I try to avoid hyperbole, but these next four games in Houston are the most important in the history of sports. At 1-8 on the season series thus far the A’s have failed worse than Napoleon in Russia (take note, Les Bleus). Anything worse than a split here would be a crash of Hindenburgian proportions.
All four games scheduled to include M pitchers:
Montas vs Cole
Manaea vs Verlander
Bassitt vs McCullers
TBD vs Morton
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
Yes success!
Hell yeah
That soundtrack was epic.
love fallin’.
We may need a shutout here, Frankie.
There’s your run. Take us home.
Altootblan
He was so sure he was gonna catch Lucroy routine-ing it, then, oops.
Got him again
Yeah, and he made some crappy plays in the field too this series.
108 pitches through six for G. Cole. Still pumping 100 mph though.
Jesus Luzardo tonight: 6 IP 10 Ks 1 BB 0 R
He went 6 innings for the first time this season, presumably because the pitch count was so low it made sense to (only threw 64 pitches total).
Also, Piscotty is good now!
Am I crazy to think there is a scenario where he is pitching in Oakland in September?
Is there any reason not to have him come up and even just putch an inning of mop up?
Great minds overreact alike.
At 78 IP and an innings limit of 100 this year, he has about 4-5 starts left.
Ah well. I’ll start hoping he makes the 2019 rotation out of camp.
Jesus Puk n’ … Chris?
Video of Luzardo making a batter look silly for his 10th K tonight. At one point the announcer says he hits 98.
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Maybe we call him dr lizardo and monkeyball comes back
la zurda
PBiscotty!It worked this tine, but I still support just drilling Gattis in the ribs every AB.
Ray said it is a whole different game after the ASB. Does it mean 5 balls for a walk?
Tyler White and Evan Gattis have to be related right?
This umpire is fucking clueless.
Maybe Springer gets a hit there anyway but FU ump.
Gattis. Fuck.
Yay
Great fucking game.
Boom goes the Treinenyte!
Good stuff!
Eat it fatty! Victory cabbage for all.
Haven’t give up a run in a minute, have we.
I feel infinitely more confident in Trivino/Treinen than I ever did with Cook/Doolittle/Grant.
Well, Doo was pretty good and Cook had a great run. But Trivino and especially Treinen are just so damned composed compared to the crazyman type. Like, professional.
As I am in Seattle right now I feel obligated to call on the as to go 54-40 before the all star break.
54-40 or fight
*and (?)
Presumably the musical retort will come from The Whigs.
or anyone else who wants to polk their nose in.
I can’t believe the A’s missed this by the strength of josh reddicks check swing.
Wait a minute. I was away for not even full three weeks and the A’s are … contenders?
We’re contendish.
In a normal year we would be right in the middle of everything. But these dumb superteams ya’know.
We just have to have that Dory attitude. Just keep winning, just keep winning.
Yeah, more wins than any team in National League bar… Brewers?!
I judge this gross.
Justice for Jed!
Great interview with Fuson. This guy does not BS at all.
But if you wanted good news on Kaep, look away. Dude’s gonna be 25 before he throws another milb pitch. Is it just me or are the A’s worse about recovery from TJS than any other team?
I honestly don’t remember a successful case. Worrisome for Cotton and Puk who I had high hopes for.
His answers on Kaprelian are strikingly terse compared to his effusive, warts-and-all answers about every other player.
It makes me think either his shoulder is much worse than the team has let on, or there is an internal conflict (either within the front office or between the front office and the player) about how to handle him.
i can’t be too down on the package fro gray, though
I mean, why not? Fowler’s OK I guess, but I’m not sure he’ll really be the CF of the future. I’ve always been pretty down on Mateo and he’s been terrible this year.
Gray’s been bad, but I would take him back in a heartbeat. I would trade Mateo/Kaep for Gray right now, although I think the Yankees would accept less from any non-A’s team. In a vacuum, I’m not sure I wouldn’t trade Fowler/Mateo/Kaep for Gray. An, at worst mid-rotation, still young SP with a history of performing in big games? Aside from superstars, that’s exactly what the A’s need right now.
I totally agree on gray. I think getting him back and letting him throw a fastball would be a perfect fit. I do think it would be cheap. I have a fantasy of forst/beane sneaking into someone elses trade
I dunno.
