has been…erratic, the first i knew of frank thomas’s return was seeing him walk out onto the on deck circle in that crazy first inning – definitely a moment!

I heard he didn’t have his re-bar today.

Hope he gets it soon, because I love that metal bar.

Can you repost here?

The day was all about Frank Thomas returning to the green and gold, and the A’s seemed invigorated by having the Big Hurt back where he belongs

I’m not the only one who thought it was really weird seeing him in a Blue Jay uniform, am I?

I mean, yeah he’s wearing a Chisox lid in the HOF, but I don’t really remember many (if any?) guys who played on the team for one year that fit in so well and had such an impact.

Like meeting somebody for the first time and feeling like you’ve known them forever, I guess.

Thomas was a very nice addition, but who is Davis? I’ll find out, of course, and they raved about his speed on the radio…I should pay more attention to the league and I don’t, if it’s not the A’s I don’t care much.

I usually don’t have the opportunity to weigh in from work (hence my absence from the game thread), but I was following along with the action via Yahoo! all the same. And to say that this game had me grinning from ear to ear is a definite understatement. Whether we stay as good as our current record is, in some ways, not even an issue for me. This team is just a heck of a lot of fun to watch, far more fun than I could have expected when the season started. To add Big Frank to that mix just adds to the fun.

Needless to say, I too hope we can keep this going this coming weekend. Make us proud, jtleyroy.

I got so used to being told that this team will eventually fall back that I forgot what it was like to be in a really damn fun game thread. Good stuff today. Now, hopefully we can get this Seattle gorilla off our back. Go A’s!

But what happens when Duke, Harden, Buck, and Chavy come off the DL??? Who goes? I never thought I’d say this, but dang, this team has some depth. Guess it will be a while before we see Cargon or Linden get a shot.

I didn’t see the news this morning before the game … what a surprise! I was mostly excited to see Greg Smith, who WAS great, but obviously there was much more fun to be had. The ballpark was quiet, but it had great buzz thanks to the Big Hurt and a quick start.

We had a baby at the game, so we weren't sure how long we could stay.  Thanks to the A's for taking care of things early so we could relax and enjoy ourselves!  (We stayed past the end anyway).

Let. Him. Play.

and come home to some crowds! I’ll be there in Anaheim!

Today was the first game of the season I got to go to. I went to sleep last night about 9 pm and since AN was down, I didn’t get to read anything (boo). I got up at 3 am (boo), went to work, got off at 11:40 am (suppose to be 11. boo), ran home to change, drove like a demon to the game, stood in line for my ticket, heard someone say the A’s signed someone and he is here already (I started jumping up and down inside hoping it was The Hurt. I didn’t jump up and down for real so I wouldn’t scare anyone), I ripped out my radio, plugged my earbud in just as Gomez launched his homer, grabbed my ticket, got some grub and got to see for real that The BIG Hurt was back! Then I noticed they got Davis too?? I was about to faint. I didn’t cuz I was enjoying my food too much and didn’t want to drop it. I sat in my bleacher seat, got my starter tan started, enjoyed the game and now I’m excited!

Billy wouldn’t have signed these two if he didn’t think this team didn’t have a pretty good chance to contend .

Thank you Billy, once again.

Did I mention that I’m excited?

WOO! (sorry, but I needed to)

http://picasaweb.google.com/phastphil/ASGame

then on my phone (thank god for auto-refresh) and then caught the last inning on the radio again. Serious hit-parade…or rather, OBP parade, but whatever! Sounded like a fun one. I was dying when AN was offline this morning and I heard we came to terms with Frank. Then I was in the car and heard that he was in the lineup today – fast work! I really like Mike Sweeney…so I’m worried about him but hey, I guess we can always figure to have enough guys on the DL to successfully shuffle the roster around…here’s hoping anyway.

Nice win, bitches!

perhaps Game 3 of the 2006 ALDS

“Are we trying to develop a young team? Yeah, but we are not running an instructional league. We are running a professional sports franchise.”

Say what you want, the man wants to win.

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I got so pumped I went out and bought the MLB Package so I can stop having to go to bars in Manhattan asking them to play the A’s. This signing is a great move, with virtually no cost to the team, and injects some excitement in both the team and fans. (Look at this thread). Depending on how Beane uses people’s options, and who performs, it’ll be real interesting to see what happens when Buck and Chavy get healthy. But I love having the depth to choose.

but this was a resounding team win. I don’t believe they all decided to play their asses off just because he was in the lineup.

I’m glad to see Big Frank with the team, and having him and a healthy Sweeney hitting back-to-back seems like a pretty sweet proposition.

I worry about getting the kids enough playing time. Barton and Li’l Sweeney especially. I don’t know who this Davis character is, but I suppose I’ll wait and see before getting too antsy about him taking away PA’s from Sweeney. I really think the kid could do a lot for the team in near future.

Anyway, today is all about high hopes and bright futures. Good win.

This will change somewhat with Thomas on board, but until Buck fell prey to the shin splints goblin, we were (essentially) running three regular platoons:

Denorfia / R Sweeney
M Sweeney / Cust
Murphy / Hannahan

How rare is that? It seems relatively unique, but I haven’t paid sufficiently close attention to know for certain. It also seems like this might be a good way to manufacture decent offensive production on the cheap, and more fully exploit all available roster slots.

Are there lots of players out there sporting big enough splits to make them really effective part-time players, but less than average regulars? How difficult is it to piece together a squad where 3-4 batting order regulars take up 6-8 roster spots? You’d need at least a couple of the heavy-split guys (Murphy, Hannahan) to also give you multiple position flexibility, right? In other words, find the same elasticity with respect to position coverage, but fill it with matching feast/famine platoon split guys rather than speedy, slap hitting, quotable utility guys.

Have the A’s pursued this strategy, dating back to last summer, or did it just kind of happen this way? Even if they aren’t, why don’t teams (generally) do this more? Are the roster construction difficulties prohibitive? Is the pool of heavy-split, multi-position players too shallow? Have I written this into the ground yet? Has the topic already been addressed a million times? Did you lose interest seven sentences ago? Having made it this far, perhaps on the strength of three Red Bulls, a Big Hurt high, and the (erroneous) assumption that I was building to some kind of fascinating climactic epiphany, do you feel cheated? Robbed? Betrayed? Bamboozled?

Anyway. I know the fanpost section is reserved for DLD’s, titles with two question marks, and pithy discourses on the Struggle Between Man and AN, but consider this a formal request.

but a different BREED of baseball!

“We knew going into it that this could possibly end up being a tough day for him,” Gardenhire said. “These guys are a different breed of ballclub. They take pitches and have short swings. They don’t get big and try to hit home runs. They make contact, and that’s what happened out there.”

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