not to make a big deal out of it, but here we go.
Crisp CF, Jaso C, Donaldson 3B, Moss 1B, Cespedes LF, Lowrie SS, Reddick RF, Callaspo DH, Sogard 2B
I have $5. No I don\'t.221 thoughts on “Game 52. Gray v Scherzer”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Yesterday I had exchanged my bleacher ticket for one of the few singles left in the shade, in 217, and there was an empty seat next to me. The guy sitting on the other side of the empty seat asked me “Hey, is it okay if my friend comes and sits here?” I said “Sure, whatever…” — it wasn’t like it was my seat, why should I have veto power? Then I looked up to see that the friend he was beckoning to was Banjo Man.
(But fortunately, there was a seat on the aisle which was more convenient for his banjo playing than mine in the middle of the row.)
I saw you in the WSC yesterday and waived, but you did not see. I couldn’t really stop
Did your kids clear waivers, or did someone claim them?
conditional waivers, you’ll never know
FKing Anaheim…
It was so hot outside in that interminable line, I’m sure all I was thinking about was finding a seat and collapsing. I don’t know what was going on with the security people – perhaps they had received a Credible Threat — but they were actually looking closely through all of the bags, and moving incredibly slowly considering it was a sold-out stadium and they didn’t open the doors until 90 minutes to first pitch.
Dammit. I hate hunter.
And why is ray on my radio?
#shootypeopleproblems
Catfish?
I thought a 6 hour nap today would keep me up long enough tonight to watch the game. Nope.
Well so much for that.
I will be incredibly annoyed if they show the Scherzer Game 4 performance tonight.
Should have sat Reddick tonight for that reason.
4 for 8 lifetime vs Sherzer before tonight. Just popped one up but he didn’t miss it by all that much really. I say Reddick has at least one extra base hit in him tonight.
Too soon is all I’m saying. Very traumatic K…
VC went there / TV shows cespedes HR instead.
dammit vince!
….why
Mess with Scherzzzzzr
Melvin/Coco couldn’t handle more runners stranded by Ks…
(It got retweeted by Empty Seats Galore)
Needs moar tarp.
dammit
Trying to get all the suck out of this preview matchup now maybe…
dammit (hey duplicate comment police, I am going to say this a lot)
dammit.
so, you lose your challenge, then there is another play that you want to challenge, the umpire refuses, can you play under protest?
When the boys choose cookies for dessert and after eating them decide they should have chosen ice cream, do they get ice cream too? Assume perfect Aramark service in crafting your answer.
Excellent
x2
I think that was an example of that mentoring of the young players by Torii Hunter that Shooty was talking about yesterday.
Austin Jackson channeling Raiders receivers on that route to the ball.
I thought it should have been a ground-rule double.
if the outfielder raises his hands it might be
With the ball sitting in plain sight, you’re putting a lot of faith in getting the call from the ump. If not, inside-the-park homer.
Yeah, that would be too Tejada-ish. Anyway, Callaspo made the matter moot.
So maybe all the Tigers starters just suck now all of a sudden and they’ll collapse.
nice AB coco. you owe us a run though
why do I hate hunter if he is so beloved around the league?
I chuckled when Vince told us “Torii Hunter has the ability to unite any clubhouse, no matter how diverse it is.” I nominate Torii for Special Ambassador to St. Louis Rams training camp.
White players, black players, “impostors,” they all think Torii’s a righteous dude.
yeah, really
The bat flip. Even on outs.
I fucking hate vince’s call on opposition HRs
how come?
cabrón.
In what universe does calling for an inside fastball to Cabrera make any sense?
I don’t think that’s necessarily worse than outside over the plate. It wasn’t inside enough, and he didn’t throw it hard enough.
Cabrera’s already tagged Gray’s fastball hard. I just would not throw anything other than the curve to him as long as he has two strikes.
I don’t like that guy Cabrera.
I expect runs or 20 pitches this inning
I would have preferred a run.
Always give your children options.
vince really knowing his demo dropping a hamilton berger reference.
how..wha…ok, I need some context here. Did someone bring up a new single by Drake and VC assumed it was Paul Drake?
Wow, thanks blue.
Thanks blue!
Normally I tune out Glen and Ray by the second inning but it’s somehow really hard to turn Shooty into white noise.
21,000
throw the fucking curveball
dammit..
Sonny getting hit harder than I recall seeing before.
Shoot up, Shutty.
I enjoyed hearing about how Ausmus is not afraid to call a pitchout because he’s from the national league.
Wow
thank you for a reason to typpe duchscherer again
i’m just gonna assume you meant to write zito and typo’d.
I don’t think a sac fly is possible with Callaspo on 3B…
Maybe dead center in the Polo Grounds.
“Strong right arm followed by some top hand Johnson.” Without context, a baseball play is pretty far down the list of events I would guessed was being broadcast with that phrase.
