Enough with the damned Bernie Lean already: Your 2013 Oakland Athletics Thread

http://beermugsports.com/storage/coco%20crisp%20bobble%20head%203.jpg

Welcome aboard to Chris Young, Jed Lowrie, John Jaso, and Hiroyuki Nakajima!

Im gonna try to follow nakajima this year.. he has some badass numbers in npb

This really isn't anything new on the move to San Jose but it's new and baseball is actually doing something:

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-0221-athletics-san-jose-20130221,0,1177347.story

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me tuning in 5 mins ago: "Who's the huge... oh, Bartolo"

Helping the Astros' BIP frequency.

Looking forward to Bartolo's interleague at-bats this season. Takes every pitch, barely bothers to lift the bat.

they sent Straily down for that man.

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/2467577/Reddick_sunflowerseed.gif

http://pauls.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/donaldsonbuckle.gif

Oakland Athletics are 12-4.

If their offense if for real then they'll run away with the division.

I think they look great but getting to play Houston six times is kinda distorting.

^^^^^^^^

That said the division overall minus Texas is pretty weak all of the sudden in general. Angels plan to be Yankees West looking pretty poor (small sample but minus Weaver I like their staff even less than I did last month).

YOENIS

Crazy multi-comeback game, O's pen not very clutchy.

and then a toss the ball around finale!

free baseball (no more BART trains, eh?)

p horrible ball calls walk in a run

and the A's tie it, again due to Kerwin Danley's charity. I'd love to be the guy reviewing his Pitchf/x.

oh crap, my fantasy team just got 5.1 surprise innings from brett anderson 0_o

guess that ankle wasn't as sprained as he though

*thoughthenheim

http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/cache/location.php-pitchSel=474463&game=gid_2013_04_29_anamlb_oakmlb_1&batterX=&innings=yyyyyyyyy&sp_type=1&s_type=.gif

I went to bed in the 18th alas.

Three outfielders left with leg injuries.

was AJ Griffin a Bad News Bear?

11th career shutout for Colon

This game went by incredibly fast, 2 hours 14 minutes.

Colon's got a chance at the post-deadball record for fewest walks per nine. Scanning the leaderboard, the three lowest I see are Carlos Silva in 2005 (0.4301), Saberhagen in 1994 (0.6598), and Cliff Lee in 2010 (0.7630). Colon's walked four in 70.1 innings so far (0.5118). (Not that there are actual records assigned for post-deadball.)

Today was Coco Crisp Cereal Bowl Day.

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Oakland Athletics on Pinterest</p></div>

third-best record in the AL

lol derek norris walkup music is marilyn manson the beautiful ppl

awes

ewww

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/6/17/4438522/oakland-athletics-coliseum-sewage-locker-rooms-new-ballpark

where did donaldson come from? dude is solid

The first round of the 2007 draft

huh in the rich harden trade. the reinforcing of the never trade w/ beane principle

Is it a rule the A's always have to have a sidewinder reliever? Not that it is necessarily hard comparatively in the MLB sense, but that one I saw last night for the A's made Chris Heisey of the Reds look totally dumbfounded in a three pitch strike out.

Sidearm relievers = a market inefficiency no doubt.

I think this A's team is pretty much all market inefficiency: 5 decent starters + amazing defense + insane bullpen + average offense. Middle two being a winning combo has kinda been what Beane has been working for a while, but getting the average offense together seems like it was the final key.

Bartolo : allowed one run in seven innings against the Pirates. It was his 11th straight start of at least six innings while allowing three or fewer runs. That's tied for the second-longest such streak for the A's in the live ball era.

Any room on the bandwagon?

donaldsons really scuffling now - 1 xbh in last 72 abs

two in 73

trying to figure out where I can see the A's play this year, i think I blew it. Last weekend of season in Seattle?

7 hits, 5 runs and 3 walks in 2.2 innings for Colon.

so what's wrong?

Lack of offense.

They aren't that good. You can only play the Astros so many times.

^ my thoughts aswell.

yeah their RS/RA match Tampa Bay's almost exactly.

Reddick to DL with sprained wrist.

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coco

A's play the Astros again lol

Yankees' playoff odds have gone up 6.9% in the last week. A's went up 12.6%.