I didn’t like the trade, arguing that if we couldn’t get profiles with better reward/risk profiles than those three it would be better to hold on to Sonny and wait another year. It seems pretty clear that that would have been a losing proposition, if the best anyone here can say is that they might reverse it, despite a completely lost season from Kaprielian and a terrible one for Mateo.
Is Sonny really “at worst mid-rotation” now? He’s been downright bad two of the last three years, and even last year was not great. Maybe the different pitching philosophy, or just the change of scenery back would help. Or maybe wear and tear has already taken enough of a toll on his arm, even if that doesn’t show up in obvious ways like diminished velocity. If he really could be had cheap, sure, go for it. (Buy low, etc.) But it might not be like getting an ace at the deadline.
I never had enough knowledge to have an opinion about the gray deal last year, writers seemed to like it, those of you here that have deeper understanding of prospects were meh to no. the appeal of gray is that sheryl ring piece in fangraphs earlier this year and the prospect of getting him cheaply.
I would love a new pitcher, like the other gray, but I really don’t want to see anything other than money spent on upgrading the rotation. which is kinda like saying “I don’t want to upgrade the rotation at the deadline.”
I worry of the sustainability of the current winning formula, starter goes twice through the order, and have the bullpen take 5 inning. Has an A’s starter made it to the 7th in a while?
20 times this season – 1 in March, 6 in April, 7 in May, 5 in June, but only 1 in July (4th).
Bassitt 1
Cahill 3
Gossett 1
Manaea 8
Megden 4
Montas 2
Triggs 1
Sunday probably would have been 2 in july had it not been for all star break and nl park
Still, that seems low.
It’s been awhile since I eagerly awaited the return of Cahill. Actually Im not sure I have ever done that.
There you go!
That ejection seemed so random.
Maybe something lingering from last night? Melvin had some postgame quotes that seemed like subtle shots at Vanover’s calls on Fowler.
can’t wait to see this resilient team I have been reading about this last week.
well you’ve seen it
I like
They do the “make the starter throw a lot of pitches and then punish the bullpen” thing that I know you love.
you have been mining FK data from 2011
with bob ejected, Casilla gets in a tight* game
*I mean, ok tightish
Korach is calling Casilla “Willie”?
has for years. Claims it is his nickname. I believe one of the defendants in a few good men is Willie Santiago. My guess is prior to his departure in 2009, they watched the movie on the plane and some people called Casilla “willie” I refuse to believe it is wide spread, or followed him to the giants.
It is on his b-r page (as “Willi”)
I also noticed the other day that “Pegasus” is listed for Chapman there, which led me to this from his college days.
I strenuously object to that nickname.
you can’t handle the truth
Also
Timely and relevant!
Nice ninth, fellows!
He’l always be Jairo to me.
Slowly read the thread first just to confirm someone didnt beat me to this.
No 8th inning magic.
Setting up Hatcher for the win.
Fosse’s radio spots for “tootsie roll bites” is hilarious. “They’re full of tootsie fun!”
Hmmmm
Wow
Wow, indeed
Don’t throw that curve down the middle to Gattis a second time.
Anyone else notice a couple odd new taglines coming up
if guriel steals….
It’s nice that we’ve already used Casilla and Hatcher.
Got through Altuve and Gattis.
And we’ve already used Casilla and Hatcher.
dammit GM.
Ray: “I agree with you 100%” {then deliver Rickey Henderson anecdote arguing exactly the opposite)
This ump is sure giving the outside pitches.
Hey hey Piscotty!
such a good story
i don’t like this part
That was a fucking strike
damn
Drat.
i have hope for the 12th
FKing hell
just score 2 in the 12th, we are good
That was as strange a play as I’ve ever seen.
Not Lucroy’s finest moment. Or inning.
Canha probably should have done better?
Or did the ball hit the runner? Never mind.
He had no reason to hurry either, could’ve just stood there with the ball and made the tag.
It kind of depends on what the runners were doing. He may have thought he needed to throw down to third after tagging Bregman.
I can’t imagine the lead runner was very far off second at that point.
In that case, the correct play would have been throwing to third and then back to first for the easy double play.
Oh man that would have been so effin cool.
They tried to hide me at catcher in 3rd grade Peanut League, and I think I lost us a game on a play something like that one.
Glad that the comedy show Lil Miss Aces sold me tickets to was last night. Got to miss that joke and instead got a surprise 20 minutes of jokes from Paul Reiser.
true athletic
Jose Guillen will always have a place in my heart.
