every 5th start, we'd have the best record in baseball. Don't worry... another AL Central team who no one predicted finishing higher than 3rd in their own division, another series win for us.

... unless Lackey and Vlad each misses at least half the season. (Not that I'm arguing that if both do, the A's necessarily will win the division; just that I think that's the absolute minimum decline in the Angels' capacities it would take.)

Harden might make 5 more starts for the A's in '08. I wouldn't anticipate Duke making more than 10-15 starts total. Gaudin's probably gonna be wildly inconsistent (emphasis on "wildly") all year. Eveland and Smith likely will suffer some rookie troubles. The A's pen could end up being a liability instead of a strength.

Crosby will likely regress to somewhere just a skosh better than what we've seen at the plate from him the last 2 years. Chavvy's career could be over. Cust's 2007 could have been a one-time freak of nature. Barton could plateau at Hatteberg level. Buck could be the outfield version of Harden. Emil Brown could get 500 plate appearances. Mike Sweeney could get 500 plate appearances. Mark Ellis could be traded.

But I still like this team for 84 wins (with a double-Gonzalez-inspired amazing run in July-August, which carries the team through 2 key departures at the trade deadline; and then a rookie exhaustion/"mental toughness"-deficient fade in mid-August and September).

(ha)

Blez, you non-believer. Where did we go wrong with you? And now you're calling on small sample size? Don't you know pennants are won (and lost) in the first two weeks? Have my own posts taught you nothing? Well, I hate to throw facts in your face, but you've left me no choice:

1973: the A's started 5-8. They sucked, man! It was a fluke they won their second straight Series that year!

1977: just like this year, an 8-5 start. Print those playoff tickets! Oh, they finished 63-98? OK, then how about:

1978: 10-3. Now THAT was a great team! Better than '77, that's for sure. Yep, I checked: a whole five games better.

1983: What a year! 9-4 after 13 games. But what I remember most is the playoffs. Because we weren't in them. You kind of have to win more than 74 games total to qualify.

1984: Again, 9-4! And we did win more than 74. We won 77. So there.

1986: 8-5. La Russa took over in mid-season, and we went...76-86.

1987: 3-10. How that team managed to finish .500 is beyond me.

1988: 7-6. What a mediocre bunch that was. Couldn't even beat the Dodgers in the World Series.

1999: 6-7. That team could barely win 87 games. Sad.

2000: 5-8. Those guys had to wait until the last day to clinch the AL West. Just awful, man.

2001: 3-10. I didn't even bother with baseball for the rest of the season. They finished 14 games behind Seattle! Ok, so they still won 102 games. Semantics.

2003: 7-6. So they won their division again. Big deal.

2006: 6-7. I told everyone that they'd be lucky to win 94. I was right (93-69). Or could be they were just unlucky.

Although some years held to form, it is obvious that 13 games does not a season make. And although my "faith" tells me the A's should win the West every year, the reality of it all (not to mention the examples above) says Blez is probably right.

Well, hell. I guess I'll have to do something else with the money I was going to use on playoff tickets.

why cant it? I mean why couldnt we get a little luck on our side for once. Stay in contention till Gio/Carlos come up, weed out the slackers by June and go on a run with a health Harden/Blanton and Chavy being Chavy. Its not likely but it could happen. And thats why we are fans, you never know.

Gio is green and gold jesus, and will save us all!

Foolsh, the most insane regular poster on AN since oaktoon left, called you out, not the whole DLD crew!

they've gotten close to nothing from Cust, BigSweeney, Hannahan, and not so much from EBrown. Maybe the pitching won't last, but I wonder if some of the bats might not come around. And maybe CGonzalez might really be good in CF when MiniSweeney and Denorfia cool down. Still early, but still looking good. Hell with small sample sizes. For this year, the small sample size is all we've got.

but it did. "Now they go face the team with the best record in the AL ..."
Seeing as they're only percentage points better than us, you're technically correct, but that's just being a wet blanket for "wet blankets" sake.
You made great points to be sure, but you could write the same thing about Chicago .... A's sweep two.

For all the reasons outlined by Blez. I can't wait for July to roll around and for teams to come calling for Street and Blanton, maybe even Harden!

You gave us the big cardboard box to play with out in the back yard, but you're reminding those of us who are busy attaching wings and wheels to it that it is just possible that our spaceship may not in fact fly to the moon. Fair enough.

But since nothing we as fans think about the team makes any difference to the ultimate outcome anyway, I think we might as well enjoy our time in this beautiful spaceship.

