a full season of bonds in the lineup means fewer things have to break right for the a's and break wrong for the angels for the a's to be in contention.

sweeney can stay and back up cust/bonds/barton, DJ needs to go.

question: what's the earliest the a's could call up carlos gonzalez and/or gio gonzalez without costing a year of service time?

I was looking at August and September, and the A's play about nine or ten home games in each month, and ..

that's it!! I thought...WTF! Then I heard the broadcast of the SF-A's game tonight (Friday) and heard Ray Fosse talk about a TON of home games in June. This is simply too weird.

Sal, if you want to do some analysis of the famed "computerized" MLB schedule, that would be welcome. Once again, the teams in snow-bound areas get plenty of home games in April, while warmer sites (like Oakland) get no weather bias.

What's the total MLBPA payroll? And how much was spent on concocting the schedule??!! IMO, a huge problem with the "absent-human intervention, unreasoned" schedule.

No time-zone bias (IMO), no weather bias (IMO), no travel frequency bias (IMO), no relative team attractiveness bias (e.g. Yankees, very attractive gate, Tampa Bay, not attractive) IMO.

Curious if the Dan Haren trade would be a favored re-do in Oakland with news of the loss of Kelvim Escobar.

I noticed that newly upgraded Lookout Landing has its fav icon working already. What the hell. I thought it was disabled under the new format, but no. Jeff figured it out in like one day. Blez, or whatever other manager has access, needs to get on it.

Oh, and I just noticed we now have the optional wide format and optional turn-off-avatars here, both thanks to whining at LL. Cool.

Did you know that new comments are yellow on every site? It looks great here, because it's our color, but it looks stupid on LL. Their new comments should be blue. I'm surprised none of the other non-gold teams complained about it.

AVG OBP SLG
.321 .310 .393

I'm pretty sure that's not a good line. Isn't your OBP supposed to be higher than your BA? And, slugging in the .390 range... isn't that Kotsayesque?

P.S. There ya go PT... an OBP lower than a batting average. See, it can happen. ;-)

year. The A's aren't as bad as everyone thinks and with the injuries, the Angels are definitely not as good.

I still don't think the A's will even sniff the AL West crown unless a thousand things break right, but hell, that's why we watch, right?

Nice post, sal.

say that things work out that, in terms of true talent, the A's are an 82 win team and the Angels and 84 win team ... what are the odds that the A's win the division, based on chance/distribution/etc? (a rough estimate is perfectly fine)

The difference between that and 50-50 is roughly what the A's would have traded away in the Danny Haren trade, knowing what we know now ...

puts the Rangers at 77 wins - their rotation looks worse than usual and it never looks good. And their short relief, usually a strength recently, is in shambles. devo (or salb, or anyone) - what puts the Rangers that close to .500 in your projection-machine? Seems odd.

but it does open up some opportunities as salb has so capably pointed out. This season is going to be a lot more fun than I expected. bring it on!

This is late, but maybe a topic for a future staturdya?

I get a kick out of broadcasters saying things like, "well, this batter is 3 for 6 lifetime against this pitcher, he really owns this guy, they probably will be really careful" when in fact you've got a lifetime .250 lefty hitter with no pop vs. Randy Johnson, two outs, nobody on, and another inconsequential hitter behind him. Yet managers will sometimes bench a competent righty because of this matchup.

I'm pretty sure people will agree that there's simply no reason to pay attention to the matchup data in this particular scenario. I'm wondering if anyone has given thought to what a good way to analyze batter v. pitcher matchups? Maybe both batter and pitcher career #'s vs. all righties/lefties?

It is a good place to start.

Now, I'd like to add the "effect" of losing Vlad for a month, your ACE for a month and a half and your #2 for the entire season.

I have not looked up or crunched the numbers BUT I do believe that it is possible to put together a metric for this:

In addition to the single effect of losing a pitcher or hitter, there must also be a combined effect of losing two pitchers and a your BEST hitter at the same time.

Perhaps it would multiply the losses by a factor of 1.8 - 2.8?

Also, the rate at which aces give up runs in a single game seems to be more consistant with winning.

lackey giving up 3 runs a game on average means alot of 1 - 4 run outings which put a team in better position to win whereas a 4.8 ERA Bootcheck would more than likely singlehandedly lose games by giving up 6 runs himself for every time he kept the team in it by surrendering 2 runs.

Then there is the effect of losing your "Holy Grail" on offense.

Vlad makes the Angels offense a threat to score every time he is up. There is a reason he has hit 25 homers and driven in 100 RBI for the last 10 years.

Every time the little "moscas" (Spanish for fleas) get on base there is the threat that BAD VLAD will drive them in.

With solid starting pitching he only has to hit one off the wall once a game to keep them in the game.

With Lackey and Escobar missing AND Vlad in there, there will be more impetus on his production. IF he misses a significant amount of time while those two are out there will be a much larger impact than 1 game...IMO.

Things I'd look up:

Runs in each game surrendered by Escobar and Lackey as compared to their replacements and see which games were 3 or less per 6 innings.

The increased OBP and OPS of players hitting in front of VLAD as well as the runs per game with him in.

Also, don't forget that with Shields also feeling pain there will be a bigger strain on the bullpen that already figures to eat more innings without Lackey or Escobar in there.

Also look into the stretch of schedule that the ANgels play while missing their two aces.

One last thing that should be factored in to the Angels favor is the fact that pitchers that go around the League the first time, Joe Saunders anyone, usually fair pretty well IF they are good pitchers, and Lackey can be back before his replacement has to go around a second time.

I need to get over to the Raiders now, but I think IF we can weigh out all of these factors there may be a better gauge of just how many games losing these players will cost them.

I am not unpleased about one less "ace" for the Angels.
I have over the years debated to put them as second most hated following the Giants. I dont know if I could accept a series for the West if they ever took one.