What a Coincidence! A's Swept at Fenway

They’ve played 18 games and managed to win just 5 of them, getting swept 4 times.

Seems like almost an allergic reaction to success.

“Hit in the air to deep right field, It is High, it is far, It is gone…. “Mark sends a Tex message”…..“Oh, You’re on the Mark Teixeira”

I can’t watch terrible. I have tickets to about ten more games. I’ll go to Root Beer Float day (who can resist root beer floats?) and probably one date in August and September each just to see some baseball. But the rest of my tickets are going on Stubhub.

This season is done. Here’s to hoping for a team next year that has some energy and talent and is at least mediocre. New ownership (someone who actually likes baseball and hasn’t bought the team solely to make money off revenue sharing and potential future real estate deals) and management (someone who hasn’t decided that soccer is really his thing) are desperately needed.

Trade gonzales to the yankees cahil and willingham to who cares. Then they are going to try to beat out the astros for the worst record in baseball. This is all part of lew wolf’s plan to make the A’s suck, so that he can move the team

We used to know how to win, while sometimes underacheiving even. But not any more.
And now we have a pattern of underacheiving and losing also. Not good. If we are truly
lacking in talent relative to our competiton let’s at least play at the level we are capable of.
We have always lead the universe in brain dead at bats and now we are suffering in additonal facets of the game.

and put us all out of our misery

The AAA lineup today by OPS:

1.167
.924
.858
1.118
.728
1.012
.864
.864
.898

I say punt. Start letting it known that everyone is available. And I mean everyone. Try for a week to see if they can find a taker for Kouz/Ellis/Matsui, if not, DFA them. Keep the OFers for now, but let it known Willingham/DDJ/Crisp are available. All three should draw interest. While at least the first two are type As, the new CBA may not allow for picks for them, so I definitely try to trade them.

All bullpen pieces should be available. I doubt anyone will want Fuentes, but dangle him. Balfour/Wuertz should draw interest. Ziggy/Breslow/Devine are probably not in high demand and are good pitchers, but if anyone asks for them, trade them. Bailey should stay to prove he is healthy before trading him.

Suzuki should have been traded in the offseason or the year before. But I look for a strong offer from a team like Boston.

Lastly, the young starters. I wouldn’t trade them in season. But I worry Anderson is injured again. If he is, he could very quickly go from a golden asset into Rich Harden from 2006-2008. If someone asks for him super aggressively, I deal him. Since Cahill and Gio have stayed mostly healthy, you keep them to the offseason at least.

Finally, the callups. I’m not sure any real prospect is really deserving of a callup. Weeks kind of sucked last year, so I’m not buying quite yet. Cardenas might be OK, if he had a position. It’s time to experiment with some lottery tickets. Call up Sizemore and let him play for a few months straight. Once an OF spot opens up, call up Jai Miller or Jermaine Mitchell. I don’t expect anything from either, but they’re toolsy enough that there’s a miniscule chance they’re a late bloomer. If Ellis is gone, call up Cardenas at 2b. His bat is more ready than Weeks and if he really can’t hack it at any position but there, the A’s have to trade or move Weeks to maximize their values. Allowing both time at 2b simultaneously allows the A’s to showcase either.

Carter and Taylor both were important parts of the A’s future. I wouldn’t want to totally destroy their developments, but both are looking more and more like busts. If the A’s really wanted to play it risky, you could call one or both up, with the expectation that they’re going to suck.

We need new management. I’m done with Billy Beane, mostly because he refuses to man up and fire his friend.

Plus, the kids might be all right, but they’re no where near as good as the starters we will lose in a blow up. I’ve got no problem dfa’ing Matsui, or Kouz either. I’ve got no problem with trying to trade Ellis to some team that needs classy defense up the middle. Bring up Sizemore, and Weeks, and Rosales. All fine. Probably trade Rosales or Sizemore at some point in that case. I guess they’ll stick with Jackson because “Billy really likes him”. He’s a fine platoon complement to deJesus/Sweeney and maybe Barton occasionally, because all of them have trouble with lefties and Jackson rakes against them.