Actually he thinks we're an 80 win team, which is 3 games ahead of where it's supposed to be at this point in the season. A's supposedly have a 35% chance to win the division. I think there's plenty of hope and PECOTA seems to agree.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/ps_oddspec.php

Not one of Blez's most stellar pieces.

85 wins or so this year, a commendable feat in the eyes of the Eastern Bloc Experts who predicted a long, painful season. I'm still stuck in 2009 mode, where everything I see now translates to salivating about the competitive teams that will be fielded in the near future.

A Gonzalez/Sweeney/Buck outfield? Yes, please. Blanton, Duke, Eveland, Gonzalez, and Smith in the rotation? 10-4. If they magically find that rarest of Oakland creatures-- an impact right-handed bat-- that's a scary team.

For now, though, I'm content to see development rather than W's.

And any team that can run out five solid starting pitchers--which we can still say even with Duke and Harden out--is still going to sniff competitiveness, no matter how much they suck at hitting baseballs.

Overall MVP: Bobby Crosby, holy carp!

Pitching MVP: Dana Eveland

If someone had told AN that 2 weeks into the season Harden and Duke would be out, and Cust would be in miserable slump would any of us thought the A's had a chance? no.

If Cust can find his stroke, If we can get 30 starts out of Ducharden...

Keep it up Dana and BoCroz

Why, with the blank canvas of a new season, take such a pessimistic view of the future? Sure, the guys you mention could wear down and have mediocre years, but they can just as easily have a magical year and overachieve. I don't know about you but I think they are going to be much better than expected...I since the first week of spring and this start has done nothing but buoy that OPTIMISM....signed, Mr Dry Blanket

than a Tigers fan who is wondering why his team can't seem to buy a win.

I've always liked the fact that being an A's fan does not come with a lot of expectations. We feel great when we win because a lot of times it is unexpected and when we lose in years like this year, we can say we are rebuilding and mean it.

I likes me my A's!

We lead the AL in wins a couple weeks in. Watching the kids grow into their own before your eyes is priceless.

WON!

"Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee..." Go boys, Go!

I posted this above too but it's buried in 15 replies and a few people had asked, so...

The arbitration "cutoff" for becoming a Super Two arbitration-eligible player is not a specific day. It's intentionally tricky/vague to try and discourage teams from blatantly jerking with players, I'd imagine. Basically, if a player finishes in the top 17% of "service time days" for all players with 2+ years of service time but less than 3, he'll be arbitration eligible.
There are 186 days in a major league season (IIRC), but a "full season" is considered 172 days for counting purposes. So by keeping Longoria down just long enough, the Rays ensured that he'll finish the year with something like 171 service time days - just short of one year. This means that, years from now, he'll have 5.171 days of service time - making him one DAY shy of free agency...but in actually, giving the club an additional full year of club control. (Players aren't eligible to become FAs until the season after they reach 6 years).
Back to arbitration: You can't say exactly what DAY to call up CarGon and avoid him reaching arbitration status because of that 17% rule. But from Keith Law and Cot's, "The historical cutoff point for Super 2 status is 2 years, 128 days of service, though the requirement has been as high as 2 years, 140 days."
So you can see why you can't narrow it down to a specific date. To be safe though, you could guarantee that if you called him up in mid-June he wouldn't ever be a Super Two. If you called him up in early June he might be, and if you called him up in mid-May he'd certainly be.

But, we know for sure that Longoria will be a Super Two. In fact, after the 2010 season, he'll probably have the most service time of any player with between and 2 and 3 years of service - because he'll have 2 years, 170-171 days (2.171).

*This is less of an issue with a player like Coco Crisp (who was a Super Two once) than it is with Evan Longoria or Ryan Braun, though. Crisp wasn't considered one of the top 10 prospects in the game when he came up, so it was a bit of a surprise that he did as well as he did. Perhaps the Indians gave little clock to him ever being a Super Two, because they might've thought they were bringing him up as a stopgap solution, and would send him down again eventually. For mediocre prospects, teams probably don't give as much thought to their arbitration clocks...because you can predict that a mediocre prospect will get sent down at some point again anyway.
With a Longoria or a Braun, you pretty much know that the moment they hit the bigs, they're gonna stick - so you can plan out their MLB service-time from the point of their callup.
We could debate if Carlos Gonzalez falls into the category of those latter two. I don't think it's guaranteed that he'll be ready to be called anytime before mid-June, and I don't think he presents the upgrade to us that Braun did to the Brewers, so there's less to gain from rushing him. And even if CarGon does come up at some point this year, he could also find his way back to AAA again, which would make a lot of our Arby Clock/FA timeline discussions moot.