuild mode after the division rival Angels and Rangers made an array of championship caliber moves. I can’t completely blame the A’s for thinking about rebuilding after they saw what their divisional opponents did, but at the same time it feels like they aren’t even going to try AT ALL for a few years. They kinda half-assed the rebuild the first time around when they sort of rebuilt by trading pitchers, but then traded away a kings ransom (Cargo) for a crappy Matt Holiday. This time it’s really full on rebuild mode, and they are trading away any and all assets they have which should include Andrew Bailey in the near future (he was the only piece I honestly didn’t mind seeing go). They’ll probably ship off Brett Anderson as well when he comes back from his Tommy John surgery next season. The most perplexing part of these trades to us fans is that they had control over these pitchers for a long time before they even hit their arbitration years. Not signing Willingham or Matsui also put the writing on the wall that this team isn’t going to compete for awhile because they have zero offense outside Jemile Weeks now. Hell they aren’t even keeping around the beloved backup catcher who doesn’t even cost much to keep.

Sure they got some nice prospects back for Cahill and Gio, but the growing sentiment with my A’s friends is that this team has completely given up, and they won’t be following anything they do next year or possibly ever. I can’t blame them at all. It’s going to be painful watching this team, even more so than last seasons error filled crap fest. I’ve heard numerous times that it might be better to just root for a new team, like say, the Giants. This statement pretty much crushed me every time I heard someone say it over the past couple months, especially when my Uncle said it who is one of the main reasons I’m an A’s fan at all. Some of the most loyal A’s fans over the years jumping ship to a team that I didn’t necessarily hate, but am starting to hate them more and more. Honestly, the best part about the Cahill trade is that he’s going to the Giants rival the Diamondbacks. I can see him getting numerous 4-6-3 double plays against their weak hitting lineup, but even that will only bring me minimal enjoyment.

Anyways, the A’s are in a real life version of Major League the movie as the owner is desperate to move, and seems to be fielding the least competitive team possible. There also seems to be a growing dissent for the A’s moving to San Jose among fans, and I’ll be the first to say I’d love to see them stay in Oakland by Jack London Square, but at the moment that isn’t a realistic option if we want them to be competitive again (aka get corporate sponsors to push them into the $80-$100M range in salary). Can they draw people at the coliseum if they are good? Sure, but they’ll never have a large payroll that exceeds $70M, and teams have caught up to them on all the sabermetrics stuff that helped keep Billy ahead of the competition during the early 2000′s. On an even playing field, there’s noway to compete with such little salary to work with.

It feels like the odds are against them whether it’s moving to San Jose and being blocked by the Giants. And seriously, how many fans would the Giants really lose?!? They are in SF, a HUGE city, and can take all the fairweather east bay A’s fans if they haven’t jumped teams already. Whether it’s Oakland coming up with a viable option to build a new park for this team or San Jose. It doesn’t matter what’s being proposed or done for them, it almost feels like they’re inevitably going to have to move out of the Bay Area just like the Kings will probably have to move from Sacramento. I’m not sure what my A’s friends think of them moving out of California, but as lame as they think people in San Jose are, I’d much rather have the A’s there instead of some other state. Recently it sounds like the Giants aren’t going to give up their gold mine of sponsorships (SJ) without a fight, and Selig is too stupid to make a ruling on anything, so they probably won’t know what they can or can’t do until he’s retired or dead. Once again the A’s will go into another season with no direction for the future, and most likely losing more fans in the process. They need new facilities. They need more sponsors. They need a fresh start, and now I’m just hoping it’s going to be in the greater bay area or in California. No plans have been discussed outside the bay area, but I’m sure those talks will start soon if something doesn’t give. Mark my words!

6 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Sports

October 22, 2011

A’s Bring Back Pitching Coach Curt Young, And Hope For 2012

By mceezy

Curt Young ditches his team of drunks for younger kids who aren't old enough to drink

With a football resurgance going on in the Bay Area – the Raiders and 49ers are both off the great starts in the NFL season – Northern California baseball fans are wondering what it would be like if their MLB teams returned to contention next year. Sure, the Giants are, for a few more days, the reigning World Series champions, but they took a step back this year. But, if you know us, you know Doin Work is more about the A’s anyway. Over the second half of the season, it became clear that Oakland is not too far off from being competitive again. The pitching was clearly there, they just needed to find the offense to go with it, which has been a problem since the A’s went to the ALCS in 2006. But after we finally got rid of manager Bob Geren, the hitting finally came around. Problem is, the pitching suffered. Injuries were a factor, losing guys like Dallas Braden and Brett Anderson certainly hurt, but even ace Trevor Cahill had a down year. While I’m not so sure pitching coach Ron Romanick was the problem, there’s no denying the fact that the A’s pitching staff had much success under his predecessor, Curt Young. Young was let go last year to take the Boston Red Sox position, but we all know what happened there last year. With the Epstein-Francona regime ousted from power, Curt was left looking for a new team. Fortunately, the A’s wereright here waiting (as Richard Marx once sang in 1989 when Young helped pitch the A’s to a World Series pennant). Before he left to coach the Red Sox beer-drinking, fried chicken eating, video game playing bums, Young led the A’s staff to a 3.47 ERA, the lowest for an AL team in 20 years. It’s pretty much the same staff he left, with Braden and Anderson set to rejoin Cahill, and perhaps the new ace of the staff, all-star Gio Gonzalez. So, if Curt Young can help return the rotation to top form, it will allow the A’s front office and coaching staff to focus all of their attention on the offense, where it absolutely belongs.

 

5 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Sports

October 3, 2011

Too Much Moneyball

By chappy81

There’s been a lot of hype about the movie Moneyball, but I still have yet to see it. I’m sure I will for sure one of these days, just not quite sure when. The opposite of the Moneyball A’s would probably be the Yankees. There was a funny spoof made at jest.com (a site I’d never heard of) if the Yankees were the subject of the movie. Clever and funny soundbites throughout. I must be losing my touch, because once again I can’t embed the video, but here’s the link. Enjoy!

