Podcast & Links: Red-Hot A's and the Wild West

Holy winning streak, BatmAN! The A's have won 17 out of 20 and are just rolling through the soft part of their schedule. They will soon be tested, though, with upcoming series against the Yankees, Reds, and Cardinals. Let's just enjoy this run of success while it lasts and bask in the fact that the Angels are terrible and the Giants are being outscored by their opponents.

On today's episode of the Phil Naessens Show, we discuss the red-hot Yoenis Cespedes, the triumphant return of Josh Reddick, and the struggles of Sean Doolittle. We then turn an eye toward the rest of the AL West and take a look at each team (except that we ran out of time before we got to the Astros; I'm sure everyone is really broken up about that). My segment starts at 32:15 and goes for about 24 minutes. This link will open a player which will begin playing automatically when the page loads; or, right-click to save to your computer or mobile device:

Direct Link

Let me know what you think in the comments! How do you see the AL West shaking out at season's end? Do you agree with my final standings?

And now, a Daily Link Dump:

- The early returns from the draft are in. The Crawfish Boxes (Houston Astros blog) has a great scouting report on Oakland's 1st round pick, high school outfielder Billy McKinney.

- Check out MLB.com's take on:

---#24 overall pick Billy McKinney (OF)
---#63 Dillon Overton (LHP) & #71 Chad Pinder (SS/3B)
---#100 Ryon Healy (1B) & #106 Chris Kohler (LHP) & #131 Dylan Cover (RHP)

- Here's a chat session with John Hickey from this morning.

- There's a story about the A's success on Bleacher Report, but it is so godawful that I just can't do that to all of you. Google anything about sports and the results will be 50% Bleacher Report anyway, so you can find that one on your own.

Got more A's-related links? Dump away in the comments!

The A's and White Sox face off at 5:10pm. Jarrod Parker takes the mound against Chris Sale in a re-match of last Sunday's contest.