The home season started exactly 6 months ago today in Tokyo, and it wraps with three at the Coliseum against the Texas Rangers this weekend.
Tonight at 7: Mike Fiers, as long as he lasts, vs. Mike Minor
Saturday at 6: Sean Manaea vs. Brock Burke
Sunday at 1: Tanner Roark vs. Lance Lynn
In addition to tonight’s in-progress games the Indians and Rays schedules this weekend are:
Saturday: BOS-TB at 3, PHI-CLE at 4
Sunday: BOS-TB at 10 a.m., PHI-CLE at 4:30 (ESPN)
Monday: BOS-TB at 4, A’s and CLE off
One thing about those TB and CLE games: if I ever catch any of you drinking a “Budweiser Reserve Copper Lager” I will grab that bottle and smash it on the pavement.
They’re honoring the A’s employees of the month, and one of the 20 people up there is Ryan Buchter.
Does that get used as an arguement in arbitration? “He was a 3 time employee of the month!”
For the First time ever, the A’s lost an actual regular season game on my birthday, so they have to win on my half birthday.
Manaea appears to be sporting corn rows.
read the whole thread
boston is terrible. From the front office through the analytics to the platers
The grass looks terrible. FK the Raiders, man.
I would hope they will lay in new grass on Monday even though there’s a chance there won’t be another baseball game there this year.
Interesting question, they’ll have a solid nine days to get the grass into prime condition come Oct 2.
I think I read that it takes about 2 – 6 weeks for sod to take.
That can’t be the whole story, football teams routinely resod in a week between games
I’d still do it. Can’t be worse than what we have now.
Fiers FB 89-92 according to Gameday.
mitch moreland again!
off Pagan.
I knew he’d come through for us eventually.
Pinder!
The Rangers announcers have been reading some promos for the final week at the current ballpark. It includes an “All-Time Team”. I wouldn’t have thought of Colby Lewis as a name on that list but he’s on there.
The ballpark isn’t being torn down immediately. There’s some new iteration of the XFL starting play next spring and the Dallas entry will play there.
can the red sox get 6 outs without giving up a run?
no
I wouldn’t expect much from them this weekend. They’re doing a bullpen game tomorrow and Eovaldi and his 6+ ERA Sunday.
Painful watching this schmo they have out there right now.
The Phillies defense is also hard to watch, especially with Vargas on the mound.
How does Mike Minor have such great stats?
imagine it being part of your job to have to wait around for 2 hours to see if you can pour beer on your coworkers
I would like to get Minor to 100 pitches this inning.
This is acceptable, he could be coming out anyways.
So even Friday Night Lights in SoCal includes beachballs in the stands.
I guess Fiers’ nerve stinger pre-amputation condition really was a passing thing.
Either that or this is like the strike of cognitive lightning just before someone dies.
Fiers back?
I like this spot to get Bassitt an inning, good chance to see if he can get three outs in a traditional bullpen role.
Imperfect game for A’s pitchers: two baserunners, one picked off, the other erased on a DP.
Does anybody know who this is?
The Upgrade Instagram generation does not recognize.
The Brewers -12 run differential is enough to push the Cubs (+113) 2 games back of the 2nd wildcard spot; the expected W/L would have the Cubs 12 games ahead.
Holy Toledo. It will be a pleasant drive down to Oakland but it came that close to going the other way.
That’s an impressive road win, no?
Fuck you, communist motherfucker.
Any win at SEC, even low end team like Ole Miss, is good. Better was win at UW, which whomped BYU in Provo. BYU beat U$C which beat Utah which was Top 10.
Cal’s next game is a 7:30 pm, Friday night game. Thanks for nothing, ESPN.
It’s been a fun season. I’ve never seen a finish quite like that. They never showed a good replay, but it looked like a TD…
Today was a good day for “functional passing game” to make a surprise guest appearance.
29,500+ announced crowd last night. About 2,000 more than the crowd for the equivalent game last year (Friday, Sept. 21 against the Twins, Manaea bobblehead).
Mississippi turned blue, early Texas returns promising. Ohio looking good as well. Florida too close to call as usual.
Fernando Rodney just blew a 4-run lead to the Marlins.
Chappy breaking out of the slump tonight.
Dagnabbit, a first inning blowout. It’s a lot of Waves between 7-0 in the first and fireworks.
Moreland go-ahead HR in the 11th.
“Josh A. Smith,” their 11th pitcher of the night, going for the save.
Save for whom?
