We need a new thread for this odd period before the regular season starts again.
This is that thread.
87 thoughts on “Interstitial Game Grill”
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We need a new thread for this odd period before the regular season starts again.
This is that thread.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I’m also in between signing up for A’s Access and receiving my credentials.
That’s okay, the A’s are between selling A’s Access and having it actually work at the stadium.
72 hours out, the forecast looks poor. Steady rain in AM, continuing showers in afternoon.
I seem to remember a home opener being raimed out in the late 90s/early 00s, maybe vs NYY, but my Google Fu is failing me
Opening night 1999 vs NYY was not rained out, but it looks like it ended after 8 innings.
I’m seeing a different forecast for Thursday, with only light rain in the early morning, and partly cloudy in the PM.
I’m just looking at weather.com, which has seemed to be less accurate in last few months. I’ve been blaming the govt shutdown.
Of course forecasts >48 hours all have a significant margin of error anyway.
Oh yes now I remember, sat in stands for a long cold, wet time waiting for the possible resumption which never came.
And 2014 they were able to play opening night, but the next game was rained out.
Was that the one where it wasn’t raining at game time but they had neglected to cover the infield overnight?
That one was later the same week.
double header!
Are there plans for an opening day tailgate? We fly back tomorrow so will be there, jet lagged or not.
We had a convoluted travel day yesterday, otherwise I’d be tempted to go to the spring HS baseball tournament. Too bad it’s in Kobe and not right here in Osaka. Had some Hanshin Tigers fans try to talk me into it last night.
Just saw your comment in the other thread. See you on the asphalt!
Playing an opener at Target Field on March 28 seems perilous but their forecast is partly sunny, around 50°F, very low chance of precipitation.
still poor
If the opener gets rained out, I propose a double-header on May 29, when the Angels are in town for “Weather Education Day.”
Mike Trout already has that day circled on his calendar.
I’m still seeing conflicting information about tomorrow
Weather underground shows (light) rain all day, while Dark Sky has maybe a little rain in the morning and then partly cloudy after noon.
NWS:
Sounds like one of those Bay Area spring days when a dark cloud approaches, it dumps rain for about 3 minutes and then the sun immediately comes out, and then that happens again 45 minutes later.
This system is different, more continuously cloudy but only occasionally rainy. Yesterday afternoon it looked more like east coast snowstorm clouds approaching than anything else.
My prediction is light rain more off than on throughout day, not enough to delay game but enough to make cold and wet the dominant feeling.
Latest from weather.com now has no rain during daylight hours tomorrow. Weatherunderground still has showers all day.
Variously from 15% to 34% chance showers hourly during presumed tailgate and ballgame times.
I’M KIND OF EXCITED!
The Chateau Soaker grounds crew, which rivals that at Mar-A-Lago, has cleared 7 inches of fresh overnight snow off the Bill King Deck and we are ready to PLAY BALL!
Here’s your radar loop which at the moment shows nothing of interest south of Sonoma County.
Also I see tides are low during ballgame hours, perhaps helpful for field and sewage conditions
“Weather Education Day” is immediately preceded by “Nurses Night.” Things are going to get wild at the Coliseum that week.
At last year’s Nurses Night we watched a nurse (not in our group) get so wasted that she ended up leaving on a stretcher, covered in vomit.
Why exactly are they playing through a rain storm?
just pay everone there $20 and call it a night
They really could. It looks like there are a couple hundred people in the stands.
Provided they dont have to pay birds.
The only answer is so Bobby Rayburn can hit a HR to save his son.
Im sorry. But this may be the only time I can get a The Fan joke in.
The Giants really do suck.
They are going to make Brooks look good tonight, which will give him the opportunity to get absolutely blown up by the Red Sox and the Astros next week.
Yep.
DOMINANT. “Solidifying and burnishing his resume as the number five starter.” — Ken
Sigh
They’re using a version of the worst song of all time in their promos this year.
Reminds me that in Tokyo it sounded like Hundley was using Collective Soul’s “Shine” as walkup music. Another reason to DFA his ass at the earliest opportunity.
Oh dear god.
Is Buchter officially bad now? That would be problematic.
Cute
I hope that wasn’t Montas’s vaunted new splitter.
NOTY
It’s tough to see anyone knocking out #1 seed Jizyah Shorts, but some other names I like are Toka Badboy, Truman Peyote, Storm Duck, Dr. Trent Artichoker, Pope Thrower, Precious Orji, Sparky Laguana, General Booty, Corno Pronk, Chastity Gooch-Fant, Paisley Boney IV, and Rev. Pix Butt.
I’ll take Badboy, Thrower, Shorts, and Butt as my final four.
I’m picking the ultimate first round upset. #1 seed Surender Nada will get taken out by #16 Jonathan Anomaly. Bad seeding by the committee.
Random complaint: When I use the At Bat app to watch a spring training game it takes about 3 minutes to load and get going. “Please wait while we confirm your account information.” This has not been an issue in past years; it has pretty much fired right up. The VPN and ad-blocking are turned off so it’s nothing like that.
I’ve only tried to watch about 4 spring training games but this has happened every time. It’s kind of fun to watch a couple innings of a game in Montreal.
Also interesting to turn on some random game, especially involving a team that trains in Florida, and notice that __________ is a non-roster player with the __________ (in this case Eric Sogard/Blue Jays).
Dan Strailly’s available just sayin.
The issue I have come across on MLB TV is it will buffer like crazy during commercials, then seem to be just fine once we get back to game action.