Reply fail.
Major League Mastubating, baby!!
Crap, you’ve gotta look for changeup there.
Great pitch on the K, needed to hit that 2-1 fastball.
better than a sac fly!
John fucking Jaso, I’ve missed you.
Said it before, say it again. Woulda been nice to have John Jaso in that playoff series…
I was hoping to get Scherzer to 85 pitches, but I’ll take that inning.
And the USA scores! This has otherwise been A zeri, zeri boring game.
had to go on a food run. i wanna watch the 2nd half later. any chance you can spoiler further down the thread if you mentioned more results? i know it totally doesn’t count or matter.
Sorry! No further spoilage.
thanks, and no worries.
a grinder of a game.
the second one was nice. that defender just stood there watching like he had paid for his in-court seat though.
jones, johnson, johannsson… you guys are starting to sound like one of those small countries where everybody’s cousins with each other.
bradley kind of clunked all night, didn’t he? i swear at one moment i went, why’s he still playing, is he the coach’s son or something? and then i remembered.
and i can’t believe cuauhtemoc is
still alivein tonight’s lineup. i hope he tries the cuauhtecmilla (at least twice). geez that guy’s a tool.OH MAN!
i guess you can’t spoiler the whole thing. gotta do ¶ by ¶…
sorry! i’m warming up too. will be in shape by the 12th, promise.
We dropped a Johnson too.
Bradley had a little bit of a rough one. I’m putting it down to a newish formation (midfield diamond) that had him further upfield than usual. Asking him to play like Xavi is a bit of stretch, even as good as he is. I’m sure he’ll be dropping deeper against the better teams out of necessity.
Not to mention that Jones, whom I adore, isn’t satisfied with being our Gattuso. He wants to be our Pirlo too. He hits a great long pass, but that was never going to work in the winds of Candlestick. I felt like he was either bypassing Bradley or putting him under duress a little too often.
yep, wind was a factor. bradley’s free kick was probably closer than it looked.
I had never seen someone set the ball down for a corner kick, only to have it blow away. This must be what it’s like to root for the Faroe Islands.
That was a terrible choice for a venue.
Stanford would have been WAY better.
also not on a random FKing tuesday when the Gnats and A’s are both playing as well.
Oh, and advertise the game. and don’t make tickets expensive.
Thanks, and go As.
this. (the second part of #4)
Yeah. It was a completely crazy choice in every respect. I hope the poor turnout isn’t used to justify not having the team back in the Bay Area for another six years.
Yeah exactly. Poor venue, poor date, poor execution
anybody know who paid for the player face banners the crowd was holding up?
was it the USMNT org itself, or do the fan groups organize that well?
i thoroughly approve, either way.
Fan groups, I’m pretty sure. They did a really nice job with those last night. The Wondo one was especially cool.
Also, as long as we’re complaining:
1. I’m not a fan of the superhero jammies uniforms.
2. Why in the hell are they not using these games to get used to the Brazuca ball?
Nike you suck.
Yeah. The rocket pop uniforms look like we’re France, and the aways look like a freaking golf shirt.
Just an awful, awful pair of uniforms.
I wish they would just use the centennial kits FOREVER.
Thanks, and go As.
that’s was my thought too! i even thought the linesman was going to hold the ball down when he walked up toward the flag.
so… 15 days out and arrows are flying in brasilia. i’m just a touch worried.
Yikes, that does look crazy. After all the build-up to the potential problems in Sochi that didn’t materialize, it’s easy to shrug off all the talk of mayhem at the WC, but this does seem like a different situation. No Putin to put the clamps on everything, plus it’s all over a big country not just in one place. It seems there’s a lot of reasons for the people there to be angry about this, I just hope it doesn’t get really ugly.
On another note, I happened by the new Biergarten on Gilman yesterday in the first hour that it opened. The Brazil Cafe guy is involved, and he said the grand opening is June 12 and they’ll have a big screen for the WC. Could be cool to watch it outdoors there.
1.
2. that sounds fun. it’ll have to be a neutral game (south americanly speaking) for me though. england-italy, 3pm on saturday for example.
That feels more like Judge Dread than Robocop.
Ken and Ray, the reason the fake to third move was banned was because very few pitchers ever picked anybody off with it. Most of them used it as a way to waste time. The game needs to be speeded up and that was a small step in the right direction.
Really wish they hadn’t used Otero yesterday.
didn’t see that change up coming
The most startling revelation of the night is that Ray hasn’t read Jason Kendall’s book yet.
He wants to finish coloring in all the pictures first.
Damn, that inning might’ve given Scherzer enough to go two more.
yup
This happens every 5th inning where the opposing pitcher is on the ropes. The a’s respond with a , 10 pitch inning.