Ok, someone uploaded it to youtube, so here’s the video without having to click on another site…

11 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Sports

August 31, 2011

A’s Get Robbed In Bugtown USA

By mceezy

I guess it doesn’t really matter, so I shouldn’t be crying over spilled milk, but the A’s got robbed in Cleveland tonight. For a while I thought the bugs were going to dictate the outcome of the game, and we’d be able to blame it on the insects, like the Yankees did in the playoffs a few years back. Instead, we can blame it on BRUCE DRECKMAN.  YOU blew a call tonight Dreckman, all because you wanted to go home. The A’s and Indians were deadlocked in a 3-3 tie in the 16th inning. A run hadn’t been scored in 10 innings, but it was just passed midnight in Cleveland, and you wanted to hit the hay. Well I’m not gonna stand for this. This aggression will not stand, man. Kurt Suzuki clearly made the tag on the ass no less than 6 inches ahead of the plate. I know the bugs must be a pain in the ass, but let’s at least let the players on the field determine the outcome of the game. This was the biggest blown call since Jim Joyce ruined Armando Galarraga’s career. There was only one out, so it’s not like the Indians probably wouldn’t have scored. But to send a team home on that play, is no doubt a low point in the season. It may not seem like a big deal now, but for all you fans of playoff teams, just hope that you don’t get dealt Bruce Dreckman for one of your series. His blown call will sail under the radar, but it won’t go without notice on Doin Work. F*** YOU BRUCE DRECKMAN.

10 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Sports

August 23, 2011

Knee Jerk Reactions To Knee Jerk Reactions

By mceezy

Man, were there a lot of knee jerk reactions this weekend. I had my share of knee jerk reactions to those knee jerk reactions. I had no other choice since I spent the majority of the weekend off the grid in spectacular Yosemite National Park. I had some spotty reception, and there was a TV in the tavern, but for the most part, I spent the weekend oblivious to what was going on in the world. The 20 minutes of sports I did catch was the SF Giants getting beat by the Astros, 5-0. I had no idea, until Sunday afternoon, once I touched back down in the California Central Valley, where there was reception again, that the 49ers – Raiders game was riddled with brawls and shootings. Well, you can’t say the Niners didn’t overreact to the incidents. So here’s my feelings on that, along with some other things….

49ers – Raiders Violence:  Why wouldn’t these two fan bases wanna brawl? Both their teams sucks donkey balls, despite plenty of means to be a contender. They’ve both been deep in the postseason numerous times, but these times are hard for Bay Area football teams. It’s no surprise that fans would want to distract themselves from the garbage going on the field. But it doesn’t take a CSI cast member to see that the fights in the stand weren’t merely Raiders vs. 49ers fans. It was one group of dudes against another group of dudes. There was plenty of red on gold violence, and silver and black evil (which we call crime). For the 49ers to subliminally claim that Raider fans were to blame is ridiculous – much like their management of the franchise over the last decade. I’m the #1 apologist for Raider fans… I won’t claim responsibility for any of them, but it’s not that serious. The incidents that occurred at Candlestick Point this past weekend had very little to do with football. Yet, the 49ers’ brass wants to suspend all future preseason games against the Raiders. Alright man, if you’d rather fork over the cash for a charter flight and 50 hotel rooms in San Diego, go right ahead. I’m pretty sure a few extra security guards would be cheaper.

Raiders Grab Terrelle Pryor: Of course they did. Everyone knew the Raiders would go after Pryor, but it almost seemed too obvious. Now the naysayers are bantering about how soon he’ll be moved to wide receiver. Yet Pryor, along with agent Drew Rosenhaus, and according to them, Raiders management, all insist that Terrelle will remain a quarterback. Whether or not that comes to fruition, it’s a low risk – high reward move for Oakland. Because let me put it this way… IF TERRELLE PRYOR PLAYED NEXT YEAR AT OHIO STATE, WOULD YOU SAY THAT HE WOULD GO LOWER THAN THE SECOND ROUND?! ….DIDN’T THINK SO. So to give up a third round pick next year for a flier on Pryor, I’m with it. Especially when I think about how they would burn the pick next year. The Raiders have become a team that takes who they want, when they want. They reached on guys like Mike Mitchell and Demarcus Van Dyke, but that’s who they wanted, so it didn’t matter what pick it was.

Earthquakes Give A’s Home Field Advantage In Yankee Stadium: A 5.9 earthquake struck the East Coast yesterday, and so did the Oakland Athletics. Two violent aftershocks were reported, but were later discovered to be Brandon Allen home runs. The first baseman, acquired from Arizona for Brad Ziegler at the trade deadline, has immediately stepped into the starting first baseman role. Though he was expected to hold down the corner until Conor Jackson came back, Allen has remained at first – while Jackson has found his playing time in the outfield. The A’s have played as good of baseball as any team since the all-star break – unfortunately they’ve been too far out of the race – but a few newcomers have of all 90 of us fans excited for the future. There’s not a lot left to play for… but a sweep, or even just a series win, in the Bronx would do wonders for this team. The Yanks were clearly shaken by the earthquake earlier in the day, but that’s just business as usual for the Northern California A’s squad.

Matt Holliday Gets Earf*cked By A Moth: I had a giant moth land on my forehead today at the office, so I can relate. This story would have never caught my attention if I didn’t have a moth run in this morning. But my moth was way bigger than Matt Holliday’s. He had one burrow into his year. That’s some horror movie type stuff. I caught the interview with Holliday on ESPN radio this afternoon. He sad he felt a bug going crazy inside his ear. The doctors couldn’t see anything, but finally they broke out the light and were able to see something moving around in there. They tried to pull it out with tweezers, but kept only getting pieces of the wings. Holliday described the wings as basically flaking off. After some time, the doctor was able to grab the insect by the body and pull him out of Holliday’s ear. Nucking futs.

5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Sports

August 23, 2011

A’s Stuck in Purgatory…

By chappy81

Over the past five years, the A’s have been in a state of regression as they struggle with just about everything from facilities, to players, to attendance. They can’t get players to sign with them even when they do put out the best offer on the table, because they have crappy facilities. Players like Beltre and Furcal just use them as leverage for other teams who are offering them smaller or nearly the same contracts. The A’s want a new stadium yet Lew Wolff refuses to negotiate with the Oakland officials anymore than he already has, and they have been pushed to the back-burners by the MLB committee looking into their situation of moving. Their lineup is scattered with quadruple-A players, and there’s probably only a dozen A’s fans left (judging by attendance). I figured I’d break down the key issues with the team, and help get the word out on how dire our situation is. I know I’ve ranted about these issues a few times, but I figured I should put them all together to let everyone know what is what and draw your own conclusion on who is to blame. It’ll be my last post about it for awhile, I swear!

