Pitchers
Fernando Abad
Raul Alcantara
Brett Anderson
Jerry Blevins
Jesse Chavez
Ryan Cook
Sean Doolittle
Pedro Figueroa
Sonny Gray
Luke Gregerson
A.J. Griffin
Jim Johnson
Arnold Leon
Josh Lindblom
Scott Kazmir
Tommy Milone
Dan Otero
Jarrod Parker
Fernando Rodriguez
Evan Scribner
Dan Straily
Andrew Werner
Michael Ynoa
Catchers
John Jaso
Derek Norris
Stephen Vogt
Infielders
Daric Barton
Alberto Callaspo
Josh Donaldson
Nate Freiman
Jed Lowrie
Brandon Moss
Andy Parrino
Shane Peterson
Little Nicky Punto
Eric Sogard
Outfielders
Yoenis Cespedes
Coco Crisp
Craig Gentry
Josh Reddick
Michael Taylor
Discuss
I have $5. No I don\'t.
I would like to get up and go downstairs, but I don’t wanna miss the Anderson-for-Bautista trade undoubtedly coming before sundown :P
I’m crawling into the bomb shelter until this is over. Some of these guys’ Athletics tenures may be measured in hours.
Your list is already pretty far out of date, Ed.
This list is sooooooo early December 2.
I think you’re missing Gentry, Johnson, and Lindblom. And you still have Choice.
Punto and Kazmir aren’t on the 40 man yet?
I hate all of you
And Alcantara.
Kazmir is not actually on the roster yet, but presumably will be very soon.
grrrrrr
I assume you’re billing us for this.
LOL
I’m not the one who decided to put in effort here.
YOLO
Someone must have shotgunned the whole coffee pot at the office this morning, Holy Toledo. He sounds like something out of Thelma & Louise, OMG… I picture him standing on his desk with three cell phones and 4 landlines stuffed into his ears and eating a box of Christmas Twinkies, with Jonah Hill sitting across the desk egging him on whilst Wolff gets hung up on calling in on Line 7 wondering WTF is going on.
that’s a tough one to envision without a storyboard…
150. that’s the height tag i though i was using.
Hahahaha, your mix is on heavy rotation btw!
you do good work
This might be the greatest single post in FK history, since I got here anyway. I feel like I should pay you money for this.
now i know how welles felt after RKO 180º’d the ending of ambersons.
Uh… okay.
that’s ok. i moved on to it’s all true. probably won’t finish it though.
I am pretty sure that the Coli tried to get a five year lease and you were the one that threatened to go to ATT park.
yeah, public words from people like him are meaningless
Sounds like he was mostly being flip. I’ll save my outrage for a better time.
I would not be at all surprised at this point if they broke into CNN’s telecast and said it appears as if Billy Beane has kidnapped Bud Selig to an undisclosed mountain fortress and is threatening to tie him to the train tracks unless a shovel is in the ground by Friday night.
I think the A’s started out with the 5 year lease off. The Coli wanted more years and a lot more money. MLB came in and threaten ATT and asked for the 2 year.
That’s as I understand it too. Coliseum Authority wanted to bargain more on the concessions, parking, etc. The two-year deal they’re hoping to get the city and county to sign off on by next week will net the Authority slightly more money, but not so much more that it would have been a great deal at five or six years. The advantage is that it preserves their option to knock the stadium down after the end of the 2015 season.
It makes sense for both sides assuming MLB gets their ass together resolves thing internally soon regardless of their decision. If it’s more can kicking as we expect/seen, eventually the CA is going to call MLB’s bluff and either the A’s will over pay for the Coliseum or MLB will be forced to shove the A’s into ATT. I’d even go so far to say the the A’s shouldn’t be terribly concerned about the financial terms of the deal as much as MLB is. Anything more they pay in their lease is recovered in the revenue sharing. Anything they stand to gain in the lease is lost from their revenue sharing.
The Authority caved on what was a strong negotiating position to get much more money, because the A’s make out like bandits on concessions, and everyone knows this but does not know how much, because the A’s don’t have to disclose the gross concession revenue. Mind you, this is for their games and for Raiders games, the concessions for which the A’s also manage. But the threat from MLB of having no baseball tenant at all (empty threat though it may have been) utterly deflated the JPA’s resolve. They settled at two years, plus slightly more rent plus an extra $250K/year to make the concession issue go away.
