Roll Call: Meet AN's New Writers

Good afternoon, Athletics Nation! It's Friday, you're hopefully getting off work soon, and the A's are playing a game tonight against ... Felix Hernandez? Damn it all. Well, I guess there's always a chance.

As we gear up for game time, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce a few new writers who will be contributing to Athletics Nation this season. Some are familiar faces taking on bigger roles, and some are new to the community. Here we go!

Phil Naessens

Phil (pictured above) will be joining us all the way from Greece to post a weekly fantasy column. His articles will appear on the weekends, when those of you who play fantasy will be thinking about setting your weekly lineups. You may recognize Phil's name from my weekly appearances on his podcast. We've been working together for nearly two years and he is just fantastic. I'm excited to have him aboard in written form in addition to his existing audio contributions! (He's already written his first couple of columns, so check out last week's here.)

Phil Naessens is the host of the syndicated sports shows The Phil Naessens Show and Fantasy Baseball Weekly. Phil also writes NBA articles for Pounding the Rock, NBA and MLB articles for The Majors, MLB articles at Athletics Nation, Fantasy Basketball at Pounding the Rock and Fantasy Baseball at Athletics Nation. Naessens is the owner of the Phil Naessens Tennis Academy in Corfu, Greece.

Evan Kendall

Though born in Boston and raised just outside of it, Evan became an A's fan at the age of 10. It's a long story, but it includes Moneyball, a weird argument with two friends about the A's and the Twins, and a distaste for "biggest payroll wins!" baseball. Evan is a co-founder of The Sports Post and a featured writer at Beyond the Box Score.

Evan will be writing a weekly column on AN. Check out his first article here.

OmahaHi

A familiar face around the community, OmahaHi has come on to write a weekly column on the front page. Check out one of his recent articles here.

jfkoo

Jeremy lives in San Francisco, where he is about to graduate from the University of San Francisco School of Law. He grew up in the Bay Farm Island neighborhood of Alameda, 15 minutes drive from the Coliseum, and except for a brief wind-blown dalliance at Candlestick Park when he was very young, has been a life-long A's fan. He learned to keep a baseball scorecard from the Wrigley Field program on a family trip to Chicago and has kept up his scorebook since 2003, with a long break for attending UC Davis. He is a graduate of Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland and has a scorecard from the last game Tyson Ross ever started in high school ball, which was the team's only loss that season (3+ IP -- faced 4 batters in the 4th -- 8 H, 4 K, 2 BB, 2 HBP, 8 ER). He will be taking the California Bar Exam at the end of July.

Jeremy will be hosting Saturday Game Threads and Recaps; he will debut tomorrow against Seattle. He will also be doing a series tentatively titled This Week in Scorebook Stories.

bta47

Hey all, I'm Duncan Morrow (AKA bta47). I'm currently a Sophomore at the University of Vermont. I grew up in Pleasanton, and took BART up to the games with my sister basically every weekend starting the summer of 2002. Been an A's fan ever since. Home's now Portland, but I still manage to get down to the Coliseum every few months -- the 18-inning game last year was particularly memorable.

In a really bizarre coincidence, my dorm is about 100 feet from where the Vermont Lake Monsters, the Athletics' Short Season Single-A team, play. So, basically the same thing as the Coliseum. Right? Right?

Duncan will be hosting Thursday Game Threads and Recaps, but he will debut next Wednesday against the Angels since there is no Thursday game next week.

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Welcome to all of our new contributors!