Hey, we made it to a second series, somehow. The Colorado Rockies make their first visit since [fill in search result] for a quick two-gamer, first facing Daniel “Sex Wax” Mengden and his arsenal of duplicity. Joke’s on you, [name of Rockies player I know]!
Wednesday’s game is an afternoon Bluetooth special, and might be time to get right with Jesús. Then Thursday comes the first off day, after which more baseball may or may not ensue.
So enjoy the home cooking a little longer, boys, from your not-remotely-safe pseudobubbles, before hitting the maybe-even-less-safe road, and Ken Korach’s torture by a thousand fly balls begins.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
Also found this during my exhaustive research for this game thread. I can’t imagine betting daily baseball game lines, but this guy claims betting A’s as a home favorite since 2018 has more than double the ROI than the next best team.
It would appear that Canha has finally scaled Mt. Everyday Player.
Who am I, then, to question Sir Edmund on his choice of balaclava, even at sunny 65 degrees.
Mengden got away with nibble nibble nibble, thanks to a generous strike zone, but I fear that shit won’t work for long.
Time to smoke Senzatela.
KD continues to slowly slide down the order.
Not far enough.
Late on a bunch of fastballs, then pops up a hanging curve.
This slightly earlier start time worked almost perfect with the dinner cooking schedule. Aces approves.
Astros pitching is getting pretty decimated. They just signed Rodney today and some guy literally named Scrubb is coming into the game in a bases loaded situation.
Sacrifice flies for everyone!
Sigh…KD was probably my favorite player of 2016-18, but yeah he’s done.
That 3-1 fastball he was late on and fouled back would’ve been in the right field bleachers two years ago.
i feel so bad. ther is no way he can start tomorrow
Especially after finally getting paid it is really disappointing.
That Bud Light banner in the RF bleachers is a crime against humanity.
So was Mengden’s big hanger.
Weems coming in to “Money” (Pink Floyd)
Nice K to start with. I’m not sure he has any idea where his pitches are going though.
Announced his presence with authority.
A lot of them are going into the outfield.
Khris you are killing me.
Joe Kelly after throwing behind Bregman’s head, and then striking out Corea:
That’s awesome, also bonus points for looking like Bill Hader.
Why don’t the astros just own it. yeah. we got caught. I’ll take a HBP or throw behind the head
8 game suspension
seems excessive
Isnt that like 20-25 in this season?
yeah. it’s gonna go into next season.
That was quick
Also, why is the width attribute not working?
Holly FK, 8 games! That’s 8 games more than any of the Astrocheats
that’s too many. 3 for throwing too high too hard
it’s just all so stupid
Weems eating those innings.
I am just realizing that the shade of green on the A’s helmets finally matches this variant of green in the jerseys.
Trivino struggling isnt quite as sad as KD, but I do wish he could make it back.
He had a good outing last time, I’m not giving up yet. Now he’s gonna take all the pain it takes to get out of the inning cause the pen is quiet.
I honestly don’t know how Trivino is so hittable for a guy who throws 97.
Possible explanation: really terrible spin rates on the 4 seamer.
Trivino is working on things.
oy
Is sean doolittle the only extension in the beane era that paid off?
Coco (first of two extensions I think?)
yup
The more I think about it the more I think a lot of KDs issue is mental. Unfortunately I know remember that his arm is mental too.
@Ed I think so? Did Coco have 2 extensions and maybe the 1st 1 paid off?
It’s funny because the biggest complaint is that we dont keep players around. But given that track record maybe it is for the best
I think it was a good extention, it was the right time. too bad the national league demands statergery
Never the same, took out his legs or something
There’s a strong selection effect on the cost (and hence quality) of the cohort of players who get extended.
I still don’t get what the rules for mask use in the dugouts are supposed to be. The practice seems all over the map.
8 teams make the playoffs, 8 teams make the playoffs, 8 teams make the playoffs
The price of winning a bunch of close ones. None of our good pitchers were available.
The KD situation is grim though.
ireally don’t like the idea of benching him, but he must be
Can every comment be read with “And it goes without saying they should not be playing baseball
All of this is implied now.
Incorporated by reference
Sort of like how you don’t have to say “Louie Gohmert, pig-headed moron who infects his allies.” You can just say “Louie Gohmert” and the rest is understood.