The Facilities

It’s strange how you come to different conclusions as time passes. Personally I enjoy the coliseum, and feel it has a little charm left even after they built the funny looking Mt. Davis for the Raiders games. It’s not a problem that they share the stadium with a football team, the problem is that the coliseum is in the ghetto, and there’s not much around the stadium. Jack London Square is cool and all, but it’s not the city. Many residents would rather go to a Giants game and talk about garlic fries while sending out e-mails on their blackberries. Can I blame them? Not really since they don’t care about the game anyways. Seriously, would you rather sit at PacBell or O.co Coliseum if you don’t care about the game? Easy answer. A’s fans at the games are great fans. The problem is there’s barely any fans going, and there’s nothing to do in that area, except maybe unload a few freight containers. In a time where your stadium needs to be connected to a mall and be in a thriving downtown-like area, the A’s don’t stand a chance in increasing attendance. Will the A’s move to San Jose to get a stadium built? After reading this brilliant piece by Howard Bryant on ESPN, I doubt it will happen anytime soon, and may never happen with the Giants trying to force the A’s into contraction (that’s what it feels like at least).

Pre-Mount Davis Coliseum

Nowadays players want to be treated like Mark Cuban treats the Mavs (state of the art training equipment and state of the art electronics everywhere). The coliseum was built back when players were allowed to smoke during the game in the dugouts. That should say everything about how dated the facilities are. Maybe that’s a reason why we seem to set records yearly for DL usage. As I said, I don’t dislike the coliseum, but if we need a new stadium to get our guys healthy and help us attract offensive players in free agency, I’m 100% for it.

About three years ago we thought we were heading to Freemont in what seemed like a done deal. I wasn’t excited, but wasn’t totally against it since we didn’t seem to have any other options. The deal fell apart for a few reasons, and from what I heard it was because there wasn’t solid BART access which put the A’s back to square one. This was probably the only time I really felt bad for Wolff during the process, because he spent around $30M of his own money getting that proposal in the works.

The Giants and Media Marketing

With the World Series win last year the Bay Area is owned by the Giants at the moment. They’ve always had more fans than the A’s, but now it’s ridiculously lopsided as all the sort of fans have jumped on their bandwagon. It’s almost impossible to find info on the A’s in the papers or on TV. The Giants are dominating the market as much as you can in a two team market. Hell, at the beginning of the year I could barely find a radio station that even talks about the A’s. Is this Lew Wolff’s plan to slowly make everyone not care about this team by spending $1 on advertising for every $100,000 the Giants spend? Seems like the strategy is working as attendance keeps dipping. It’s not like Lew Wolff is poor, I hear him and Fishcer have a net worth over a billion, but they don’t seem to put a dime of that into marketing this team. I’m not sure what I hate more about this fact that the Giants are the Bay Area team or that Lew Wolff isn’t really putting up a fight.

It’s no secret Lew Wolff desperately wants to move out of Oakland and preferably to San Jose, but the Giants own the territorial rights. A little over a decade ago when Pac Bell park was in the works, the A’s then owner gave them the rights to the south as a gentlemen’s agreement to give them some leverage to get their stadium built. Unfortunately the same situation has come up for the A’s, yet the Giants refuse to relinquish those rights back to the A’s. How does moving from 15 miles away from the Giants to 60 miles away from them hurt their market more? Tough for me to answer that as I’m no financial guru. I do know that the Giants want to be big spenders like the Yankees and Red Sox, which at this point seems like it could happen if Wolff keeps tightening his wallet and the Giants keep the A’s out of San Jose. Seems like the Giants could return the favor, and maybe that would even open Oakland back up to the point where they negotiate again. Right now with no real ability to threaten to leave, the city of Oakland doesn’t have to scramble and put together a good stadium deal…

Billy Beane

I’ve found it comical how people are blaming Billy Beane for the A’s lack of success on the field. Maybe it’s because the movie Moneyball is coming out, and people want to knock him off the proverbial pedestal, but it’s got to be tough to build a team when you’re constantly in limbo. Sure we could’ve kept Ethier and Cargo, but almost all Beane’s moves at the time made sense to me, so he gets a pass for those two. In any kind of business you need a plan, and as of right now there are no long term plans with this team, so it makes his job nearly impossible to succeed at, which is why I’ll give Beane a pass until we know more than a year into the future. Hell our contract with the coliseum agreement is up after this season, so we might not even have a stadium next year! Hopefully they don’t play in the parking lot… When you’re a GM and have no idea what the future holds, it’s impossible to map a team strategy out. We’ve always done a lot of one year contracts, but we usually lock up a couple guys, and that hasn’t been happening. Personally, I blame the unstable future. Based on some of the contracts that Beane has offered to top free agents, he is serious about fielding a good team. Unfortunately, we end up with a lot of new guys or castoffs, because the “premium” free agents don’t come here because they can get paid the same elsewhere where they have better facilities. Even with all the Dodgers problems, at least they know they’re staying in LA. The A’s have relatively no idea when or where this team will be in three to five years. Hopefully it’s not still at square one where they are today or I might be forced to give up on baseball all together.

Side rant: The only thing I’m still pissed about with BB is the fact he let Ron Washington go. I said a couple years ago before Texas started being the class of the AL West, losing Washington might curse us. He was a players coach and instead we got a non-players coach in Geren. How could he let go of the coach that EVERYONE in the locker room loved? He made the players want to play, and kept the locker room relaxed and loose, you can’t put a price on that. If I could only ask Billy one question, it would be why we let Wash go instead of giving him the keys to the car.

The MLB

I guess this is who I blame at the moment for our purgatory status. The MLB made a three man committee that Bud Selig appointed to sort out this whole mess over two years ago. According to Selig, it might take awhile longer to make sense of all the options in this dispute. I’ve already vented about it, so I won’t tell you how ridiculous it is that it’s taken over two years since he appointed the committee. Yes, there’s tons of issues, involved in crunching the numbers and projecting the effects on each community, but they’re building Farmer’s Field in LA without even having a team here! You’d think he could give everyone in the A’s front office an update or two on the progress at least. If you needed another reason to hate Selig here it is. 75 CEO’s in San Jose wrote up a letter telling him why he should approve the A’s move to San Jose, and how it would work financially. They are currently the 10th largest city in the US (surprising to me), and seem to want to help fund the building of the stadium. So what does Selig do when he recieves this letter from some of the richest men in the US? He ignores it, and doesn’t respond. Is it because they aren’t Jewish? Is it because he loves the Giants? Is it because he’s senile and doesn’t even remember reading the petition/letter showing where and how they would acquire land and funds to build the park? Only Selig could answer that, and based on how he’s treated us the past couple years, I doubt we’ll ever hear an answer to that petition.