Didn’t both Cansecos have that at almost the same time?
twss?
Hmmm, it may be contagious.
Still can’t stop smdh’ing over that play last night.
I was tossing and turning between about 3 and 5 a.m. over that one, and I bet Lucroy did the same for more than just two hours.
Attn: AV
Of course.
Yeah this is the key part.
he was a judge? Judges are bound to always pay for things. this raises a lot of questions that I know will never be answered and even if they are will be shrugged off by the NYT/WaPo no matter how many of these friends are lobbyists
I guess the Nationals will be picking up Doolittle’s 2019 option.
Seriously, I hope every FKer has more in his or her retirement account(s) than Mr. Kavanaugh has in total assets.
Edit: Oh, wait, This story has been updated to reflect that Kavanaugh has a government retirement account worth nearly half a million dollars that was not required to be disclosed.
I was just reading this. Frankly Kavanaugh’s modest assets from a life as a jurist (and not a highly paid white collar lawyer) is a mark in his favor in my book. Not nearly enough to outweigh the marks against him of course. But we definitely need more not-rich folks in government.
Also I bet he thinks Dusty Baker is brilliant.
Not-rich?
He’s a graduate of Georgetown Prep (same as Gorsuch), and Yale (figures) who has been making a salary of “about $220,000 a year” for at least a decade. I guess that is a modest salary compared to some private lawyers, but that still doesn’t mean he can relate in any way to the common folk. He’s a plenty rich guy who lives beyond his means either because he’s a complete imbecile or (more likely) because he knows that he can collect wingnut welfare from the donor classes whenever he wants.
Agree with your last sentence, though.
That’s all fair and he’s quite privileged to be sure. He’s still a less plutocratic Pres appointee than most (and not just Trump), two income family paying mortgage and education and Nats tix costs.
Regarding last night:
No outs, runners on first and third, up a run in the bottom of the 11th. Would playing the infield back have been the better move?
I think not, but only because the batter (Kemp) was an extremely fast runner who would be hard to double up. Anyone but him or Altuve in the box, I’m trying to turn two and get to the 12th.
Good start
Hi friends. I’ve got a bit of a unique situation. Do any of you FKn lawyers know someone who handles mergers and acquisitions that you’d recommend? Bonus if they are familiar with nonprofits.
I don’t. I know lots of people who could defend a DUI or a fight
Not a DUI, a DU Us!
I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.
What’s your price point? (he says weeks after it is too late to be of assistance, digging out of a big FKing backlog)
Unleash the hound!
So far so good, but Bassitt, Cahill, Jackson, Anderson, plus the shallowness of the bullpen quality, is why I’m not buying A’s stock. At least the Anderson issue does generally self-resolve within about 3 weeks.
A’s stock will remain enticingly affordable for awhile, you have time.
I like the October 2020 call options. Still not crazy about the October 2019 but I’ve been slow to pull the trigger there before.
its a one day at a time thing, really. I was counting outs in this game from #1.
I think get through today and there is a good chance they will be over 500 by tomorrow.
The rotation was the obvious weakness at the beginning of the year, and when we were hanging around at .500, and even now during this 17-5(!) streak which has mostly featured pretty good pitching.
The A’s have used 12 starters (not counting Lucas spot start in bullpen game). Six have been decent (Manaea, Montas, Cahill, Bassitt, Jackson, arguably Mengden), the other five have mostly been bad (Anderson, Gossett, Triggs, Graveman, Blackburn).
Five of that group staying both healthy and effective is probably too much to ask. Four might be enough, and is at least plausible. Likely? OK, probably not. There is also the possibility that just hanging around for another couple of weeks could be enough to make us buyers at the deadline.
So basically what Ed said. I’ll enjoy the unexpectedly good baseball for now, and try not to be too disappointed if Gossburn are starting important games down the stretch.
He never, ever caught that ball.
Has Larry Vanover always been this terrible?
Melvin is exasperated with this umpiring crew.
Astros are playing kinda fugly.
You jinxed it. That was a nice play.
Why is Mike Gallego guest-coaching at third base?
The kid’s got a strong arm, but I can’t blame Williams there after he airmailed the one in the first.
And we will see you in September, Mr. Piscotty.
Ramon Laureano time? Fowler, Canha, Pinder, Martini is a little thin out there if you bring back Barreto.
