March is all about games that start at 3:00am where I live. Sorry, I just can’t get too excited about having to sleep through Opening Day, and then browsing “Open Thread: Game 2” to find 12 comments made by a group of 7 insomniacs.
April is all about confronting the harsh reality that the Eric Chavez had three surgeries, Chris Denorfia didn’t hit live pitching for 18 months, Crosby still can’t lay off the slider low and away, and Dana Eveland is on our team (until he gets his career ERA under 7.50 I intend to make him my poster-boy for the “Hey, Remember Tim Birtsas?” Club).
May is all about the A’s usual May swoon, only this time it’s not a swoon, it’s just that the cream rises and…well, you can’t have cream and rebuilding at the same time. June is like May, only a bit warmer.
And then comes July. Come July, service time will no longer be a concern and if he hasn’t come up by now Carlos Gonzalez may well have played his way out of Sacramento and into Oakland. Gio Gonzalez could do the same – no rush, but what Street showed at age 21 and Travis Buck showed when he was only supposed to be ready for AAA, Gio has three months to prove in Sacramento. Meanwhile, Suzuki, Barton, and Denorfia will each have hit full stride in his first full major league season – and the same could be said of Buck, who only got 82 games in last year. If Gaudin and Duchscherer aren’t at peak performance by April, they should be by July – and one can hope the same of Chavez.
It’s too bad they don’t have the “split season” in the major leagues like they do in the minors, because I can’t see the Angels losing the first half of 2008. But the final 81 games – who knows?