Conclusion

It feels like there’s a lot of people to blame for this mess. Again, I wrote this more to inform everyone out there of our situation rather than blame a certain person or people, it’s been a group effort to ruin this proud franchise. The A’s have some great fans, but unfortunately I’ve heard more than a few recently say “it’s just easier to follow the Giants”. I don’t like bringing up the movie Major League when it’s referencing my team, but it feels like all the forces in the league are against us, and one or more of these crooks is trying to get rid of the A’s in Oakland at least. We can’t attract free agents because our facilities suck, our owner doesn’t want to stay in Oakland or negotiate with the city for a new stadium, Selig and his merry men don’t seem to give two craps about us, and the Giants would rather see the A’s die a slow death than give them the territorial rights that the A’s gave them for nothing less than two decades ago. Talk about the odds being stacked against you! It will be a Billy Beane led miracle if this team makes the playoffs anytime soon.

6 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Sports

August 16, 2011

Elephants and Seals

By chappy81

It’s been a little while since we did our A’s and Giants updates. As always, By is covering the World Champs and Chappy is covering the A’s.

San Francisco Giants (66-56, 2nd) Oakland A’s (53-68, 4th place)

Three Up

Oakland A’s – The A’s won back to back road series for the first time since April. Upon coming home, they were promptly swept by the Rangers. The A’s bats have come alive since the All-Star break scoring the 5th most runs post AS break. Josh Willingham is one home run shy of giving us a 20 home run hitter for the first time since Cust did it in 2009. Is it a positive that we are already calling up prospects like Brandon Allen to see what they got? I guess so, but that just means we are way out of it. At least yesterday he went 6 for 8 over his last two games. Since all of our outfield will be free agents this year I’m not sure why we haven’t seen more youngsters. The Willingham, Matsui, Dejesus, and Conor Jackson projects should come to an end soon, and maybe we’ll see how Choice, Carter, or Taylor does.

SF Giants - As bad as the offensive woes have been for the Giants, they’re still only 2.5 back from Arizona, when they could and should very well be out of the division race by now.  They’ve lost 12 of their last 17 all the while the D’Backs seem to never lose.  Our starting pitching has been superb and consistent, and all Giants fans know that our chances at repeating hinge on our staff.  That’s not, and never has been the problem.  The good news is, Sunday’s game against the Marlins, and Monday’s game at Atlanta showed a bit of inclination that our offense has started to turn a corner.  Unfortunately Brian Wilson blew the game against the Braves.  Easily the most painful loss of the season for the Giants.  If the bats can produce 3-4 runs a game going forward, I have much confidence that the Giants make the post season and do some serious damage towards claiming another title.

Three Down

Oakland A’s – Where to start. Oh yeah, our defense. What was thought to be a strength coming into the season has been a glaring weakness. We continually shoot ourselves in the foot committing errors every game, and thankfully Melvin is pissed about it. There’s no way this team should be third in the league in errors backing up a great pitching staff. This also got me thinking, is our team ERA just good because they give up a lot of unearned runs? Even Trevor and Gio look pretty average as of late. CJ Wilson talked crap about how the A’s suck and so do their fans before Texas came to Oakland, and kinda backed it up after one of the most disappointing series of the year for the A’s.

SF Giants - Well, the fact that at one point last month we looked to be smooth sailing towards winning the division, then added perhaps the best free agent bat to help bolster our lineup, and now, we are slipping out of contention and that big bat we added can’t even suit up for us.  Yeah that’s pretty lame.  Losing the series to the Pirates hurt.  Losing 3-4 at home against the Phil’s stung.  Letting Arizona take the last series against us at home wasn’t helpful.  Getting swept by the Reds flat out sucked.  I can’t even write a reasonable “Three Down” segment for this post, I’m just a little upset, but by no means have I lost faith in the Giants.  But I won’t lie, I’m very nervous right now.

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Sports

July 10, 2011

Elephants and Seals

By chappy81

As always By will be covering the Giants and Chappy will be covering the A’s portion.

San Francisco Giants (1st place 50-40)

Oakland Athletics (4th place 39-51)

Three Up -

Oakland A’s -Mark Ellis is wrecking pitchers lately going 11-32 with four doubles, three homers, and 7 RBI’s in his last seven games. Too bad he’s now a member of the Rockies. Tough for me to find a lot of positives outside of Jemile Weeks and Scott Sizemore, but I guess our leading RBI man Josh Willingham is healthy and back in the lineup. Guillermo Moscoso pitched 24.2 innings only giving up one run, but was sent back to AAA today. I guess that shows you how good our pitching has been even with numerous injuries. I’d like to see us trade a couple of these pitchers for a bat. Is that asking too much? I guess so. I think it’s a good thing they are going to let our top prospect Chris Carter keep playing in Oakland. It’s not like he could do worse than Barton was doing at first base. I hope we sell off some players and get something worthwhile at the trade deadline. I’d love to see them unload Fuentes.

SF Giants – There’s so many positives to write about, but I’ll keep it short.  Let’s start with the obvious, the Giants remain in first place, and the only goal for the miSFits is to win their division and make the playoffs.  Another positive, the G-Men are sending four All-Stars to the desert, and if not for horrible run support for Mad Bum, perhaps five.  How about Barry Zito guys!?  While most Giants fans are raving about his “return” to prominence, I still remain skeptical.  Let’s just appreciate his last three starts for now before we go handing him the Cy Young shall we?  And lastly, it is good seeing Buster Posey in the dugout again.  We miss you buddy ~

Three Down - 

Oakland A’s – Where to start!?! We score no runs, and the only games we win are 1-0 or 2-0. Those wins are also few and far between. We are last in the worst division in the AL.  We’ve hit the fewest homers, and are in the bottom three in all of baseball for runs, RBI, and batting average.  When you see stats like Kurt Suzuki has 6 of our last 16 hits, and Derek Holland with a career 5.22 ERA holds you to a 4 hit CG shutout, you know you’re in trouble. I’m tired of writing how they can’t hit, so I’ll spare myself. If there wasn’t enough bad mojo going around this team, even fans are dying at the park when they hit foul balls…

SF Giants – I hate to sound redundant, but the one downer for these Giants is their hitting.  While they remain scrappy and stay true to form with their “A Different Hero Every Night” approach on offense, it’s hard to fathom them keeping it up the entire season.  Especially since it started last season.  Overall, not much to complain about with the Giants, especially while they’re in first.