I think it could be issues with my Fire TV, but doing thr needed troubleshooting is a level of effort I will delay until the regular season.
So the mechanics of syncing Ken and Vince to Youtube TV appear to be: Listen to Gameday Audio on the computer, pause it for about 25 seconds to get it where it’s just a little ahead of the picture, then use the hardware to match it up exactly. I haven’t tried it that way before but if that 25-second buffering remains constant, it’s easier than I expected (i.e. no need to try to match it with TuneIn which technically isn’t available in my area).
Samardzija is currently #18 in starting pitcher 2019 salary and one of three in the top 20 who put up negative WAR last year (Felix and Homer Bailey). Not sure he’ll repeat the negative WAR this year, though Felix probably will, but $/WAR is going to be frighteningly high.
I don’t think we’re in any sort of position to talk about anybody’s starting pitching.
Thanks, and go As.
The A’s will pay about $19.8 million for 0.4 starting pitcher WAR, but that’s cumulative for all 162 starts, not the 15 or so starts that Samardzija ends up making. Hendriks at $2.15 million for 51 starts and -0.2 WAR is a big part of that.
Brooks and Barretto are both the fifth starter??
Thanks, and go As.
well OK. Jerry was getting less outs than bucter?
To me Blevins looks finished, while Buchter just sucked and could stop sucking.
It ain’t gonna happen, our ass is in the jackpot
How was I not aware of this till now?
Most impressed with Miss California at the 1969 home opener:
Dave Duncan and Rollie Fingers, the two guys with unbuttoned jackets on the right. Rollie needed the mustache because he had a real dorky look without it.
Joe DiMaggio slept with Marilyn Monroe but he still looks pretty interested.
The hottest thing in that photo by far is the Olds 442.
I was also impressed by the racial diversity of a 1969 A’s crowd.
One hour later…
The next morning…
Huh? That says “March 27, 2019”, not “April 1, 2019”.
That is a LOT of money to spend on a guy who hasn’t played much more than 100 innings in a season at first base in several years. I’d rather stagger through with Canha at 1B and buy some more pitching instead.
It sounds like the Jays are picking up some of his salary. And I did think Profar looked pretty shaky at 1B the last couple nights. But, yeah, given the overall hitting depth, this doesn’t seem like a move that needed to be made, especially after cheaping out at SP and C.
edit: sayeth SuSlu
Overspending on a washed-up DH seems to be the A’s way of keeping the union off their back on payroll.
So would giving Keuchel a 3/45 deal with an opt out after 1 year.
Thanks, and go As.
You would think you could sell something like that to him – he knows how good the young hitters are, a good defense behind him (we’ll see how good without Olson but still), and he’d get to pitch in the Coli.
Oh, so the Jays just wanted to dump him, no reasonable or even unreasonable offer refused. I guess that’s OK given the need for lefthanded hitting. Re Profar looking shaky, I doubt Morales will be any better. We might find out exactly how much of Chapman’s Platinum Glove and Semien’s improvement can be attributed to Olson.
He’s also kind of a switch-hitter in name only — he can’t hit lefties at all. A four-man bench would be useful given how often he will need to be pulled in late innings.
LOL Kendrys has averaged a grand total of about 11 games per season at 1B the last 4 seasons. They trust Canha and Barreto so little that they’ve gone out of their way to acquire this 35 year old DH to play first base?
Meanwhile the rotation and catching is and has continued to be an utter FKing wreck, and quite literally cost us both games in Japan. But no, they’re completely content with that as is.
Yeah, not bringing Lucroy back is going to be the biggest loss for this team.
My initial concern was that they were taking on a more substantial portion of the $12 million (possibly because they had an Olson update that said he would be out until the All Star Break) and had foreclosed some options for upgrades in those areas. Since none of that appears to be true, and since they did need someone to bat behind Khris for the first couple months, this is an acceptable attempt at putting on a Band-Aid. He’ll suck defensively and it’s not that unlikely that he’ll immediately Butler at the plate, but they didn’t really give up anything either. Looking at some of the Toronto press it looks like maybe they wouldn’t have had to give up anything at all if they had waited a couple weeks for the DFA and the clearing of waivers.
Whatever marginal upgrade he is over Canha offensively is probably more than offset by his likely atrocious defense. That 2 million they still have to pay him is probably better spent on someone like EJax so we don’t have to be subjected to Aaron Brooks.
“It’s incredibly hard.”
I guess we decided we need to win 12-8 every night, but I sure dont feel like this puts us over any real or imagined hump.
It seems like there’s not a lot of confidence in Canha.
If they’re going to photoshop him into an A’s uniform couldn’t they do anything about that gut? Not selling jeans, apparently.
In case anyone else still watches the Walking Dead: Holy shit!
Being out of town on opening day stinks. Being out of town on opening day and realizing you are in the opposing team’s mlb.tv blackout area double stinks.
Living in that area is the suck that keeps on sucking.
Robinson Cano’s first NL at bat went well.
A lot, near A6 pole, row 20 further from Coliseum than usual.
That’s 29.5 feet more distance than required!
Rich Harden nods his head.
Vince wearing Broadcaster Formal for today’s occasion
I was going to put up a game thread but it looks like you have a draft sitting there.
Not sure how much game thread commenting I’ll be doing this year; between ~30 second delays and blue screens, probably just a between-innings rant here and there.
I abandoned it thinking you might be cooking one up! I’ll toss it up now.