I do have a problem with losing Crisp when we have no one to replace him in CF. He’s really just Rajai at the plate but he looks a lot better doing it, and he can play the field just fine, thank you. No sense in going without a viable CF. We could lose either of Sweeney or deJesus (they’re both pretty good, with pretty much the same strengths).

But if management really wants to prove they care in any way about salvaging their fan base, the only pitcher I’d consider trading is Brett. He hasn’t looked all that great lately. We could get a monster haul for him with his insanely low contract by this year’s standards. so, if the right farm system was made available to us, with some serious replacement starter prospects, I guess I could live with that.

Willingham? Of course he has value. But without him, we’d better be sure the Burninator is ready to Monster Mash, because we’d be the most punchless offense since the dead ball era.

The A’s ALWAYS suck this time of the year, and always fall several games under .500. During the early part of the decade, they rebounded with spectacular second halves; during more recent years, they came back then fell back. As, I suspect, will happen this season.

You can’t do a Marlins fire sale because the farm system isn’t sufficiently stocked to complement the new players; and you can’t get anyone good anyway when the sale players are all struggling.

I understand that DeJesus was brought on board in case Sweeney didn’t come all the way back. But he has, and therefore DeJesus is a logical trade candidate IF - big IF - Beane can get something decent in return. The A’s lose nothing if they lose DeJesus because both Sweeney and Jackson together or separately will do just as well taking his at bats, and that doesn’t count possible success by Cardenas or Taylor, or the longshot Jai Miller if they’re brought up.

Matsui was a dud the day he was signed, and was a huge mistake. HIs numbers were in fast decline last year, and he should have hung up his cleats. But by signing him, the A’s were not only limiting in-game moves by having five outfielders who could only play outfield (Willingham, Crisp, DeJesus, Sweeney, Matsui) and only two players who could relieve infielders (the LaRoche spot and Jackson, though Powell could also play first base), but also limiting their ability to bring up fresh faces from Sacramento because hardly anyone except LaRoche and Powell had options left, as well as having to wait two months or more to see if the notoriously slow-starting Matsui was through or not.

I’m not yet in favor of blowing the team up, my early frustrations notwithstanding. I think this group still could pull it together somewhat, particularly with a new manager, and if Matsui and DeJesus move on to other pastures, and slowly the AAA players get their chance. But this is at best an 83-win team, even if Barton comes alive and Anderson remembers how to pitch.

  I saw a A’s t-shirt yesterday real cheap but didn’t want to buy it because it calls out loser team. Why waste my money on a team that their owner doesn’t care about.

They are all in contract years and stand to make decent money. I don’t think effort is the problem. The As have always seemed to get “professional” players, meaning they go about their business with little attention-grabbing things.

The problem is that the team just doesn’t have enough good players to contend. Theonly thing the As had going for them is that the AL West is a weak division. And perhaps a breakout season by Carter or a trade in June.

When over half of your lineup could be easily replaced by replacement level players, you are not going to score runs.

PS- trade Brett Anderson now…. He’s gotta be hurt.

Anderson had allowed 11 hits and 10 runs, nine earned, against New York in his previous outing. The primary problem he is having lately, Anderson said, is that his slider doesn’t have its customary bite, and he also has lost velocity on it. The pitch is usually in the 82-83 mph range, Anderson said, but now it’s 79-80 mph.

His fastball is also down a few ticks from where it was two years ago, but Anderson said that the low- to mid-90s he was hitting then was the anomaly, not the high 80s he’s working in now. The uncooperative slider is the bigger issue.
 
“It’s rolling in there,” he said. “It doesn’t have good sharpness in the zone. It’s not a good swing-and-miss pitch.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/05/SPBP1JPDMV.DTL#ixzz1OS9JWH00

Mark is my favorite A. I think he is hurting the A’s. For some reason he does not look the same. He has no pop, no pull , no nuthing ! What the heck is going on? The A’s are hard to watch.

so if they trade suzuki perhaps barton could try and see if he still has it. But then again why even bother. I just wish that bob geren would get fired. something. This team needs a shakeup. I’m tired of seeing matsui lose games too. Laroche was a much better player than matsui. So I really don’t understand why we keep that used up shell of a player around anyway. He has no energy for the game. I would much rather see some of those kids from triple a play. Watching Rajai play last year was fun, watching matsui be the do (designated out) is not fun.