7 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Sports

June 22, 2011

Excitement in Oakland, and His Name is Jemile Weeks

By chappy81

It’s been a little over two weeks since the A’s called up the 2008 #1 pick, Jemile Weeks. MCeezy already declared him his favorite current A’s player on facebook the other day, and I have to say I’d agree with that sentiment. Hopefully writing about him doesn’t jinx him like I did writing about Matt Joyce’s great year, but sometimes you have to risk it when you’re excited. It’s been awhile since one of our position player prospects caused this much stir on Athletics Nation (the best A’s blog). Yeah, there was excitement when Chris Carter was called up last year, but ultimately he didn’t do anything. Weeks on the other hand, has been tearing the cover off the ball. He hit three triples in his first week in the big leagues. He has been playing so well he has earned his spot as our leadoff man the past few games. He’s also seems to have taken our longest tenured A’s player’s spot, 2B Mark Ellis (11 years with Oakland), in those two short weeks. If we still had Geren as our manager, I bet Weeks would go back to the bench when Ellis comes off the DL today, but now that we have a competent manager, I don’t see Melvin taking the hot bat out of the lineup. He’s already given Matsui some confidence, and has shown that he will play the best players every night. How has Weeks earned that leadoff spot? By taking professional atbats and swinging at a very low rate of balls out of the strike zone. Translation; he doesn’t swing at bad pitches, and when he does swing he connects on 80% of pitches. So far the switch hitter is batting .362 with an OBP% of .400, .572 SLG%., and 4 steals to boot. To say he’s been our table setter over this current six game winning streak would be the understatement of the day. He’s had a couple of blemishes in the field, but that can be overlooked when he’s making more great plays than bad ones. Weeks has great range because of his speed, and even with this very short sample size, I feel he could win a gold glove one day if he continues to work on his fielding.

Maybe A’s fans are getting a little ahead of themselves with Weeks already saying that he is the next Reyes. I saw a comment yesterday that Weeks even hit a triple off Chuck Norris! All kidding aside, even though his small sample size has been great, it’s tough to see him being able to keep it going as well as he has. I’m sure he’s bound to hit a rookie wall at some point. Even if he does, I can’t think of a prospect that we’ve called up in the last four years that wasn’t a pitcher that I was this excited about! Maybe Kurt Suzuki, but it looks like we finally found a solid offensive piece, after numerous underwhelming prospects (Barton, Pennington, Carson, Watson, Crosby, Buck, Keilty, and many more). The only thing I’m cautioning myself for is that he has been hurt a lot over the three years in our farm system. It’s probably because he plays with reckless abandon, which usually results in an injury or two, but there’s noway you’d want to change that since that’s what makes him successful. Maybe he needs to learn something from Reyes as he said this year that he needed to learn when to go 110% and when to go 80% which is why he’s been a lot healthier this season. As of the moment, I’ve developed a Curry-like mancrush on Jemile, and he’s already paying dividends if you picked him up for your fantasy team!

3 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Sports

June 15, 2011

Elephants and Seals

By chappy81

As always By will be covering the Giants and Chappy will be covering the A’s portions.

San Francisco Giants (38-29 1st place) Oakland A’s (28-40 4th place)

Three Up

Oakland A’s – They broke their 10 game losing streak against the White Sox in a comeback win. Unfortunately they went from second to fourth during that losing streak. We thankfully have a new manager (Bob Melvin) that I wrote about last week, so now I can’t work in any disses about the team overcoming Geren’s minimal coaching abilities. The new Bob has already started making the players do some infield practice before games, which is rare this day in age for any team to practice much infield work before games. The good part about this hire is he’s already proactive attacking one of our big weaknesses (A’s are ranked 27th in fielding with 51 errors). Now if he could only figure out some good drills to get them to hit! Bob Melvin seems to like keeping Matsui in the lineup everyday, which was something Geren couldn’t seem to do as he sat Matsui against lefties. Matsui even answered with a homer off a lefty last night. Hopefully this means Matsui will get comfortable at the plate knowing he’ll be in the lineup all the time. Andrew Bailey is finally closing games for us this season, too bad there aren’t any games for him to close. Scott Sizemore, who we got from Detroit, is already our best option at 3B even though he’d never played the position prior to coming to the A’s. Jemile Weeks was also called up when Ellis went on the DL, and has impressed me a lot more than Chris Carter did last year during his first MLB stint with three triples in his first seven games.

SF Giants – I just got home from a fantastic early dinner and as I type this, the G-Men hold a 5-0 lead against second place Arizona in the 5th.  I also see that Pablo “Panda” Sandoval has already left his mark on this game, bringing in the game’s first run.  Panda provides us with a much needed bat, at an absolutely desperate time.  It’s one thing that we lost Buster Posey for the entire season, but now Freddy Sanchez’s year is in jeopardy, and Freddy has been knocking in clutch runs all season.  I guess a positive we Giants fans can take out of all of this, is the fact that we’re still in first place, believe it or not!  And the reason why, is that the Giants epitomize the concept of team ball.  When someone goes down, the next person simply steps up and fills in.  I mean, we’ve had Nate Shierholtz hitting third at times, Nate Shierholtz people!  And now he has a few walk off base hits notched under his belt.  There’s a different hero every night with these guys, very similar to last season.  So if you’re an optimistic person, which I’m usually not, but if you are, you must be thinking we’re sitting pretty atop the division despite being dealt the worse possible hand you can be dealt.  Things can only get better from here, right?

Three Down

Oakland A’s – We have five starting pitchers on the DL, and Brett Anderson was that fifth starter to land on the DL. He’s avoiding Tommy John surgery, but it sounds like he might still have to have it down the road. I’m no doctor, but it doesn’t sound like these plasma injections do very much from other players accounts. We’ve called up some prospects mainly because of the numerous injuries. SP Graham Godfrey had an interesting way of getting called up the the big leagues, but we are really missing those starters that went down. Hopefully McCarthy comes back soon which seems likely. We’ve lost 13 of 14, and I might already be rooting for Seattle to take the division. (I’ll wait till the All-Star break, but it’s sad I’m already pondering picking who I want to win the division not named the A’s.) Daric Barton continues to digress this season. Not sure how much longer I can root for a guy that is in his third year, and having his worst season of those three years, he feels like Bobby Crosby all over again. Hopefully we are prepping Chris Carter or Michael Taylor in the minors to play first base. Maybe we should’ve hung onto Brett Wallace who is having a decent year in Houston…

Even Chriss Angel runs out of magic.