The two years versus five years issue isn’t really related to the Raiders, as any longer lease would have had a minimal buy out amount with one year notice should a new football stadium plan materialize.
Or so I imagine.
Enjoy next year guys. It’s probably the swan song for the Oakland Athletics.
The window is closing anyway unless Russel is the second coming of ARod.
This was a much bigger compliment in 2004
So the color guy on the NZ broadcast of the test match just said some guy deserves bat 6th because he is a good wicket keeper (along with some batting stuff)
So, Gentry’s defensive metrics are insane. Career 29.5 UZR/150 in CF spanning more than 1,400 innings. I’m thinking Coco may DH a lot this season.
Gentry’s UZR/150 is the highest in the MLB of any outfielder, according to what Brian Kenny was just geeking out about on MLB Network. WOW.
Even if you assume he’s only +10 in center and a ~90 wRC+ bat full time, he’s still around a 2 WAR player. That’s why I’m perfectly fine giving up Choice/Bostick for him.
Yeah, I just wish they could ixnayed Lindbloom and figured out another prospect besides Bostick
I assume that there is something they like about Lindbloom and I usually give the A’s the benefit of the doubt when it comes to picking pitchers.
His DRS figures are equally stunning. Jesus.
I just thought of him as that fast guy who was a pain to deal with. I didn’t realize he was a defensive wizard.
Just the fact he’s not playing against us anymore is worth a fking win by itself.
Has he ever been given a real shot at being a full time starter?
FWIW
This is entertaining: a real-time map of where people are tweeting something that includes the word “fuck”.
(My colleague brought it to my attention. He said “Look, someone is tweeting ‘fuck’ in Newfoundland right now!” I said, “Is it right now, or is it half an hour ago?” )
I got to see many bombs drop in New England. Ellsbury seems to be the culprit.
New England is going nuts!
That might just be normal New England.
ross taylor has gotten a double century with no 6s. 23 4s. meaning he has over 100 runs on singles and doubles
Does anyone remember a Beane trading frenzy/signing binge like this? It’s been a couple of hours. Time for another trade!
IKR, I keep imaging a huge mound of cocaine on his desk and Jonah Hill rubbing his nose in the corner.
he’s waving his cellphone aloft in my mind and shouting SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FREN!!!!!!!
NZ declared after 9 wickets. 609 runs.
I don’t know what that means. I don’;t know when the windies are going to start their innings
It means they think they have enough runs and don’t want a draw called because everyone’s mother is calling them home for dinner.
windies are 115/5 after an hour and a half or so. i believe it’s not looking good for them, wicket-wise.
gotta admit, playing yesterday’s replay in bed, on my phone with earbuds, resting my head sideways so i could juuust see the screen propped against the side pillow… was a really neat way to get to sleep and stay there. and it was still playing when i woke up to pee.
yup. Without their masher, they really didn’t have much hope. their bowlers certainly didn’t keep them in the game.
speaking of the masher. he is really not very good at social media. He had an injury and is not playing, so instead he goes to his other business and…
this one has the rants
and my personal favo(u)rite:
he’s right about cigarettes, anyway.
he is a rich kid in a poor country. I’ll give him a slight pass.
ITS LUNCH!
IT’S PEOPLE!!! YOU’RE EATING PEOPLE!!!
For some reason in the last few months it seems like my fingernails have started growing at twice the rate they used to. And the nails on my big toes are outpacing those on the rest of my toes by like 4:1. This is not quite the superpower I had hoped to suddenly develop.
That happens when people get old.
Does anything else get bigger?
First – heh.
Second – Ear hair. Nose hair. Eyebrows.
Third – most old men havr innies.
It’s a rough day when it takes two people to find your junk: one to push down on the area around it and one to grab the head when it turtles out.
Still, two people playing with your junk. I can see the upside.
Right before you get a catheter.
I thought this thread was about an orgy. I was disappointed.
How many cups?
One keg.
Looks like I picked the right week to start eating kraut.
