I really don't like the AL West this season. That last series was just the latest in a string of bad Oakland performances against their division rivals. As of right now, the A's are a .364 team when playing against Seattle, Texas, or LAAA. So it is with a heavy sense of dread that I consider the upcoming four game set in Anaheim.

Let's just get on with the GOG.

Links

• Probable pitchers
• Angels stats
• And, I haven't graded GOG #41 yet. But I do know that my prediction that Oakland would sweep Seattle is worth zero points.

GOG #42 :: Down with the AL West (35 points possible)

Four game series @ Los Angeles Angels -- August 27-30

UPDATE -- answers added below in bold

1. Series outcome [3 points] 2-2 split
2. Kendry Morales is having a big year in his first full major league season. Seriously, where did those 27 home runs come from all of a sudden? Predict Morales' AB/H/XBH against Oakland [2 points each] 16 AB, 9 H(!), 5 XBH(!)
3. Brett Anderson has been getting robbed! In his 8 no-decisions this season, he has a WHIP of just 1.17 and has struck out 40 batters against just 12 walks, adding up to an ERA of 3.64. How many runs to the A's score in Brett's Sunday start (against Lackey!) [3 points] Athletics score one whole run in Anderson's start
4. Jose Arredondo is having a disappointing season, as his ERA has ballooned from 1.62 in 2008 to 5.86 this year. One possible cause is a decrease in his average fastball velocity from 93.7 mph to 92.2. What's sort of weird is that his K/9 is actually up by a lot, into Andrew Bailey territory. How many Athletics does Arredondo strike out? Do the A's score any runs off of him? [3 points for the first part, +-1 for the second part] Arredondo strikes out 1, allows 3 ER in the series
5. In 15 career appearances vs Oakland (14 of them as a starter), Ervin Santana has an ERA of 1.35 and a WHIP of 0.977. I'm actually sort of surprised that his K/9 against the A's is only 6.4, which is lower than his overall career number by a full point. Predict Santana's ER/K/BB this time around [2 points each] 2 ER, 6 K, 2 BB
6. Cliff Pennington is providing more value than Bobby Crosby just by keeping his mouth shut. His OBP is sitting at .299 right now. Will Cliff get on-base in at least 30% of his plate appearances this series? Will he pick up his sixth extra-base hit of the year? [+1 for each right answer, -1 for each wrong] Pennington has a .200 OBP for the series, but he does get an extra-base hit
7. The good catcher and the bad catcher :: How many starts behind the plate for Napoli (.883 OPS) vs Mathis (.624 OPS)? [3 points] 1 start for Napoli, 3 starts for Mathis
8. Recently Ziegler made it on a Sport Illustrated list of the top 10 set-up men in baseball. His ERA might not be quite as sparkly as it was last year, but he's getting more strikeouts, fewer walks, and still sports a groundball rate over 60%. Predict Ziggy's walks, strikeouts, and groundball outs for the series [2 points each] 0 BB, 1 K, 4 groundball outs
9. It's been a long time since the A's and Angels were remotely close in stolen base standings. Which team gets more swipes in the series? [+1 if right, -1 if wrong] 4 SB for Oakland, 0 SB for the Angels
10. Does any Athletic have a three (or more) hit game in the series? [+1 if right, -1 if wrong] yep, Sweeney in game 1 and Rajai in game 3

First pitch is at 7:25 sharp. Don't miss it!

Results

A pretty solid series for the A's and an excellent bunch of scores for the GOG. One of these days, I'm going to look for the correlation between GOG scores and how well Oakland does in a given series. I suspect it's going to be a fairly tight relationship.

Overall scoring statistics

• mean = 7.42857 points
• standard deviation = 2.95386 points
• mode = 8 or 10 points

via cfcp.uchicago.edu

Your Scores

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