DJ took the opportunity to make some phone calls to the Japanese teams. He could be playing 1B for the Hiroshima Carp or the Orix Blue Wave sooner than you think.

according to baseball-almanac.com
dunno the circumstances...

But the A's lefties (DiNaro and Embree) aren't the types that can only face left-handed hitters. In fact, I seem to recall that Embree is actually better against right-handed hitters.

...gee, this Linden thing is yesterday's news and its been pretty well accepted that Linden did not cross any line in his comments...now you come out with this statement...are you harboring personal anger issues and using Linden's situation to feed your inner demons? Bitter, bitter, bitter person...

Pee Wee Herman Reese.

No word on whether Red Sox scout Jesse Levis is planning to come.

and they could become Jason Kendall. Well except for Kendall - he'd become Neifi Perez. Neifi would become Zito. And Zito would become me.

And I'd become me.

And with that and almost every other projection system giving Barton close to or exceeding an .800 OPS over the full season, I don't see the logic in sending him down at all this season, even if he has a month of a .650 OPS, which is possible with the wrist injury, but certainly not plausible long-term.

this week when he was batting third in the first two games of the season that maybe he is going to spend some time in the majors.

were due to boredom - as was his great September the presence of being challenged again. He had outgrown AAA - at age 21 (!). If healthy, I think he'll do great in the bigs this year. Please be healthy!

I'm just not as bullish about Barton (this year) as Silver/PECOTA are. PECOTA's a projection system, not an oracle. It's the best one out there, and it's a great tool. No one should take it as the gospel, because it'll "miss" on plenty of players this year, but certainly it's a good tool. But it also made a projection on Barton before he had a nagging wrist injury, which makes that projection even further from rock-solid, as I'm sure Nate would tell you himself. If he re-did a projection for Barton now using the information he has now, it would be adjusted downward.

As for this...

Dan Johnson too has never OPSed 1000 over a full season in AAA, or anywhe

just natural, male, physical growth. You and I, and most males who continued to work out, were probably better athletes at age 23 than we were at 21. He will make the same physical growth in Sacramento, where he can also develop more power and learn how to hit lefties more effectively.

If he's bored down there, that's a character flaw. There's certainly things for him to work on. He'd be making approximately $40-50K to play baseball at age 22. And he plays in a crown jewel of a AAA ballpark in Sacramento and living in a nice city. There's no need to feel sorry for him any more than there is for Prince Fielder or anyone else who complained about being re-newed this year for near the league minimum. They all chose this profession and signed a contract. One day they will reach FA and win their rightful contractual freedom. And I will never bemoan what anyone makes in FA for exactly that reason - it's simply how the financial structure of the profession they chose works. But you take the sour with the sweet. It means that some 22-year-olds lose out on some money by being optioned down to the minor leagues, even if they are as good as the person in front of them. That's the real world, too - sometimes a person with less potential gets the job.

But this isn't a service-time issue alone. It's also a merit issue, of forcing a 22-year-old to absolutely dominate in order to break through the door. But the secondary issues are salaries, Johnson's lack of minor league options, and this one, which most of you will probably disagree with:

Dan Johnson and Daric Barton are currently about the same hitter. We don't think that way, because we've been perpetually disappointed by DJ, and because it's human nature to be tantalized by the new and the unknown. So we think that one of them sucks and should be discarded, and that the other is much, much better. But they are likely to perform fairly close to the same, if both were given this entire season to play every day at first base. I personally think DJ would out-perform him.

Daric Barton OPSed .823 last year in 602 AAA plate appearances in a hitter's league. Those numbers do not translate to a high-quality big-league first basemen yet, no matter how they are twisted.
Dan Johnson put up an OPS of .937 in his last full season at Sacramento, in '04. And he's never done worse than that in any of his subsequent AAA stops. The difference was/is, at age 28 now, and even when he was 26 and 27, Johnson had a heck of a lot less to gain from subsequent seasons in AAA than Barton does now, because of the physical maturation issue I discussed earlier.

And hey, Jack Cust finally broke through at age 28. If anyone's going to be patient with a hitter, it's Beane.

I think Dan Johnson, during his age 28-29 season, can post an .800 OPS over a full season and play good defense at first base, if he stays healthy. If he could do that, he would have decent trade value. And by '09, Daric Barton would've compiled at least a .900 OPS in AAA, and perhaps higher, and would be that much more ready for the big leagues, instead of having a Alex Gordon '07esque year in '08.

That's how I think it should play out, and I think it still could, if Barton struggles the first two months. I don't think you'll see DJ taken off the roster, which was the whole point of what I wrote the first time. There's too many obvious, rational reasons to keep him here.

I saw the one at their park that said "I know where the Giants are" and I said "last place?"

Now that CGon is AAA-bound, let me say that I think it would be a spiffy idea for him to play CF at Sacramento. Anyone know - is that the plan?

We simply can't believe anything.

I'm gonna start a paper called "Lies and Speculation" and see how often it's quoted for it's obvious accuracy.

... do you go to Eveland?

this one a try.

but living in Southern California in the '70s, it was great having Scully and Enberg/Drysdale (Angels) on the radio. That was in the days when very few games were on TV so we relied on the voices to give us the entire picture, and those were some tremendous radio announcers.

Vin was waxing nostalgic about the Coliseum days in the first inning tonight. Unfortunately, he's spending the second inning interviewing Frank McCourt.

at any time given all the information available, it's not a hindsight thing.

about Italians, until Fiorentino got sent down.