:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/20239457/20130922_sal_aj8_537.0.jpg)
Good morning, Athletics Nation! There are three games left in the regular season, and no matter what happens, the A's will be enjoying playoff baseball in October. The Rays, Indians, and Rangers get to duke it out for a chance to (most likely) play Boston, and the A's are looking forward to their series against the Tigers.
On today's Phil Naessens Show, we discuss Oakland's upcoming ALDS roster, Josh Donaldson and the MVP race, and the Wild Card race which Oakland doesn't have to be a part of. Listen to the show right here on Athletics Nation by using the media player embedded below. My segment starts at about 39:30 and goes for around 20 minutes (...And Brandon Kraeling from Red Reporter leads off the show):
Give it a listen and leave your feedback in the comments!
....and if you want to listen some more, here is another podcast that I did on Baseball PhD. My segment starts around 23:00 and goes for about 15 minutes. Note that we recorded this on Sept 16, but it's more general stuff so it's not really out of date.
Your Daily Link Dump:
- Allen Barra of The Atlantic has a piece about the 2013 Oakland A's -- the real Moneyball team.
- Marc Hulet of Fangraphs takes a look at the state of the A's minor-league system now that 2013 is in the books.
- Scott Boras is looking for $100M for Shin-Soo Choo. Wendy Thurm of Fangraphs takes a look through the history of Boras's seemingly ridiculous contract predictions to see how often he's been right.
- A Fangraphs community member discusses a defensive metric called Predictive UZR.
- What Brian McCann would have done if he'd been at Yankee Stadium last night.
Torrey's Taco Stand:
On this day a year ago, Travis Blackley pitched poorly and the Rangers topped the A's, 9-7. I thought the Rangers had taken the division for good and the A's would have to settle for a Wild Card spot. The day before saw the A's beat the Rangers 9-3.
Tonight's starting lineup has Brandon Moss as the DH and Yoenis Cespedes back in left field.