Somewhere in an alternate universe, Seth Smith hit a three-run home run in game 5, which the A’s went on to win in 12 innings. That alternate universe Seth Smith is local legend. In this universe, thee ya later theth.
And he was so close too, timing perfect, off by millimeters. Haunts me.
His AB against Valverde in game four is still my favorite AB of any A over the last 15 years; however, alternate universe Seth’s AB likely woulda topped that.
Anyone going to be in KC on January 25th?
Only if the Chiefs bring me and Bed in to be motivational speakers before their Super Bowl appearance the following week.
We’ll motivate those bastards to a Buffalo Bills like Super Bowl performance.
Wait, we got Little Nicky Punto?! How did that happen?
And Huddy signed with the Giants? I thought they would sign Mulder first
Huddy is two years older.
We’re rich now. We can afford championship ballplayers.
Yay!
Shoe drop:
OH NOES!1!
Now wait a god damned minute…they released Andrew Werner, who I have on great authority is a LHP, well…fuck it, that’s it…I’m out as an A’s fan.
No one predicted it, but that trade to get him and Parrino turned out to be worst deal of last offseason.
People around here irrationally hated Tyson Ross.
I hated that deal. Ross was bad but he had a lot more talent than those 2 clowns. It’s like the Dodgers trading Rick Sutcliffe for Jorge Orta after he went 5-11 the previous 2 years, or the Astros trading Joaquin Andujar for Tony Scott (not the director) after his 4.94 ERA in the first part of 1981. Ross had options. There was no reason not to send him to Sacramento in case of injury.
Ross was out of options.
Then how did the Padres option him last year?
Don’t get me started on the Joaquin Andujar deal…
Ross had a nice half season but I wouldn’t go comparing him to two former big leaguers who had long successful careers.
I’m not comparing Ross to Sutcliffe or Andujar in terms of career value. I’m comparing the thought process of the guy who traded them for almost nothing when he didn’t need to.
DFA BAIT
With Pollock they wouldn’t have needed Gentry.
You can flip pollack then. or better yet be prepared for reddick sucking or flip Reddick.
Or just keep Choice and Bostick.
Well, they wouldn’t have Cespedes.
i make that trade in a second.
also can you imagine cespedes with the we play the game the right way ™ diamondbacks?
He’s thinking to himself, “I bet this kid could get 3 outs in the 9th in the Coliseum, if the marine layer was in and Curt taught him a screwball. I know he’d cost less than 10 million a year, anyway…”
Kid, do you like Brad Pitt movies?
John Rocker’s twitter account is the new Jose Canseco’s twitter account.
(Sorry if this turns out to be fake, but it seems real and it certainly sounds like I would expect John Rocker’s twitter account to sound.)
Interesting…
Bad job performance: Taking a nap in the truck you’re driving which is hauling cobalt-60. Worse job performance: Opening up the sealed container emblazoned with “Highly Radioactive” warning signs after you’ve stolen it.
Pardon?
Truck theft happens a lot. I guess a lot of it not targeted at any particular cargo. That makes it more like a christmas surprise when you open the trailer!
EBEX says hello.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I had in mind.
Darwin Award earned.
Although
I would just as soon not have someone driving a truckload of highly radioactive material nod off at the wheel.
Please everyone knows those trucks drive themselves using that auto-gizmo.
I’m glad they got somebody good instead.
Thanks, and go As.
What she doesn’t mention is that someone who know longer works there through the name out there. But it made for a great laugh.
I like Susan’s previous Twitter picture better than this one. IIRC the old one was a picture someone snapped of her outside the Paramount Theater for the moneyball premier.
This one just looks like a screenshot from a CSN broadcast.
Does anyone know about this
I thought she was still president
I think it was a one-year term. A Twins writer is the new prez.
It is.
The annual term ends with the end of the World Series, I believe.
Looks like Brian Wilson got two years from the Dodgers at only slightly less than what the A’s are paying Kazmir, but he gets an opt out after one year. I don’t get baseball economics sometimes.
Wow. That’s for someone who has pitched a total of 15.2 Major League innings over the last two years (probably also some postseason innings for the Dodgers that I didn’t count).
He’s not even closing for them (or at least he shouldn’t be)
Wow. I was thinking the Johnson deal was bad, but now….