Unreal
Lord, this gets even worse. He lives in his office!
that is perfect
wonder if that’s the same office he brought his staff into to tell them he had CV.
And of course he thinks he got it because he wore a mask.
Or ‘SeatUpgrade
Heh heh. Of course now that Dallas is using the front row seats the upgrading prospects are worse.
So…is Barreto ever going to get a chance or are we going to pretend that Machin/Pinder/Kemp’s combined 1-17 is too important to keep him from a start or two?
All things considered-3-2 without a 2B, C, or DH so far is pretty good.
I thought today might be Barreto’s turn, but Machín gets the nod.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Athletics/status/1288523624731652097
Currently watching Marine Layer take on all comers, including Kaval, on Twitter as he trashes everything Howard Terminal. Pretty entertaining.
I’m going to be moving to a new place near Mills next month (with a direct view down to the Coliseum haha), and suddenly the Coliseum site is sounding a lot better to me.
He’s still going. A one man concern-trolling operation.
Chapman with the line drive homer! Launch angle my ass!
The Rockies 2B looks like Fletcher so of course we can’t get him out.
Catch the fking ball. (Tough play, to be fair.)
Nice header, though
Braden said it was good that it hit him in the head.
with luck like that, they best win this game
Maybe Marcus is playing himself back into our price range.
townsend demonstrating how he doesn’t understand projections on the radio
i’d really like it if some of these strikes would turn into outs
Chapman > Arenado
Not surprised they didn’t reverse that.
I can only assume they couldn’t tell is olsen had contact with the plate.
Still bad call. I am a little mad that teams lose challenge on plays like that
Tough to see exactly when he touched the plate and when he was tagged. From one angle I thought safe, another I thought out, a couple others the relevant part was just out of the frame. Maybe they should be able to tell with synced up feeds from the different angles, but I couldn’t.
I don’t understand how we’ve had replay for the better part of a decade now and we still deal with shitty angles and low res camera work that comprises the majority of these “inconclusive” replays.
MLB is using proprietary cameras now. it’s only gonna get more perplexing.
Vince was really overstating that. Not surprised at all when I watched the replay after.
Ray does not understand the rule about errors on potential double plays.
Vince is saying Vee A Mel Machin, which I don’t think can be right.
vimael
(he’ll probably end up saying it like y’all say san raffel.)
BoMel and ViMel
If Viamel Machin takes a pitch, its a ball
vimael
close to v-mail.
that will be hard to forget
v-mail me.
I am a married man, sir!
me too (technically), but my GF don’t care (also technically).
still haven’t figured out where to send the check?
the filing fee? i didn’t know who to make it out to, but got it now.
just lazy to get in the car and drive to hayward to drop $435 when nobody (technically) cares.
Bob is making a big deal about how it’s hard to find at bats with such a big roster, but it doesn’t take galaxy brain finagling to think that maybe it’s a good idea for someone like Seth Brown to PH for Machin or Murphy in that situation.
I thought you said it’s hard to find bats and I was like “looking at these stats you sure are right”.
The usual spring training axiom about hitters that you need at least a couple dozen ABs before you’re ready. It’s so widely accepted that I assume Bob feels he needs to keep getting ABs for Machin and Murphy and others and let them hit their way into form.
Which is a LOT to give up in a 60 game season. Makes me think they should have some arrangement for getting these irregulars ABs against live pitching, maybe as a second taxi squad or something, make 5-8 guys inactive for a given game day and send them to Laney College for simulated games.
when do we get concerned about the offense?
September 2019
SS, CF, 1B, 3B, and whatever Canha plays is fine.
RF (Piscotty) and C is a wild card. 2B is a known issue they did nothing to solve. DH is a clear problem now if Grossman is your best option.
It’s a lot of pressure on the top 5, and I think you need 1 or 2 of the remaining 4 spots to figure it out to feel more comfortable.
I would be ok giving a month of starts to Barreto (even knowing he might still be terrible), or Pinder (who has been kind of streaky). Or paying for a real upgrade at 2b. I still don’t understand what the point of Tony Kemp is, as he’s just blocking younger players while offering little apparent upside.
