After a depressing road trip that seemed much longer than 5 games, the A's come back home to face the defending American League champs. But the Rays haven't been off to a hot start either and are currently sitting in last place of the AL East with a 6-10 record. Yesterday's roster move indicates that management realizes that changes are needed. But are they moving the right direction, or just flailing around?

Forget about the stakes for the A's, what about the tough decisions for the GOG contestants? Do you embrace your inner homer and predict an A's sweep? Do you grudgingly admit that this Kazmir guy is probably pretty good? Or are you ready to bury to A's, under an avalanche of Longoria home run balls? It's decision time!

Links

• Probable pitchers
• Rays team stats
• GOG rules, scoring, and so on

GOG #06 :: Rays In Oakland? Mooooooo! (32 points possible)

Three game series vs Tampa Bay Rays -- April 24-26

UPDATE -- answers added below in bold

1. Series outcome [3 points] 2-1 Oakland
2. Evan Longoria, that guy can't even sophomore slump right :: Predict his H/R/RBI [2 points each] 2 hits, 1 run, 0 runs batted in
3. Does Carl Crawford steal one or more bases in the series? Does he get caught stealing? [+1 for each right answer, -1 for each wrong] Crawford stole 1 base, was not caught
4. Kurt Suzuki, catcher of legend :: Predict his H/BB/XBH [2 points each] 2 hits, 3 walks, 1 extra-base hit
5. Do any games go to extra innings? [+1 if right, -1 if wrong] no
6. So far this season Kazmir, Garza, and Sonnanstine have 45 strikeouts in 52 innings pitched. How many A's do the Tampa Bay starters combine to K? [3 points] 11 K (2 for Kazmir, 6 for Garza, 3 for Sonnanstine)
7. Travis Buck in exile :: How many at-bats does he get in the series? [3 points] 8 at-bats
8. How many free passes (walks + hit batters) does Cahill give out? [3 points] 2 walks, no hit batters
9. It would be the first time :: Does Dan Giese have an appearance without allowing any runs? [+1 if right, -1 if wrong] no, Giese only pitched in game 1 and he did allow a run
10. How many home runs to the A's hit in the series? [3 points] 3 HR (Hannahan, Buck, Giambi)
11. Which team gets more production (as measured by OPS) from the DH position? [+1 if right, -1 if wrong] Oakland DHs (Nomar and Cust) hit for OPS of .533, Tampa Bay DH (Burrell) hits for OPS of .508... so the answer is Oakland

Answers are due by 7:05 tonight. The last GOG isn't graded just yet, but I'll probably take care of it tomorrow (results will be added to that fANpost once I have them). Go A's!

Results

Everyone did really well this series, as shown by the mean of nearly 8 points and mode (most common score) of 11. By both of those statistics, only the Boston GOG was higher scoring. And it's a second win in a row for doctorK!

We are fan enough along in the season that the standings are starting to spread out a bit. So check out the table below to see where you stand. One note about that table: I'm only showing results and calculating standings for the people who participated in the most recent GOG. So it's possible that there could be someone who is high up in the standings for total points or AVG but didn't get in the today's chart because they didn't post an entry for this GOG.

Overall scoring statistics

• mean = 7.97619 points
• standard deviation = 4.03333
• mode = 11

via cfcp.uchicago.edu

Your Scores