It was pretty hard to watch us get K’ed one after the other.

I’m sure Frank Thomas and Mike Sweeney were figments of my imagination seen earlier in the season.

the outcome, not so great—though not really unexpected.

Hey, at least the announcers on TBS apologized for saying Duck-sher, although they totally missed the Lannahan one. Speaking of “missing”, the A’s did too much of that at the plate. I’m not even so upset at Street for blowing yesterday’s save, because when you have an offense eke out as few runs as the AAAA’s did (that comes from one of the announcers), who wouldn’t be screaming “Eek”?

I missed most of the game threads. Why was Jackahan playing first?

Did we trade any more pitchers? The last one I heard about was Blanton.

who will be the Heckler’s target this year?

Yesterday, Denorfia ended his rehab, was activated (really this time) from the DL and optioned to Sacramento. It does not show up on the official site…it still says that he was activated and optioned on 22 May. I don’t know why they never fixed that.

Swooney is just about the only thing on this team that can make me smile right now.

Rehabbing right-hander Joey Devine threw 35 pitches at 100 percent on Sunday, including 14 sliders. Manager Bob Geren said that Devine’s next outing should be in Tampa Bay, against hitters.

While we see the A’s continually add pitching prospects that pan out what is going to happen if no offensive (hitting I mean) talent is never added to the club? Swinging at pitches in the dirt all weekend does not count as being an aggressive hitter.
The product put on the field is unwatchable. No clutch hitting, no manager moves- squeeze plays, hit and runs, etc are ever applied during opportunities to try them. We are the most poorly coached and executed offense in the game.

Since he pinch hit in the 8th inning, Cust wasn’t hurt, and as a DH the past 6 games he shouldn’t need a day off to rest. Combine this with the fact that Geren has gone with a righty heavy lineup a few times before, I believe he chose to DH Brown today over Cust because he thought Brown would be better because he’s right handed as opposed to Cust, who is left-handed, versus the left-handed pitcher Andy Pettite. And that just is flat out wrong.

Looking in The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball Chapter 6 on platoon splits, it says a right handed batter needs around 2000 PA against left-handed pitchers before his platoon split can be considered reliable. If Geren is choosing between Brown and Cust based on the "platoon split", Brown only has 793 PA vs LHP, while Cust’s sample is almost insignificant with regards to platoon splits with only 291 PA vs LHP. Regardless, here are each player’s numbers against lefties:

Brown: .268/.336/.435
Cust: .221/.347/.401

Even giving Brown the benefit of batting against opposite handed pitching and Cust the penalty of same handed, Cust still has 11 points of OBP on him, though Brown has 23 points of OPS. Sample size issues are rampant here (especially regarding Cust), but this is the best I could do to paint Brown in a positive light.

In the same chapter The Book suggests assuming right handed batters have average platoon splits for such a small sample size. Since The Book, uses weighted On Base Average (wOBA) in their calculations of platoon splits I calculated Brown’s and Cust’s wOBA for their careers:

Brown wOBA: .323
Cust wOBA: .372

There’s just no way Brown’s “boost” vs LHP and Cust’s “penalty” vs LHP works out to 50 points of wOBA. Brown should not be starting against lefties at the expense of Cust (Brown shouldn’t be starting period but that’s for another time). Geren shouldn’t do this again.

I got to see in HD and I got this garbage. >:(

McCready underage affair, but you have to pay for it. damn it, i could use some excitement this sunday.

I stand by my post from a few months ago saying we should trade Ellis for Ian Stewart and put him at third. Then we could move eric patterson to 2b. That would be much better than throwing hannahan and murphy out there every day. Of course now that stewart is starting to mash in the majors our window of opportunity to do this is likely gone.

...I also find it ironic considering all the crap he got at the beginning of the season around here.

In other positive news, Swooney was awesome today. He not only gunned-down A-Rod at home for the second time in 3 days, but he also collected the A’s only RBI of the day. That he was able to get 2 hits against 2 of the Yankees best pitchers (Petitte and Rivera) just goes to show that he is unquestionably the A’s best all-around player right now. The power still isn’t there, but even if it never shows up, he’s a helluva all-around player and just an exciting guy to watch all over the field and the batter’s box.

I understand the key phrase is “right now”, but I am glad he’s getting his due.

angels series
yankees series

good thing he has joe morgan to explain things to him.

Now up 5-3 on the BoSox

She would have taken all of the idiot Yankee fans wrath and turned it into gawking. Jstandards and I went to see this mess, leaving me with only more hatred for the Yankees , their stadium, and their cretinous fans. And for wondering what the hell was up with the baserunning in the ninth. I loved the aggressiveness yesterday. Now they just need to pay attention, like run when Betemit drops a fly ball. He’s a natural infielder, so he’s more unreliable.
But the stadium organist played some great John Coltrane tunes- Countdown, Moment’s Notice, and Lazybird. That’s not something you expect everyday.