SF Giants – To the outsider looking in, you’d probably chuckle at the idea of being unhappy with a first place team.  But if you’ve been following the Giants closely like I have, especially these past two seasons, you know we win a lot, a lot of close games.  In unbelievable fashion at times.  How much magic do we still have at our disposal?  We’ve got to run out eventually right?  As long as we’re bottom dwellers in terms of offensive production, specifically scoring runs, and as long as our aces look like jokers on the mound (Tim Lincecum and Jonathan Sanchez), we’ve got reason to be concerned.  Hopefully Brandon Belt can get healthy and show us some of that bat we’ve all been told is coming.  The only consistent thing I can count on with these Giants, is Ryan Vogelsong giving up two runs or less every game.  The sad part is, some of those games are losses.

7 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Sports

June 9, 2011

Christmas Came Early, the A’s Fire Geren!

By chappy81

It’s no secret, MCeezy and I have been begging for Bob Geren to be fired for the better part of two years. Recently there’s been more of an internet buzz jumping on that bandwagon as he seems to make more and more questionable calls as the season went along. Finally this June 9th, the A’s made a move to get him out of town. It must have been hard for Billy Beane to fire his BFF Geren, but he finally sucked it up and made the much needed change. To say the team didn’t seem like they liked playing for Geren is the understatement of the year. Hell, I could barely figure out why he was making a lot of the moves he was, and I’m sure a professional player had just as hard a time making sense of his in game moves. Honestly it was like trying to figure out what happened to Lebron in Game 4.

Geren for the most part was a puppet for the front office like most of the A’s managers over the last decade plus. All his job really was supposed to be is relaying the messages from the front office to the players, and he couldn’t even handle that. When Fuentes said he never talked to Geren about his role in the bullpen, and former A’s player Huston Street said he was the worst baseball person he’s ever encountered, I think we all knew that he had completely lost this locker room. If that’s pretty much your only job, you should at least be talking to your players. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to credit the players for going on this current nine game losing streak playing as bad as possible in an effort to get Geren fired once and for all. They were in first a few short weeks ago, and now they are in dead last in the AL West 8 games out of first.

I don’t know a lot about our new interim manager Bob Melvin. He had a couple good years in Arizona going to the NLCS one year, but had a couple REALLY bad ones after. I’m glad they didn’t hire him on for good and are just trying him out for the rest of this year, so we aren’t stuck with him if he sucks too. He also had a stint with our AL West rival the Mariners, so he’s familiar with the division. I did read that Melvin grew up in the Bay Area near Palo Alto, and even played for the Cal Bears, so hopefully he has some A’s pride deep down. I hope they let him hire a new hitting coach, because that’s where we need the most improvement. Well, that and maybe a room full of hyper-barrack chambers to prevent all our guys from getting hurt like they have been.

24 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Sports

June 2, 2011

The A’s Are a Mess – But Don’t Take It From Me

By mceezy

It seems like every day now I’m fighting the urge to post a “Fire Bob Geren” rant. I have to keep reminding myself that there’s only about 50,000 A’s fans in the world. I’d venture to guess that less than 5% of our readers even care about the A’s. Though as much as I want to talk about tonight’s Game 2 of the NBA Finals, all I can think about is this bad taste left in my mouth from being swept by the Yankees at home. The A’s didn’t even put up a fight. The only punch landed was a 2-run home run from Josh Willingham off A.J. Burnett that gave Oakland a 2-1 lead yesterday, but that didn’t last long. Willingham’s also been the only guy doing any fighting for the Green and Gold this year for the most part. Without looking, I believe the A’s were outscored 19-5 by New York this week. Well of course I’m still on board with the Fire Bob Geren Movement, but the Oakland Tribune’s Monte Poole pulled a different play out of the playbook. Now, you won’t hear me praise other writers too often, but everything Monte writes I tend to like. He’s like the anti-Tim Kawakami. Anyway, Poole calls the play action fake and goes after the A’s ownership tandem, Lew Wolff and John Fisher. He brings the heat with gems like, they (took) “what once was a good franchise with an engaged fan base and starve it into lethargic inertia,” and “They have become a wealthy guy (Wolff) and an obscenely wealthy guy (Fisher) who acquired a valuable property, neglected it outright and continue to reap profits. It’s the slumlord model.” To read it in its entirety (and you should) click HERE.

It takes me back to a conversation I had back in 2006 with one of the then new owners’ daughters. I asked, “isn’t your dad the one who just bought the A’s?” She sort of rolled her eyes, sighed, and let out a reluctant “yes.” I then asked, “oh, do you get that a lot?” Again, a sigh and a yes. I replied, “Alright then, I won’t tell you to tell him NOT to move the A’s from Oakland then.” Somehow I get the impression her dad would respond the same way.

2 comments   |  tags: | posted in Sports

May 23, 2011

Mondanity

By mceezy

It’s actually far from mundane where the sports world is concerned, but the A’s got swept by the Giants and I’m not really able to see a lot of positives out there at the moment. The world is lousy right now as far as I’m concerned, but at least we’re all still here, right? Well, maybe minus 100+ of us out in Southwest Missouri. That storm was nasty, and while I constantly question why anyone would settle in Tornado Alley, I don’t think anyone could have seen one of that caliber coming. Oh, and we also lost a legend in the Macho Man Randy Savage. Dude took intensity to a whole nother level and probably should be credited as one of the primary founders of the concept of swagger. Turning my attention back to sports, here’s what captivated my interest now that the weekend is over….