I almost said something nice about him ;ast night, but he didn’t help
Thanks for nothing massholes.
Might be a good night to test a Mercy Rule here.
Davis and Pinder should get kangaroo court fines.
Astros aren’t clinching tonight.
I like Marcus’ policy of not making any outs.
Did they really just burn 5 pitchers in a 12-3 ass kicking?
Thanks, and go As.
Luzardo & Mengden are likely pitching on specific days to get him adjusted to bullpen work. No one cares about Buchter (especially if it’s an important game). And Wendelken only threw 2 pitches. I don’t think it’s a big deal.
How dare you denigrate the employee of the month like that.
EOM is purely political.
In retrospect, they really did need a day off.
4-0 Red Sox in the first with the bases still loaded. Yarbrough looks terrible.
Eovaldi looks terrible and is terrible.
The Sox are so fucking useless, just as dislikeable when losing as winning.
Crucial Joey Wendle error and it’s 7-3 Boston.
Sounds like the Coliseum will be packed again today. Single game postseason tix go on sale Weds and will include Mt Davis. The place should be rocking in October.
The concession idea of the year was the beer in plastic “Mason jars” with the lid in Arlington. Even just a coffee cup type lid would make it easier to navigate the Coliseum’s lower concourse without losing a percentage of your Denogginizing capacity.
Denogginizer seems like the antithesis of a ballpark beer, and yet they now run it on 2 of their 4 taps just to keep up with demand.
Easily MLB’s best beer value at $0.50/oz.
And fortunately a pregame Denogginizer buzz lasts 6-7 innings. FK.
Denogginizer: The Coliseum beer of choice when you desperately need a wild alcoholic nightmare.
In other news, the Raiders are who we thought they are.
Very efficient outing for Roark so far.
that ball off choo’s bat made no sound whatsoever. I have no doubt that was a superball.
So all the starters in this series have made the case for why they should or shouldnt be on the PS roster.
Um, Tanner might not have it today.
Bob? Hello??
The games in this series have not been very compelling.
Rangers pitchers have hit a few A’s hitters this year and if the A’s want to “send a message” this is the game to do it.
Looks like they need another day off.
I need someone to make a supercut of Semien trying to keep his helmet on while tearing around the bases.
Interspersed with Laureano deliberately knocking his off.
I will pay for a ticket to view this.
It came off that time despite his efforts.
I’m unreasonably pleased that the A’s avg attendance this year topped 20K.
11th in the AL, ahead of Detroit, KC, Baltimore, and (obviously) Tampa Bay.
I have to admit (as an NRAF) that I totally internalized the idea that Oakland and Tampa Bay were always the worst attendance in the league. Happy to be half wrong!
Also, Miami is averaging only 10,016 per game. If that sounds suspiciously close to 10k, then you might be interested to know that their 2018 average attendance was … 10,014 per game.
How many did Jeter buy himself to stoke is ego?
Roark and Brown both have to sit in the lavatories on the flight from Oakland to DoCal.
This is the worst Mile High Club story ever.
They both ate Arby’s?
In Brown’s case it was a big slice of Pumpkin Pie.
Brown and davis looked terrible.
ptbnl/colin bait
I realize it’s a joke about spatial curvature in GR, but the first thing that came to mind was the “small pi approximation” (but I think that is usually 3, not 1).
I didn’t even think it was that specific – though to be fair “precision cosmology” is a relatively new concept.
One of may favorite opening slides for a talk was “e = i = pi = 1” which was intended as a lazy way of not having to worry about dimensionless factors, but taken literally allows you to prove anything.
Not exactly a playoff atmosphere in the Trop.
Snell knocked out in the second inning down 1-0.
by a lefty he had down 0-2
I can’t tell what the Rays are trying to do with Snell. Whatever it is, doesn’t seem to helping their chances this year.
GOod old mitch moreland, doubles and scores
Hmmm, 4-0 now.
Chacin turned back into chacin
4-4
two lefties homer and now cora put in a lefty. I thought he was a genius
6-4 rays
BTW, fuck you boston
Damn, that’s awful.
Does anyone not have wildcard tickets that wants to go with me or has an extra for me to purchase that would want to sit together?
I’ll be on a plane
Crap, me too. Or I will be just arriving in a city that is not Oakland.
My tix are spoken for but you are more than welcome at the tailgate that will start around noon.
The last 2 comments finally made me take the look at the calendar that I have been putting off. I am going to be out of the country for the ALCS. That either is going to be a huge relief or the worst thing ever.
