is almost completely meaningless in baseball. Probably only about 20% of series go to seven games. Home teams win about 13 of every 25 games. That means about 1 out of every 125 will be decided by home field advantage.

Some reward.

Baseball should-- getting on my soapbox here-- have the same format as football. 6 teams, top 2 get first-round byes.

Or here's another idea. Give each league its own "champion"-- acknowledged and paid as such-- based on the regular season. Then take the top 6 from each American league along with the best team from each Japanese league, the top Mexican team, and the top team from whatever league is #4 (Cuban, or something) and have a 16 team playoff for the true "World Series." That would be fun as hell.

but the important part to that would be 5 games in 5 days.  Allowing a team to skip a starter is negating the fact that in order to get where they are, they needed all 5 starters and it doesn't make sense to let any team get away with only using 3 or 4.

I'll go with richwol half way.  I don't believe at all we are a sure fire contending team with Danny, Joe, and Chad as our top 3.  Chad is a #4 and in that spot is as good as any other #4.  What I am saying is that it is better to work around what you already have and then add pieces into the puzzle.  We (as I mentioned last message) do need a #3.  It's been mentioned before we need a Bronson Arroyo type into the rotation.  I'll just leave that there as a thought.  With the #3 on board, then I do believe with Danny, Joe, #3, and Chad we are a contending team.  I think we need one piece in the SP roation.  

Duke and Street make as good as a 8th/9th combo as you are going to acquire.  Sure, Street has been injured in the past and that is why it would be helpful to keep Embree.  There might be trade interest from other teams acquiring Embree, and it might be worth looking into, but with so many question marks I don't see an absolute benefit in trading Embree.  (Unless he would bring us the #3 we need, some teams are looking for a closer...)  I think all of us are saying the same thing, Danny and Joe are working brilliantly at the top, Rich has already been a hope but can't be firmly penciled in, and Street, Embree, and Duke seem to be the only sure fire components of our bullpen.  

that while Gaudin has undoubtedly regressed since the beginning of the season, his BABIP in the second half is .377. That's absurdly high. Part of this is due to the abysmal defense the A's are running out there sometimes (Cust, Swisher, Stewart is one of the worst outfields imaginable) but I suspect most of it is just bad luck.

Gaudin's peripherals suggest he should have an ERA in the high 3s to low 4s most of the time, which is, if not ace material, certainly good enough.

that people's solution to a team that can't hit is something other than "teach them to hit better and/or hire better hitters." All of these things lower players' batting averages, either because they're wasting practice time on bunting, etc. or because they're swinging in awkward ways to try and produce desired results.

It's easy for us to sit around and say "oh, look, he shouldn't have tried to pull that pitch," or whatever. These guys are reacting in split seconds. Every minor adjustment and thought process takes away from that reaction time and makes the hitter less likely to achieve what he's trying to achieve, which is (assuming he's swinging at the pitch) a base hit.

If I was a hitting coach, I'd want guys to hit the way they're most comfortable hitting. If you want guys who hit home runs, or walk a lot, or drag bunt, or whatever, that's fine-- but you need to hire them as such, not try and drill artificial philosophies into the heads of your hitters. The primary role of a hitting coach is, or at least should be, to help guys get better at doing what they're already doing by improving their mechanics.

you'd better look again, because there aren't any. Carlos Silva, a #3 on a very good day if that, is the best available, and he's going to be commanding $13M a year in this marketplace. If you want the A's to spend their entire "cash surplus" on a mediocre pitcher, that's fine-- but I can't agree with you. I'd rather wait a year until the cavalry, A.K.A. some or all of Simmons, Madsen, Cahill and Bailey, arrive, and stake my fortunes in the meantime on the fickle arm of He Who Must Not Be Named.

that I am unconvinced, to put it mildly, by the argument that the Petco/GAB difference is so significant in this case that Cameron's 30-point OPS difference makes him a 25% better hitter. Denorfia is not Adam Dunn, having 10 flyouts a year turned into home runs by the ballpark. If anything, a small park might well hurt a singles/doubles guy like him, because the outfielders can play closer (knowing that most balls that get over their heads will be home runs anyway).

Park factors are all well and good, but I question their utility in this case.

Also to be weighed in is the fact that a lot of Denorfia's major league at-bats were in pinch-hitting situations, which is known to negatively affect hitters' "true" performance at a significant rate. For obvious reasons, he'll be doing a lot less of that with the A's.