FIRE BOB GEREN – I told Chappy the other day that we need to bring back the “Fire Bob Geren” movement. That was before they got swept in San Francisco, and have now lost 5 in a row to drop to 22-25 on the season. People who aren’t fans of the A’s – which apparently is all but 10,000 people in this world – will say Geren doesn’t exactly have a lot of talent to work with. The reality is he has the best pitching staff in all of baseball. Even with injuries to Dallas Braden, Brandon McCarthy, and Tyson Ross, as long as Cahill, Anderson, and Gonzalez are still standing, they’re alright. Admittedly the offense is terrible, but they went out and got Josh Willingham, Hideki Matsui, and David Dejesus. None of them are all-stars, but each has proved himself as a big league hitter, which is something I can’t say for guys like Daric Barton or Cliff Pennington. This is Geren’s 5th season as Manager, which is practically an eternity in this day and age. The problem is he’s Billy Beane’s best friend, so you can’t count on him firing his best friend. Now, if he were Lamar Odom it’d be another story! (And if you get that reference you should be ashamed of yourself)

If you care to hear more about the Fire Bob Geren Movement, head over to AthleticsNation, where someone apparently felt the same way I did waking up this Monday morning. Only this person must not have a job to go to, because this is the longest blog post I’ve ever seen. On the other hand, Geren’s managerial shortcomings can provoke one to express a lot of frustration, so I completely get it.

Joakim Noah Called Someone a Fag – Man, why is this such a huge story today? Maybe I tuned in at the wrong time, but this entire Thunder – Mavericks 2nd quarter broadcast has been all about Noah’s “homophobic slur.” Now don’t anybody comment on why it IS such a big deal, because I’m not saying he shouldn’t have been fined and publicly reprimanded. What’s frustrating for me, and everyone else out here in California, is it has been acceptable to be gay for like 20 years now. I’m tired of seeing the rest of the country showing up all late to the party trying to overcompensate. Add to that this ridiculous commercial with Grant Hill and Jared Dudley telling us that it’s rude to call things gay. Please, Jared Dudley grew up in San Diego. I’ll bet my life he’s called plenty of things gay in his day. I guess these commercials are breaking news to a large population of the U.S., but what’s next, Shane Battier and Blake Griffin telling kids it’s okay to be of mixed descent? Get with the times. (I just saw on the ESPN ticker that the Phoenix Suns President announced he’s gay. That happened like two weeks ago. It’s a big move for him, but we should have moved on by now.)

Ray Lewis NEEDS to Remain in the Public Eye if the NFL Has a Lockout – If you saw Sal Palantonio’s interview with the Ravens’ linebacker you know what I’m talking about. I like Ray Lewis on the field a lot, but I MAY just like him even more in a different capacity, like, say a reality show. He might even have a career as a pro wrestler. Shoot, just as long as he keeps doing interviews I’ll be interested. Just watching the man talk…. it reminds me of nights in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. You know that old probably homeless, possibly a crackhead grandpa that tries to talk to you and you just keep walking? Well I have a tendency to engage that guy in a conversation. I may not always take away something constructive from it, but grandpas always seem to have a way of making it seem like what they’re telling you is the most earth-shattering stuff you’ve ever heard, even though you have no idea what in the world they’re talking about. That’s the same feeling I get when I watch Ray Lewis talk. I just want to see more. (If there’s a fantasy football season, I’m naming my team “Evil, Which We Call Crime”)

Asdrubal Cabrera is the MVP of the American League - Sure, Jose Bautista has better numbers (he just hit his 19th HR of the year tonight), but how is HIS team doing? I’m the last guy you need to notify that the Cleveland Indians have the best record in baseball, seeing how I made them my preseason pick to win the AL pennant. I can’t say I saw Cabrera being this good though. If I did, I would have drafted him instead of Omar Infante in the 22nd ROUND of our fantasy league’s draft. True, yesterday’s 5-5, 2 HR, 5 RBI performance may just be fresh on my mind, but thanks to a little ESPN2 exposure tonight, I’ve just watched this kid go 3-4 with another home run, plus a key go-ahead RBI double in the 8th inning. If the Indians do end up making it to the World Series like I’m predicting, it will because Asdrubal Cabrera got them there.

Warriors Hired Jerry West – This is exciting for obvious reasons, but I’m not sure what effect it will actually have on the team on the floor. It doesn’t seem like anything will really get the Warriors over the hump anytime soon, but you wouldn’t just bring on Jerry West if you didn’t have a good reason would you? Well, maybe. Like Matt Steinmetz points out, it will, at the very least, give the Warriors  a little more credibility. If I were a free agent, I’d probably let Larry Riley go to voicemail. But if Jerry West were calling…. You see where I’m going with this. We’ll see what the results end up being, but this is the biggest hire since the Chris Mullin / Don Nelson regime was brought back, and THAT got us that one memorable playoff appearance, so there’s reason for optimism. Just like comedian/actor Kevin Hart says, “You ain’t a Warrior if you don’t G.S.!”

10 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Sports

May 20, 2011

Elephants and Seals

By chappy81

As always, By is covering the Giants portion, and Chappy is covering the A’s portion for this post.

San Francisco Giants (1st, 24-19) Oakland Athletics (2nd, 22-22)

Three Up

Oakland Athletics – They swept the Angels in a quick two game series, and also swapped positions with them to be in a tie for first place in the AL West for the first time this season. That didn’t last long as they lost two straight to the struggling Twins and were promptly sent back to 2nd place. Their offense has gotten progressively better over the last week and a half. They’ve actually averaged nearly 5 runs a game over their last 10. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Coco Crisp has been getting on base, stealing bases, and scoring runs. When he does well, they seem to score a lot more runs. Their pitching has still been their crutch to lean on. They lead the majors in ERA at 2.68, which is the only sub-3.00 ERA in all of baseball besides the Braves 2.88 team ERA. Andrew Bailey is getting closer to returning, and will be a welcomed addition to an already great bullpen.

San Francisco Giants - Giants are sitting pretty at first place despite playing average ball.  So there’s not much to complain about here, furthermore, they just did a mini sweep of division, no everything rivals LA in LA.  So a major f**k yeah for that.  The Mark DeRosa injury could be looked at as a down, but I see the positive in it.  For one, he was hitting like s**t.  Second, we’re too deep not to circulate other players in and out of the lineup, giving tough-minded guys like Mike Fontenot a shot at some p.t.  Hopefully DeRosa takes this time to clear his mind, and find his swing.  Finally Madison Bumgarner finally got his first win of the season, the Giants are on the up and up from here on out.