Kemp, Grossman, and Machin are on the team because the team recognizes the problem of not having enough lefty bats, but are not invested in actually getting good lefty bats ($$$).
By my count that’s three, maybe four balls to Grossman in LF this year which an actually good defender would have played into outs or less baserunner advancement. None of them errors, all of them very makable plays.
Yeah I’ve noticed that too. It’s super frustrating.
Yep. Ironically, his hitting has been (SSS) good so far this year, but his supposedly good defense has been absent.
Canha walking up to Aretha (“Chain of Fools”)?
yes
Did Luzardo learn how to field from Brett Anderson?
safe
Groan. If only Luzardo was able to throw hard…
the comeback is going to be epic
I’m going to feel bad complaining about the A’s off day tomorrow.
baseball all day tomorrow. it’s cool
This is disgraceful. Adam Silver and his team should be fired.
Bob geren took 13 innings, but he got a win
Knowing the the Roger Stones of this world are busy figuring all kinds of ways to fix a mass mail-in vote (safe in the knowledge that – if successful – they also have a get-out-of-jail-free card even if they’re caught), I think the Dems need to be careful about asserting that voting by mail is sure to be safe just because it has been in the past.
To me the vulnerability to fear is still the tabulation servers.
Plenty of vulnerabilities all round – my concern is that by asserting so strongly that mail-in voting is sure to be safe (which it has been, historically) they undercut future questioning of a mail-dominated process that gets engineered to deliver for Trump.
bah. it’s fine.
even with a decimated USPS, the mail-in votes will have more time to arrive to the delayed election.
listening to slate what’s next (report on brooklyn votes still being counted, where unpostmarked biz class mail is the new hanging chad) sounds like the thing to do is request absentee ballots but drop them off in person at polling place on election day.
That’s exactly what I’ve done for years.
There have also been dedicated ballot collection boxes in recent years.
But California seems to have pretty reasonable rules for absentee ballots anyway. The bigger problems will be in the states that require that they be received by election day, or have other rules that allow for widespread rejection of ballots.
My god, Herman Cain. What a tragifarcical way to go.
Freedumb!
This whole pandemic is weird in that seeing stupid people being disproved is supposed to be satisfying. People dying, even through their own stupidity leaves me wanting…something different.
Repeating this awesome comment by “Noble Destro” on The Root.
“He was a bit of Black Icarus, who loved flying among the elite too much that he believed the sun when it said his melting wings were a liberal hoax.”
Phrasing!
“The latest polls had really been putting the willies up people.”
That’s great news. A quick check of my now-encrusted-with-dust radio confirms clear strong signal. I’d be lying if I said I remembered 980 in particular from that 1993 stint. Kaval’s explanation is a bit hard to take after he OK Boomered the same concerns six months ago.
I’ve decided to just be happy that they realized they FKed up and took steps to fix it. His initial reaction was terrible; good that they are flexible enough to pivot.
It sounds like they will be on 103.7 FM as well, which is very welcome. Also, the iHeartRadio app can’t be worse than TuneIn in terms of bugginess.
They wouldn’t be on 103.7; Kaval only said he listens to that one. 103.7 (KOSF) is T14 in the market while 960 (KNEW) is T32 with 1/11 the listeners of 103.7; that’s why there’s room for the A’s down there.
The coverage map for 960 (the red line is pretty close; ignore the purple and blue) shows that they still be mostly A’s Cast in much of the South Bay and the Santa Cruz/Monterey area.
So what is this supposed to mean?
You would need an HD radio receiver to get that digital subchannel. I went to satellite years ago and then Internet streaming, never considered buying one. Standard FM radios receive the analog broadcast.
Ah. I guess I just OK Boomered myself on that.
Huh, terrible signal on my stereo, no matter where I move the little AM loop antenna.
Doesn’t really matter, I guess, since almost every game is televised, plus I could listen through the app.
they were trying to be the liberal news station, yeah?
If they went to five-inning games, tripleheaders would be workable and maybe they could complete the 60-game schedule.
I hoped I would get more interested when the games started, but it has gone the other way. The whole scene has me running like hell.
I for one look forward to reminiscing about the 10 or 20 ballgames we got to watch during the Plague of 2020-21.