The one year thing is what makes the Johnson deal good in my eyes. All of these other guys are getting the same annual pay for two years.
In Nathan’s case I think it’s OK because he’s really awesome. Wilson and Johnson and the rest are all kinda the same.
Wilson had 13.2 ip last year and was a .4 war player. thats damn good.
The option year makes it a terrible deal. If he gets hurt it turns into a 1y 19m deal.
I bet I could find lotsa guys who compiled .4 WAR in 13.2 IP at some point last season. You have to believe that Wilson is as good or better than Kenley to make him worth paying that much.
I don’t im not a fan of the contract. if it was a straight two year deal it makes sense but as a one with an option? hardly.
Dude had back to back 2+ WAR seasons as a reliever not that long ago and his stats after he came back last year were pretty much in line with those years. Hes good and the cost of acquiring good pitching this market is insane.
What’s the medium-term prognosis on guys coming off their second TJS?
usually you would expect him to have better controll next year than he did this year.
Yes if you believe he’s no more likely to get hurt than any other pitcher it’s reasonable. Personally I don’t believe that, but the Dodgers have the resources to take that chance and get someone else if Wilson gets hurt.
right someones got to pitch those innings. I think hes pretty good
If the Mariners trade Taijuan Walker + for Price, should we be happy about that? It makes them worse in the long run, but the idea of facing Felix/Price/Iwakuma over and over again for the next two years makes my stomach hurt.
It would be annoying but just trading for Price probably isn’t going to put them close to us or Texas, especially if the package also includes good major league pieces like Miller. If they get Price, sign Cano, and trade for Kemp, then I’ll start to worry.
Well at the least, all these rumors have the sports radio stations here finally paying attention to the Mariners, sort of.
I don’t like all this money the Mariners are apparently willing to throw around.
I think it would be Walker + Franklin or Ackley rather than Miller.
Rays don’t really need Franklin or Ackley either unless they think they’ll magically Zobristize them
Franklin isn’t the worst SS in the world is he? I haven’t seen any scouting reports lately. Plus if they want they can leave Zorbist at SS for either.
Are you expecting Yunel to spontaneously implode or talk to the media or something?
Shit I completely forgot about him.
The problem is they’re only likely to do that if they get Cano.
WTF?
They are jumping right into the Pujol, apparently.
asvd
uh oh
I know Cano is good and all. But for whatever reason, there’s something about him that just doesn’t scare or excite me. Why the fk is that?
They’ll need a lot more than Cano to fully compete.
And they appear to be grabbing at all of it with their chubby little hands
Isn’t Price a lot more than Cano? I think they’re pretty good with Price, Cano, Felix, Iwakuma, Miller, Seager and Zunino.
Well they don’t have either as of yet.
Zunino is promising but hasn’t ‘done’ it yet in the bigs, that is a nice IF w/ Cano slotted in there. Miller and Seager are really good but not ‘stars’, their OF is meh, will Montero continue to underwhelm?
Lots of question marks, but there is upside, who knows effect Cano would have?
We’ll have to see who and what goes into the Price deal, is Franklin going, do they lose 2 young starters?
Price Felix Iwakuma is the best front three in baseball by a mile.
Better than Scherzer/Verlander/Sanchez? Unarguably not by a mile. Arguably not at all.
M’s rumored to be interested in Colon now, though.
Do we really think he’s going to continue to repeat what he’s done?
Probably not, but he’s available for just money, and their pitchers other than Felix/Iwakuma were replacement level last year.
Do we think Iwakuma is going to keep being like he was last year and not like in 2012?
Thanks, and go As.
Or that Felix won’t come down with a debilitating arm injury?
I didn’t realize how significantly Sanchez’s season last year affected his projections. Steamer has them equal.
240 million/10 year deal seems to have been signed.
crap
The American League West is the real Group of Death.
And then there’s Houston.
who just signed Feldmen for 3/30 making the Kazmir deal look even better
Doesn’t that depend on how many Feldmen they get for that?
aardvark is ours, and they can’t have him.
Why would you want men that have fallen anyway? What use are they?
the market is just insane this year. new strategy. FA hitters. Draft only pitchers. Tommy Milone and similar chaft is actually worth a lot these days apparently.
