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Happy Friday Athletics Nation! We're just a few hours away from Oakland's first regular season game against the American League Houston Astros. The two teams previously faced off a total of 6 times in interleague play, with the A's winning 5 of those contests. That's a pretty good record, but not as good as this: The A's have never lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, in 9 total meetings.
This week's Phil Naessens Show follows what will be the standard regular season format - a few minutes to go over the previous week's games, and a few minutes to look ahead to the upcoming week's schedule.
In this episode, we discuss Oakland's historic futility in the first two games, their turnaround in Game #3, the early success of Jed Lowrie and Nate Freiman, the pitching staff's early control problems, Bartolo Colon's upcoming season debut, and my predictions for this week's road trip to Houston and Anaheim. My segment comes first, so you can just press play, enjoy Centerfield by John Fogerty, and then listen to me yap for about 11 minutes. I did make one error in this one - I forgot that Brandon Maurer was making his MLB debut yesterday because I thought I remembered Oakland facing him last fall.
Do you agree with my predictions? How do you see the upcoming homestand shaking out? What do you expect out of Colon on Saturday? Share your thoughts in the comments!