The news this morning has me in this camp. I mean I am going to watch and of course Im gonna talk. I dont really like basketball and don’t have cable to watch that so it is watch these or reruns of Happy Days on MeTV. But 60 is a pipe dream.
10 might be about right.
“…if players continue not to strictly abide by the league’s protocols.”
My non-expert guess is that immediate problem is less due failure to abide and more due to the protocols being wholly inadequate to the task. The NBA-style bubble is the only way this could possible work. Seeing your family and friends every day during homestands guarantees new infections.
I may have underestimated the stupidity of the Marlins players, who apparently went out to bars and restaurants on their summer camp road trip to Atlanta.
My Pappy said Son ya gonna drive me to drinkin if you don’t stop drivin that Hot Tub Lincoln.
holy crap. maybe change the water every 3000 miles.
Rendon just threw a bounce pass to get a forceout at second
Shout out to the Padres ordering up a squeeze play for their fifth run of the 10th inning in SF.
Waking up to a half an hour of the Giants wreckage was strangely satisfying
Biden needs to pick his running mate already. I can’t deal with another two weeks of sexist crap from the likes of Ed Rendell and Chris Dodd about how Kamala is insufficiently demure for their tastes.
Maybe cross this name off the list.
Her name was pure theater.
Yeah never seemed remotely plausible for him to pick someone whose district is a bunch of Hollywood movie studios and whom no one had ever heard of until she hit the list.
Anyway, I’m going to say this speech is at least less harmful than when Willie and Harvey Milk et al. went to bat for Jim Jones back in the day.
this is the content i come here for
Another reason to cross her off, can’t keep her mouth shut
How is this getting out and why do people think it’s helpful?
There has to be a reason for it, yeah?
I really really don’t like Ms Harris, but I recognize that she is an adequate politician and just as qualified as biden/warren/castro/obama/clinton/kerry etc.
I only assume this is a gambit to make biden’s pick of harris seem even braver against such staunch allies bad mouthing her.
I’ve been trying to figure it out too. My uninformed read is that gross old creeps like Dodd and possibly some of her rivals in California dislike Kamala on a personal level for some reason (she isn’t deferential enough to gross old creeps, she beat them to Boxer’s seat, etc.). They see her as the likely choice at this point, and have been trying a last-ditch campaign to derail her with Biden.
But the people going to the press with it are probably Kamala supporters who are trying to bring the backroom shenanigans into the light before they can work.
Whatever the case, I’m anxiously awaiting Willie’s take on Sunday morning.
Willie is smart enough to know that he should just write about SF restaurants, movies, and his weekly encounter with a random street wit until after November. His vain need to keep proving his own punditry skills might get the better of him though.
Willie has been my favorite politician since he won the speakership while a member of the minority party.
I hope you are right, but fear you are not
I like this take, I can’t figure out why those gross old creeps would prefer Warren or abrams to harris.
Maaaaaybe whitmer? I don’t know
They don’t want Warren either. They want someone without a national constituency of her own who will be deferential to people like them.
Basically Joe Biden from 2008.
Yeah, they would prefer a man if that were on the table.
What do you folks think about Duckworth? I think I like her more than Kamala.
I began as a defense attorney in the Harris DA era, i defended parents who I had to tell could go to jail if their kid didn’t go to school. SLF worked for her AG’s office and witnesses first hand corruption adjacent activities, I do not like her at all, at all.
I would prefer duckworrth,but mostly because I don’t like Harris
That said, I don’t believe she is anything other than a normal politician with normal shitty behavior. I expect all others are mostly like her and would happily vote for her OVER biden.
Sunday Willie recap: How Dems can benefit from absentee ballots, crotchety I-told-you-so take about bikes not using closed Market Street, plus restaurants and hair dyeing during COVID. Zero words about Kamala or VP pick.
Your Willieology is unmatched. Respect.
he gets paid for that
He’s mostly been behaved since that “my lunch buddies agree that me too has gone too far” column last year.
Not nearly as much as his private clients pay I am sure. The Chron spot is just excellent free advertising.
Today in Willie, man of the people:
-He had lunch with DiFi at Waterbar, and “when the check came she insisted on paying, a rare thing for politician.”