The question is do you go for a pitchers’ park to build up your guys’ value or a hitter’s park to attract FA hitters?
A transformer park that does both when it benefits you most. Bottom half of the inning, the walls move in. Top half of the inning the walls move back.
and then you do the hokey pokey and you score yourself a run.
That IS what it’s all about.
Bill Veeck was way ahead of you.
Yes, but does his idea include a cool transforming sound as it does it?
Pitchers park because then you can trade your pitchers.
All this new TV money has thrown everything out of wack. I have no idea how to properly evaluate contracts now.
you might jump from almost 6 m per war to near 8.
That bubble is going to burst big time.
Why would it? As long as the networks are willing to pay 20-year guaranteed TV contracts, the money is there.
That’s what’s likely to be the predecessor to the burst.
the clubs will set the market, sure, but the cable tv money bubble is going to burst.
I don’t know when, and I don’t know if it will burst with some other video delivery device stepping in and giving the same amount of money, but cable is a dead format walking.
To be replaced by another format that will pay teams billions to exclusively broadcast games.
There’s only so much blood you can draw from that animal before you fail to profit. Once that’s hit and they start losing money on these deals, the teams will be screwed. Part of that is the general popularity of MLB declining. TV needs to make money in order to actually pay their end.
CSN Houston already filed bankruptcy, and now eyes turn to Time Warner’s Dodgers channel in LA. Supposedly they want a $5 monthly fee per subscriber to start, escalating to $8 in a few years. Time Warner can force that on its own customers, some of whom would probably leave as a result, but good luck selling DirecTV, Dish and other cable companies on that.
You really can’t compare Houston to LA, though in terms of overall wealth and baseball fandom, not to mention the success of the teams. I figure the stations did some sort of analysis to figure out if it was profitable before agreeing to those contracts.
In the end, all of this ends up favoring the large market teams more than they already are favored, but we already knew that.
The thing is, it’s not going to happen tomorrow. It may not even happen within the next decade. But these contracts assume the continued big money it brings in. Houston may be an outlier or it could be the start (albeit a slow one) towards something bigger. If people could see that the bubble would pop and when, we wouldn’t have depressions/recessions. So yes, they likely have calculations for these things, but they’re based on human analysis and assumptive, qualified guesswork. The fact that LA’s has a longer history of success just means there’s more money on the line/at risk.
my generation won’t pay for cable. We want a la carte programing or we’ll pirate it if it isn’t easy for us to watch legally.
Then you’ll have to deal with MLB.com blackouts.
why should i pay the mlb if i have to use a proxy against their rules anyway?
I am suspect of money on the same scale being available in the future.
like DFA, many people (including myself) have opted out of the cable/dish world. those sysstems depend on millions of subscribers. People are not going to continue to pay for cable if MLB teams (by proxy) demand $8 a month added to their bills. Its too easy to get content elsewhere.
Plus a lot of people pay that 8 bucks and don’t give a crap about baseball. As the technophobes die out and the rise of smart tvs and rokus and people that just use laptops to stream things, fewer and fewer people are going to pay for 600 channels when they perhaps watch 10. A lot of those households are going to start to refuse to pay for sports that they don’t watch.
I think that’s oversimplified. If you only watch 10 of 600 channels, there’s no chance your a la carte cost would be 1/60 your current cost, or even less than your current cost. And if we really killed cable/sattelite companies and streamed everything, it would take ISPs ~0 seconds to monetize the dramatic usage increases.
IKR, I was pretty excited for 30 seconds until I realized every other team is getting the same thing… Just puts loads more cash in the market.
Walk this way
what hump?
On the bright side, the last 10 year/$240 million deal hasn’t worked out very well so far?
they need price and brerakout seasons from at least one of their other players to make it work
Yup, but then I remember what happened to the Phillies ‘cant lose’ juggernaut rotation of a few years ago.
If Smoak and Montero somehow live up to their past prospect hype, Price on board, we could have some serious trouble.
Apparently they wanted Napoli but he went back to Boston.
Nice hatchet job on the Mariners’ front office in this morning’s Seattle fishwrap.
if that’s true, maybe we can get Wlker for Milone? he WINS amirite?
We really need to be trading with this guy before he gets fired.
emil brown for Walker