Oh wait, we still have Smolinski. Yay.
And Khrush, heading into Pac Bell.
I know Barreto hasn’t played any outfield, though it was floated at one time, but neither had Pinder, and that’s a way to get a player regular ABs at the big league level while keeping Jed past July 31.
This one has started to take on a bad odor.
It’s an attempted 6-out Trivino save that will see 4 outs.
How about the attempted 6-out Pagan hold?
Starting to get annoyed with Bregman.
he is a mixed bag isn’t he? I kinda like him and his attitude, but I don’t like how he does well against the A’s
A Mariner beat a Yankee and a Red Sock in a fan popularity vote? Seems fishy.
Bassitt’s secondary pitches are just not very good. He’s done fine getting ahead of hitters 0-2, 1-2 but he ends up in full counts more often than not.
Fowler as the leadoff hitter isn’t working for me. Maybe, or probably, eventually, but he just looks overmatched too often right now.
The whole walking once a month thing doesn’t help either.
Centimeters away from two homers this inning.
Both no-doubt moonshots to Glen Kuiper.
KK called davis’ as a hit
Vince says Dull is “trying to find more conviction in his pitches.”
They were convicted and sentenced to AAA but he got sprung.
That’s weird that the AAA All-Star Game was tonight. Did MLB and MiLB not communicate about that?
I see the Reno Aces are at home next week, including head-to-head with the MLB All-Star Game. I went to one Aces game earlier and noticed that the extended screens have not filtered down to AAA. I was sitting 3 rows behind the 1B dugout, and I used to hate sitting behind a screen, but then I turned 50 and realized I was getting a bit too old for that risk.
To add about that Aces game a few weeks ago: It was first and third, 2 outs, 3-2 count. Suddenly the home plate umpire throws his hands up and shouts “Ball Four!” WTF? It was because the 20-second pitch clock had run out. The pitcher was pissed, even more so when the next hitter lined the first pitch into right field and drove in 2 runs. That was the only 20-second call of the game. I’m not looking forward to seeing that in the majors.
Looking at the box score, the PCL manager seems to have been determined to get every pitcher into the game. Seven pitchers divided the last nine outs, including a four-pitch, one batter stint by Bobby Wahl.
James Naile threw a full inning and gave up three runs.
gotta be trivino now, yeah? this is the heart of the order.
or score 3 and use…dull?
This entire umpiring crew is terrible.
Fowler dug most of his own grave on the 5-K night but he definitely got the “shut-up-Rookie” treatment on a few calls, not just that final pitch of the 5th K. He did handle all of that pretty well.
There was a ludicrous checked-swing call on Lowrie in the first inning tonight, by the 3B umpire who called the swing on Khris as the plate umpire last night. It was like, “Oh, you guys like appeals to the base umpires? Fine, take this.”
Nice comeback after the sleepness night. I was dubious about committing money to the Coors Field trip, relatively late in what I expected to be a lousy season, back in January but that’s looking like a wise decision now.
yesterday and that tag at the plate in new york would really be bummers if not for today and the boston series.
How did the Cubs get so bad so quickly?
I took my father-in-law to our annual game yesterday, and with the A’s out of town it had to be the Giants/Cubs. Montgomery aside the Cubs pitching was passable, but their hitting was pretty poor, and the two official errors flattered their defense (and Posey’s offense – definitely some home-scorer hits there), with Bryant at 3rd being particularly bad.
Preview of Soaker’s favorite golf tournament, which starts tomorrow.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/golf/article/Stephen-Curry-Mark-Mulder-and-celebrity-wagers-13067872.php
Bregmanned.
Double Martini please
Bartender! Another please.
The Astros are FKing up a lot. The are a lot worse without Correa.
I feel bad for Hatcher. That Kemp homer was ridiculous.
8th Inning
Which wouldn’t have ended in a GIDP if Canha could bother running.
Maybe a triple if he ran?
Got hit right in the Bucht?
This must be the worst series of Altuve’s life.
This team is for real.
Yay.
After that pile of stink home series vs. the Astros a few weeks ago, I thought the Padres and White Sox would keep them afloat for a couple weeks. But certainly the 3 in Cleveland followed by 4 in Houston would finish them off for good.
I really like having a great bullpen.
Holy crap, we won! Three of four in Houston. Good times!
I don’t know what to say. I like wins. I still don’t see how it happens.