I hate that so fucking much
Nice
Wait, that means Francisco Rodriguez got the win. Not nice.
I am not understanding any of this
I would like a double oplay please
dammit
Way to finish, Sonny!
with the curve like I think someone was asking for earlier
So are we doing the gregerson, ? DOolittle tonight?
Abad and others, Greggles, and Doo?
otero is probably ready.
No, Otero. Which makes total sense..he had a day off once, like in mid March…
Omar Vizquel sighting, coaching first. Always loved that guy. Two things though:
1. It’s a crime that Alex Avila was not forced to give up no. 13 for the great Vizquel to wear.
2. Greatness notwithstanding, Omar wears his hat funny, perched too high on his head. Really goofy look. Always had that look as a player, and I now see he still does as a helmet-wearing 1B coach.
If you’re going to wear it that high, you have to go full Murphy.
I like good defensive players, but he is a player in some toronto drama that should not have been. tangentially involved Jesse Chavez.
Also i dont like that he is called future hall of famer.
i think it’s his head shape. he’s got a shelf above his brows. he wears the size that fits on the shelf. 1 size bigger, the hat slips down too far.
i have a similar problem with an alien head shape. i have to make it stick to the right spot on the back of my head. one size smaller it’s too high. one size bigger, it slips right past and dangles on the back of my neck with only my ears holding the weight.
we need runs or long at bats
you got lucky there keebs
Keebs taking lessons from . Not what I wanted to see.
When Cespedes does it in August and breaks his thumb, that’s when they’ll finally release .
It’s like he wants to break his glasses.
you got lucky there keebs
i hate hunter
No no no. You love him. Everybody loves him.
I was expecting Gregerson to blow it, but not surprised here.
Still plenty of time for Gregerson to blow it.
well, since I expected the A’s to be trailing by this time, i suppose this is ok
For some weird reason I always imagined in my head that Krol looked exactly like Blevins. He does not.
was krol in the gio trade?
He was in the Jaso trade, and also the trade you are referring to is properly called the Norris trade.
BOOBIES
Also, here comes the ball-kisser. FK him.
So, Ausmus put in Krol to bring norris in?
Moss must be happy to see not-Scherzer.
I didn’t know that JD Martinez was such a hard out.
omg
That was Abad base to give up for free to Rajai.
fuck.
ground balls please
What are the odds on a home run given up this inning? I’ve got to think it’s pretty fucking high.
Bringing Gregerson in with men on will work some day.
Someone should have a little chat with Abad about the necessity of pitching without his head up his ass.
So fucking stupid using Otero yesterday.
It didn’t make too much sense to me. The guy who’s on pace for 100 innings needed work in garbage time?
dammit
dammit
I’m disappointed that the PA did not play the sound of loud buzzing insects when this guy came in to pitch.
this is one of those games you can’t leave for 30, 40 minutes at a time, come back, and understand anything.
Damnit, this means Keebs leads off the ninth.
punto’s available!
Neither one of them should ever hit in close/late games.
Blanks or Gentry have to be better, even against a right-hander.
Vogt would be
just a touch less backspin and he’s on.
omg. we got rajai-run’d?
you did not get lucky there keebs
I’m just insanely tired of losing games like this when it was promised that our awesome, amazing, fantastic bullpen would shut down teams in these types of games.
starting pitching and defense, to a lessor extent the offense all failed in this game.
Yeah, of the A’s 21 losses, I’d wager in about half of them, the A’s had a lead at some point from the 6th on. No team will be perfect in those situations but man it’s been rough.
21 losses:
Judging it pretty crudely, it looks like 10 games that the A’s could have won with a perfect bullpen. But it’s a biased list — no bullpen is going to look good if you only focus on losses — so you would need to compare against a similar tally for other teams / seasons.
It does seem to me that the A’s really haven’t suffered many blowouts, which is good of course, but also means that every loss feels like a big disappointment.
i mentally went with 7 fairly sure Ws and a couple more possible ones, divided by halfish just for random fairness (though i guess this begs to account for all the times the game was handed to the bullpen, not just the losses), and decided the A’s record is really 35-17. FU giants!
I’d bet it’s more closer to the latter paragraph than our intrinsic failure of the bullpen.
yeah, big psychological biases for this sort of thing
Related:
8-6 in one-run games
2-8 in two-run games
5-4 in three-run games
16-3 in games decided by 4 or more runs (including 10-0 for 7 or more run margins)
So (just looking at the final result, not how it got there) we’re a little under .500 in the close ones, whereas we should probably expect to be a little (but not a lot) over .500 in those ones.
I count 12 losses where the bullpen failed to either keep the lead, keep it tied, or keep it close. But the biggest issue is that’s a raw number without context. How many chances that were close did they have? How often does the typical bp keep it close in those situations.