-“I was up in Napa the other night to see an estate my buddy bought last year for $6.5 million. How someone can spend $6.5 million for a home is beyond me. Still, it’s nice. It sits on eight acres and has eight bedrooms, a 13-car garage, a pool and a basketball court.”
she is worth hundreds of millions, and his house is worth more, yeah?
Willie just couldn’t stay quiet. Thinks Kamala should reject VP and ask for AG instead, for future political reasons.
This is incredibly bad advice. Amazing.
Among other things, the idea that the VP job is a dead end (last VP is about to be president, Gore came within an inch, Bush cruised to victory, Mondale was nominated, even Nixon eventually managed it) while AG isn’t (has any USAG later made a serious run for president?) is just laughable.
Edit because I can’t stop thinking about how dumb this is: Biden is old so his VP has a higher than usual chance of becoming the incumbent! And if he decides not to run in 2024 for health reasons, who is better positioned to replace him on the ticket, his loyal VP or his AG who is barred by law and custom from campaigning? It goes on and on.
Yeah, being senator is better than being AG.
I saw a documentary, made in 1972 or there abouts on the hairs and squares in the haight joining together to downzone the haight.
I can’t find it, but they spend some time driving around in willie’s Porsche.
He has been on brand for 50 years
godfather 3?
Agreed, and to pile on, with the chance of Dems regaining control of Senate there’s a real chance the next administration can actually achieve some policy goals on which not-Biden can run in 2024.
Wasnt Bobby Kennedy USAG? Thats as close as I can think of and of course that is a completely special case in multiple ways.
Yeah, he was, but then he went and won a senate seat before announcing against Lyndon.
Goddammit. AB5 could have been the greatest piece of legilation if it was just left to be the law
“Lyft has never obeyed AB 5 .. I don’t know anybody that has, except the Chronicle,” Brown fumed of the move by Hearst Newspapers’ flagship publication. “For 12-plus years, every Sunday, I’ve written that column in the paper and never taken a vacation. And this is the most important year. This is a campaign year, when there’s really a contest.”
Thank goodness, where else would I have gone for pro-business Democratic takes and not-really-that-grudging admiration of Trump’s Machiavellianism?
I like the “never taken a vacation” bit.
Willie, that is the idea, vacations are for employees, not freelancers.
and LOL never taken a vacation, so he has been in his room typing for the past 20 years?
Unfathomable levels of corruption and self-dealing here
on the day I was so enthralled with kodachrome photos on the internet, sigh
Give me a FKing break!
new meaning to old ballad:
when you’re kicking in the car chrome
and you’re drinking down the eau de cologne
and you’re spitting out the kodacroxychloroquine
you better watch your step
When I think back on all the crap I learned in Trumpschool
It’s a wonder I can think at all
finally figured it out. it’s the evangelicals behind this.
they think god hates agfa.
{groan} ASVD
Of the various hills on which Republicans are prepared to (literally) die these days, hydroxychloroquine is by far not the worst, but it might be the weirdest. Unless I’m missing something, there is no ideological reason to believe in it, and at least initially there was no corrupt reason either. (OK, now they are making it corrupt, because that’s the only thing Trump and his cronies know what to do, but the corruption is after the fact.) It was just some random treatment that got suggested as possibly helpful early on, Trump latched onto it, and now due to his pathological inability to ever admit error, and the rest of the party’s pathological need to back him up, every time one of these (literal) mouth-breathers like Louis Gohmert gets the disease they have to take this useless and possibly harmful drug (or at least say they are taking it) because somehow they think that makes their party look good. It’s the cult of Trumpism perfectly distilled down to tablet form.
There’s a Fox News/Trump chicken and egg thing here that I’m not sure how to sort out. Did he latch onto it because he saw it while watching his stories, or did they pump it because he was all in on it?
Also worth noting that there’s a transnational authoritarian buy-in to this behavior. Jair Bolsonaro posted video of himself pounding purported HCQ pills after he caught COVID.
You expect Trump to no longer say hydroxychloroquine after he spent so long learning to pronounce it? What a ridiculous notion.
aaaand it used up all his pronunciation brainspace.
Wired has a long piece on hydroxychloroquine. The scientific side of it is more nuanced than I had realized, but the political part is still weird.