Three Down

Oakland Athletics – Hideki Matsui hasn’t really shown much promise thus far in the season. Maybe the inconsistent playing time has something to do with it, but I feel like there’s a chance he might just be old. Dallas Braden had season ending shoulder surgery, which was a downer but not unexpected. I’m a huge Tyson Ross fan, and he’s done admirable filling in since Braden went down, but he got injured, and apparently Brandon McCarthy did too, so that’s a hole in the rotation. Maybe Harden will eventually not be hurt or maybe another round with Outman wouldn’t be terrible. Bob Geren is still making questionable lineup/bullpen changes and tinkering that seems to prevent the team from keeping their continuity, but the players seem to be overcoming the handicap of having him as a manager, which must be one tough obstacle.

San Francisco Giants - I can’t complain about much these days, perhaps the injury to Pablo Sandoval has put a damper on our inconsistent hitting.  I’m not satisfied with Tim Lincecum’s 3-4 start.  I was hoping for him to be blazing toward another Cy Young early on.  But those are all ‘whatevers’ in my book.  The Giants are in first in the NL West, and this should lead to an interesting series with the A’s.

Next Up – The battle of the bay. Inter league play starts and the battle for bay area bragging rights is on the line.

Win or lose Chaps, we’re still friends o.k. !?!?

Yeah, no hard feelings a quarter of the way through a season!

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Sports

May 3, 2011

Elephants and Seals

By chappy81

This is our second installment of Elephants and Seals. And just like last time Chappy will be covering the A’s, and By will be covering the Giants.

San Francisco Giants (13-15) Oakland Athletics (15-14)

Three Up

Oakland A’s – They lost two of three in LA, but came on strong over the weekend to take 3 of 4 from Texas to bring themselves over .500.  Their bats seemed to wake up against what we all kinda knew was some weak starting pitching out in Texas. Kurt Suzuki hit two bombs after having his newly born daughter. Willingham hit a game tying homer, and Matsui hit a walkoff in yesterdays series winning game, so there’s some reason for optimism for the offense. Andrew Bailey is throwing again, and should be back sooner than later as he’s set to face some live hitting this week. That is a big relief because Fuentes is about as scary a ninth inning as you’ll get. He doesn’t throw hard, and puts guys on base giving A’s fans a heart attack every time he’s on the mound. Bailey we need you back! Coco Crisp’s bat is as lively as his hair these days, and when he’s on, he scores lots of runs. Oakland pitchers still lead the league in ERA at 2.76. They are did pretty good in April for their standards, because April is a month they almost always have a losing record in. You don’t win a division in April, but you can be far enough behind to lose it if you aren’t careful. I mean, we could be the Twins with only 9 wins.

San Francisco Giants – 1.  We won the 2010 World Series.  I know that was last season, and that historic event is a thing of the past, but when your beloved team plays as inconsistent as they have been, despite the talent and experience they possess, well then you got to hang your hat on something.  We’re only about 7% into the season, and if they don’t clean up their act by the 20% mark, I’ll throw this trump card away.  Which brings me to my next ”up” ~

2.  We’re only 7% into the season!  It’s still very early and the Giants are much below .500 ball thanks to  taking two out of three in five of the past seven series’.  They’ve been in a lot worse situations, and for them to be even despite not finding themselves is a good sign.

3.  Aaron Rowand is hitting .300 (o.k. .296) and Pablo Sandoval is hitting .313 with five dingers.  These are two players who contributed very little last season.  Aaron Rowand was considered a free agent bust, and Panda was looked at as a fluke.  The Giants are currently 11th in hitting in the N.L. but it’s neither of these two’s fault.  If they keep playing this well offensively, it will almost be like we picked up two solid free agents this year.

Three Down

Oakland A’s – Kevin Kouzmanoff is supposedly on the team more for his defense prowess, yet he’s already made 6 errors on the season. If his bat actually worked, I wouldn’t mind the errors as much, but this is getting ridiculous, and these errors are leading to runs almost every time he kicks an easy grounder. The team as a whole hasn’t been good defensively, but I doubt they will be tied for the lead the league in errors. The offense as a whole is offensive as they’re ranked 27th in the league in runs scored, don’t have a hitter over .300 in the lineup, and swing at way too many pitches early in the count. Pitchers that give up a few runs to us still are in the game in the 7th. Aside from Barton, I’m not sure anyone in the lineup knows how to work a count, unfortunately his working the count has resulted in a high amount of strikeouts. Pitchers are throwing 70 pitch complete games against us. Ok, not really, but you get the point. We have renamed the Oakland Coliseum to the Overstock.com Coliseum or O.co Coliseum. This is in the three down section, because it sounds lame.

1.  We won the 2010 World Series.  I know you’re asking, how can this be an ”up” and a ”down”?  It’s an ”up” from a fans’ perspective, especially someone like me who is grateful he witnessed a World Series championship during his lifetime.  It’s been a ”down” for the actual team.  I tried not to think it, but it’s becoming more and more apparent, the Giants have a World Series hangover.  They’re too busy making music videos with Keenan Cahill that they forgot there’s a season to play.  But then again, this is the reason why we fell in love with these guys, they’re a bunch of goofy clowns and miSFits.

2.  Missing Andres Torres has been a huge downer for the Giants.  He’s a great lead off man, and plays a fantastic center field.  The one thing that’s underrated about Torres is his defense.  Our outfield has been our week spot early on, especially when we threw Pat Burrell and Aubrey Huff out there (wtf!) but with Ross back, and Torres on his way, I’ll stop holding my breath on every fly ball.

3.  Pitching and hitting.  If it’s not one, it’s the other.  This is reminiscent of years past with these Giants team.  They’re winning or losing games, 1-0 or 9-8.  Neither side can get it together consistently and act as a cohesive unit.  Like I mentioned earlier, we’re 11th in the N.L. in hitting.  I’m not concerned about average starts from Timmy, Jonathan Sanchez and Matty Cain, but Madison ”Mad Bum” Bumgarner has struggled big time.  Last season he was brilliant in the post season, we’ve only seen one glimpse of that pitcher since.  Could I actually be asking this, but are we missing Barry Zito?  If it’s come to this, then that’s a huge downer.

Next Up

Oakland A’s – Taking on the best team in baseball, Cleveland Indians at home. They found a little groove offensively against Texas, so hopefully that keeps up. I can’t wait for the day when I’m not shocked when they put up 4 runs in a game.

San Francisco Giants got to start doing their best Charlie Sheen impression, winning.  We got the Mets and Rockies next, very winnable series’.

16 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Sports

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 50 other followers