So that looks like
11 where we were always down after the 6th
3 where we were tied at some point after the 6th
7 where we had the lead at some point after the 6th
Also, note that all of the blown leads were only 1 run and several involved blown opportunities for the offense to add on, walk off, or re-tie it. So definitely more bullpen failure than we want to see, but also some blame for the rest of the team.
right. There are many offensive failures here as well, but it seems like the bullpen should be doing better. Its at least encouraging that the losses were 1 run leads.
I recall at least one win where Johnson blew it.
No matter how good your offense is, you’re still going to play close games and you’re still going to have missed opportunities. Right now, the offense is 2nd in the league in runs and second in wRC+. Unless we expect them to turn every game into a blowout and capitalize on every run scoring opportunity, I don’t feel inclined to blame them for much of anything.
It’s the bullpen’s job to maintain those leads in games where the offense isn’t perfect. With their negative WPA and second worst Clutch score in the league, they clearly haven’t. Hopefully this changes.
Can we all just agree we see the names Johnson and Gregerson on there too often?
yes. Also the name Felix, but that’s not about our bullpen.
0 strikeouts that game. that is on our offense not to have crushed him
well…
dammit
Crap. Quite disappointing.
Fuck, that sucked.
Least shocking headline of the week
More shocking: Brett Anderson is not
close to rejoining the RockiesdeadIt will be like a trade deadline addition!! He will be a late season/playoff ace!!!
SP Ronald Herrera is the PTBNL in the Blanks trade. Heavy price to pay for 1.5 years of Blanks.
Agreed.
Lincicum’s line:
5 innings, 0 runs, 0 hits, 4 walks, 5strikeouts, 96 pitches
and he doesn’t come out for the 6th
Ugh. I’m about to leave to go see Red Sox vs Barves and it is 48 degrees with drizzle. Almost June, my ass.
Rick Reilly wrote (and published!) an open letter to Derek Jeter’s unborn children telling them about how great and awesome and pure and handsome he was and how much Jorge Posada loved him. I’m not even going to link to it in the interest of not sickening everyone.
OK, I’ll give you the last three paragraphs because I hate you all and you deserve to suffer.
.
Watch him turn into Kirby Puckett post-baseball.
Or Steve Garvey
OJ Simpson.
Oh would that be a thing to see. But let’s do without the murder and just do the post-murder version.
look out ruben rivera
Reilly should be getting a nice gift basket for his efforts at least.
I’d imagine that they bring the child home and the next morning, there’s a gift basket in the crib and a note that he had a great night, here’s money for cab fair to the nearest orphanage and a signed baseball that, instead of saying “Derek Jeter #2” on it says “Daddy #2”
Such a classy abandonment. That’s the kind of deadbeat dad you want to be next to.
Like an eagle deciding to take the bus? How lazy must a columnist be to leave that lame analogy in a piece?
A New York one?
isn’t that the plot of john belushi’s serious movie?
How much must his editor hate him to not make him take that lame analogy out?
It’s over the top, although I did flash back to the “Liberty” lyrics.
It’s the kind of thing that happens when you stop writing in 2007 and start generating your columns through a heady mix of copy-paste, concentrated bluster, and the drool-spasms of hardcore laurel resting
Not unlike the range of a certain revered late career shortstop.
wants to have a family?
Lets pencil that out a little. he s what 40? single? I know he is rich and will have an athletes body even in teh over 40 years, but I don’t know that his gods puppy status will hold for a april-october relationship with kids coming in his 50s.
He’s famous. Those fuckers get pregnant after the first week together.
Billy Butler is having a terrible year and is owed another 5 or so million this year, plus a $1 million buyout for next year ($12.5 million team option). He bats righthanded and plays first base, sort of. The Royals suck. Can we get this guy for the low, low price of on the house? I feel like Blanks probably sucks.
I was arguing with a padres fan today about the true HR king. he was pointing to steroids as making the 90s, 2000s illegitimate seemingly ignoring the segregation and anointing ruth the king.
Anyway he asked me to make a counter offer in the case we had together, and I said “dismissal.” he said that is not negotiating, my boss overheard and chimed in “he’ll waive the apology letter.”
So my point is, if we ask for butler on the house I think we will be set for trial in july.
So he’s ignoring Hank Aaron and going straight to the white guy?
sorry, i was unclear, we were talking single season
Then what about Maris?
I think his argument was *154 games
The only seven PA away.
1927 Ruth: 691 PA
1961 Maris: 698 PA
Dunno if that brings anything to the conversation, but I always found it interesting.
In fairness, in the 4 game world series, Ruth did hit 2 more out. So for 156 games, he had 62.
Non SuSlu chron
He says the A’s have only converted 9 or 18 save opportunities.
I really wish people that get paid to write about baseball would know more about what different MLB rulebook data points actually mean.