Starting to think I underrated these guys. They sure do win a lot.

so does everyone (against the astros and angels and mariners)

i guess that applies more to tex tho -- 17 games over .500, 9 games under .500 vs everyone that isn't the AL West.

in conclusion fuck MLB scheduling forever

uh, the major alternative to what we have now is playing MORE intradivision games.

It's not scheduling's fault that the Angels blew up and the Astros are wretched.

I kinda love this A's team most of all:

Best Position Player: Converted minor league C level catching prospect
Best Pitcher: Converted minor league C level 1B prospect

The A's haven't just been beating up on bad teams lately though. They won a bunch of series in the last month against contenders.

Oakland had the cushiest schedule in the AL this year:
http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/rpi/_/sort/sos

Right next to the Dodgers, who have almost the same SOS and almost the same W/L record. Interesting.

It's not scheduling's fault that the Angels blew up and the Astros are wretched.

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Thursday, September 12, 2013 7:50 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it is scheduling's fault that every team faces a massively different set of challenges than every other team not in their league, it is scheduling's fault that the A's and the Rangers do not play 8 million games against the yankees red sox rays and orioles (and even the jays, sometimes)

in ten years if the astros and angels are great and the rays and red sox suck, it will still be scheduling's fault that the competition isn't anything close to equal

Is there a sport that isn't like that?

there is a guaranteed playoff spot for succeeding at the same (more or less) schedule that four other teams in yr division play.

there are an extra two spots for everyone else in the league. this year, at least, there is no division winner eking in while a wild card gets shafted.

in a vicious reversion to the mean, the o's have the worst record in the majors in one-run games. the schedule is not absolutely fair, but if a team can't broach the one-third that makes the playoffs after 162 games, that team very likely doesn't deserve it

Is there a sport that isn't like that?

― polyphonic, Thursday, September 12, 2013 10:01 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

does that matter?

out of all the luck involved in baseball, scheduling is one thing people do have control over, and it's ridiculous how MLB handles it. i don't see how a reasonable person can not look at the level of imbalance and think it's all peachy. maybe i've just been in the AL East for too long. but i don't think it's much of a stretch to say that the placement of the worst team in the league should have such a massive impact on the playoffs.

*shouldn't

the balance of $ seems to be shifting west. in the meantime, stop choking against the yankees, who for once are a worse team

lol i'm such a badass now that my team is likely to make the playoffs for the first time in two decades

$ is an entirely different problem

the Phillies had a 'cushy' schedule this year and have Miami in their div, look what happened.

that the phillies were ever genuinely in the playoff picture supports my point iirc

Is there a sport that isn't like that?

― polyphonic, Thursday, September 12, 2013 10:01 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Premier League Football basically is like that.

A system designed to continue to attempt to preserve some sort of regional rivalry is mildly unequal. I think this is the least of baseball's problems but if you want to pretend it's the greatest atrocity since Hiroshima then by all means.

lol good one

arguing about baseball in the baseball forum

fuck off

a note for when you sober up and/or become less of a tool: it's you

perfectly sober, not accusing anyone of equating things with hiroshima during a perfectly normal day in the fucking baseball forum

can't believe zach literally equated baseball scheduling with hiroshima

rmde

I think you are behaving like this is a much bigger deal than it is. With two spots for the wild card playoff I really don't see there being much impact here, certainly not some massive inequity that must must be fixed.

And again it's not something that once is will always be. Astros will be good again, the Rays will suck, circle of life.

It seems obvious to me than in the MLB, far bigger inequities exist right now.

I don't have a problem with unbalanced schedules, especially since winning the division means something again in the new wild card system.

yikes?

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2013/9/16/4736692/yoenis-cespedes-injury-athletics-shoulder

Fangraphs pointing out that A's are very good at building baseball teams.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-as-are-moneyballing-again/

Serious LOLs at this from BP's hit list:

The A's will open the Coliseum's third deck for the ALDS, both to accommodate more fans and to give those in the lower levels somewhere to flee to when the sewage level rises.

The sewage problem at the stadium is insane. Constant problems.

Bowell Rage

coco crisp appears to have a different choreographed HR celebration with each of his teammates

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BUtSgKhCIAE9GwF.jpg

Apparently not raw sewage but really what does it matter. What an awful place to play.