I’m always amused when some tries the “so and so would like to recall the email” move. Too late, bro!
Isn’t it FPR to delete the opponent email and notify that they sent privileged information?
I don’t remember, I usually and asleep in the CLE’s that talk about that stuff
Yes. I have done that, including with one opposing counsel who copied me on internal strategy emails like half a dozen times.
But this is totally different, and LOL, these people are running the world
It seems pretty not good for Trump that there are basically no Republicans defending him on the substance of what happened. They are all either saying it’s bad, remaining strategically silent, or outright panicking. Getting 20 Republican senators to push him out is still a longshot, but it is no longer impossible to imagine imo.
Very reminiscent of Watergate that way, where the previously staunch Republican support for the president began to erode as more indefensible acts came to light.
Hard to imagine Lewandowski and his Haldemon-esque haircut will help with that.
Trump’s unprompted statement yesterday that Congress should ask for transcripts of Pence’s conversations with the Ukrainians too seemed like a pretty big tell that he is freaking the FK out.
So we impeach Trump *and* Pence, making Nancy president?
which is hilarious to think about, but doesn’t that very possibility mean she needs to recuse?
I don’t think so, in part because I think there is zero chance she would let the House impeach Pence, no matter what he did. He has to be there to give any hope of the Senate removing Trump. And a Pence shown to have been involved in this scandal would be perfect to run against in 2020.
Then RBG retires and Nancy nominates Obama to SCOTUS.
Thanks, and go As.
Then Thomas retires and is replaced by Obama #2.
Junior Justice Barack Obama
This could totally be Nixon on a scratchy tape while Henry Kissinger occasionally says “yes, Mr. President”
(Of course, this wasn’t a half-drunk oval office rant to a toady. He said it “at a private event at the Intercontinental Hotel in New York City where the president thanked the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, and her staff as he wound up four days of meetings around the U.N. General Assembly.”)
today’s hearing along with the lewindowski one I think backs up the pelosi approach.
It is going to be really hard to get people to say the things that need to be said. The acting DNI was such a shit head about what his responsibilities were.
i need a breakdown on DNI resignation. i can’t tell what the underlying stuff is.
coats resigned because he knew shit was coming? because he didn’t want to deal with it? because he was going to be implicated? because trump told him to? did trump know this was coming?
and then why did coats prompt gordon to resign?
my original assumption when the whistleblower stuff started was that coats *was* the whistleblower. i guess not, right?
—
not entirely unrelated, did kamala have specific info when she asked barr if he’d been directed/suggested by WH to investigate anybody? or was that just a likely scenario she imagined possible and ask toward? that was may 1, rudy went to kiev may 9. close, but…
the coats stuff is too much for me to think about
Harris knew nothing about this. She was asking about mueller.
The audio is up now. It is…not unchilling.
haven’t heard, but blah blah blah he didn’t saaaaaaayyyy they should be killed
Still basically no Republicans defending Trump on the substance. Still lots of strategic silence plus some targeted criticisms from Republican senators and even the occasional Fox News type. Meanwhile, the White House and House republican crazies are basically just throwing procedural crap that no one will care about against the wall, blocking testimony by what appears to be the key witness at midnight before the hearing he flew in from Europe for, and making hail mary arguments in court to try to stop various forms of incriminating information from coming out. And the polls on impeachment are looking worse for the big man every day, even among republicans.
He’s in real trouble here.
Both he and Johnson seem to be assuming legislatures sufficiently supine/dysfunctional to abdicate their responsibilities and relying on post hoc electoral endorsement of their actions.
I wouldn’t bet against them in either case (and not only because I won’t bet on things I’m emotionally invested in).
i admire your optimism. even with what was obvious now being exposed and verified, i admire your optimism.
I think the most likely result is impeachment, acquittal plus maybe some sort of formal rebuke or censure, and a Democrat elected fairly comfortably in 2020. But I think the chances of removal or resignation are hovering somewhere above zero, which is saying something given the current composition of the senate.
I also think that as this process moves along, he is likely to commit additional impeachable offenses out of panic, which changes the calculus.
I guess that makes me an optimist, but I don’t feel like an optimist at all.
I’m an optimist in that I don’t think the armed insurrection which follows will kill as many Americans as the first civil war did.
Not after the Dakotas go nucular (or maybe that will be outsourced to the Russians too).
as Tom Lehrer sang:
We’ll try to stay serene and calm
When Alabama gets the bomb