Getting to Bumgarner would be nice.
Not that I set expectations high, but if the A’s can win 4 or 5 of the games against SF, I think 95.7 might devote a couple minutes to them.
Nah, by then they’ll just be talking about which third-string long snapper is looking good in 49ers camp.
What the what’s wrong with the Giants commentary. As well as who they’re going to sell and who they’re going to get.
I dipped into 95.7 three times this morning:
1. Home Run Derby: Lame or Cool?
2. Niners Niners Niners
3. Randy Wynn talking about the Giants
I also listened to about five minutes of KNBR, in which Brian Murphy was twice lamented that the Giants didn’t hit Canha “in the ribs.”
I have to say, I’m perversely enjoying Steinmetz & Ratto see who can be the crustiest curmudgeon.
James Paxton pulled in the first inning with an apparent injury.
Back tightness.
I mean, its part of the game. anderson and mccarthy went down in 2012. can’t feel good, but its not something to feel bad about
Pujols just tied Rickey on the all time hit list. :(
Tied Griffey on the homer list on the same swing.
Who finishes with more hits:
Beltre (3,112)
Pujols (3,055)
Mac users:
I bought a Windows 10 notebook last year and have seen enough of Windows 10 to know I don’t want it when I replace the Windows 7 desktop.
I decided to do what people told me to do 20 years ago, which is buy an iMac. Here’s what they offer on their site. The 21.5-inch monitor is fine; that’s what I have now. That 4K display would be good, and the other upgrade I was considering for speed would be the 256GB solid-state drive. I’m currently using 57GB out of the 1TB on the Win7 machine, so I don’t think I need to go to 512GB. So I’d probably buy that middle one with the base 3.0GHz processor and the base 8GB of memory, so that prices at $1499 with the SSD. Does that sound like an adequate configuration?
Probably.
The SSD is a good call. Beyond that, if you’re not a serious gamer or making movies even lower-end computers are plenty fast these days.
MacRumors says new models may be out in the fall, if you can wait a few months.
Might just be me, but I’m not a fan of the solid state drive. At least not without a secondary drive to keep your important things on. When they die, they do so slowly stealing away files with it. And if something gets deleted, it’s a whole hell of a lot harder to recover it than with traditional drives.
More RAM is always better. You cannot upgrade it later, because it’s all soldered to the main board on a Mac.
I absolutely FKin hate them for consumer use. Turns out they are also terrible for business use. GREAT if you’re doing A/V stuff, or music, or photo editing, or…
Thanks, and go As.
academia
Nevertheless, agreed about more RAM = better. For this amount of money I want the thing to be current at least through the end of Trump’s second term, and dealing with it up front avoids angst over future OS upgrades.
Yeah. For regular use, RAM = browser windows open and SSDs = no load time for anything ever.
I bought an iMac in 2010 and was still using it actively in 2016. It has fallen into disuse over the last couple of years, but I think it would still be running fine if I needed it.
My 2008 iMac feels a little slow (even after adding RAM, which was easy), but runs fine.
My 2011 MacBook Air is still perfectly fast.
Yeah, the main reason I stopped using my 2010 iMac is that I decided to just used the 2014 MacBook Air for everything and it is awesome.
The Nurse is a Mac devotee, unfortunately. The mid-level config plus the 512 GB is exactly what we went with last year and it works well for all needs including some higher end photoshop stuff.
Avoid using iTunes for your music because you can never go back and it’s torture why oh why did I ever let it happen.
This single thing has kept me out of the Apple universe. I was fortunate enough to have copies of everything that I was able to salvage after I gave up on iTunes, but it was a pain in the neck and some stuff I just had to give up on and go track down again.
Thanks for the input, the order has been placed. I’d have to change something significant about the way I use the computer to exceed 256GB, developing a porn addiction or something, but there’s always external storage.
According to Fangraphs, Trayce Thompson’s wRC+ for this year is -5. I didn’t know it was even possible to go negative.
It evidently goes down to -100, which is what Manaea (0-for-1), Blackburn (0-for-2), and Montas (0-for-3) all have.
Edwin Jackson shows at -100 as well, despite not having a plate appearance yet. He stands at (positive) 9 for his career.
He has 49 career hits and two homers, I’m expecting big things.
And one stolen base!
So…
Thanks, and go As.
Well he’s just missed out on Xherdan Shaqiri.
Barf
Hmmm
* judgment