Now the Twins, that’s a team whose shit really doesn’t work in the playoffs. Ours can and has and will again.
It’s another perfect day in the best place on earth. Yeah there’s more smoke and the eyes burn a little, and those cracks in the foundation got a lot bigger and that stupid fucking red alarm won’t stop flashing and the incessant creeping anxiety got cranked up to the tightest yet but goddamnit this is our home.
Semien, La Stella, Ramon, Canha, Pinder, Olson, Khris, Piscotty, Murphy. Bassitt.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
I guess I’m a homer, but the Twins have the reason/excuse that they just were not close to as good as the Yankee teams they always seemed to play. We have usually been pretty close to as good and, as a result, there is no reason the coin wont flip to our side today.
clap clap clapclapclap
Reasons for optimism:
Chicago’s vaunted record against lefty starters means they were 21-25 against righty starters.
The second best record in the majors against lefty starters was Oakland (something like 11-3).
Reasons for pessimism:
Already covered extensively.
I’m pumped let’s do this!
Where the fuck is the A’s game, I’m seeing enough failing hitters as it is.
MLB Network or espn news
espn +?
I don’t get MLBN, and can’t even find ESPN News
Found it. Don’t get that station either.
I turned around in the kitchen this morning and saw the heating element in the oven succumb in a blaze of glory. We’ll see what kind of an omen that is.
Alex Rodriguez’ obsession with bunt is unbearable
Gonna try to change the mojo by going radio today.
I had enough of Jessica Mendoza yesterday. And Ray is likely to stay more on-topic in postseason.
Even Fleming, who I generally enjoy, was tough to take yesterday. I think partly because he wasn’t in the stadium and partly because of Mendoza talking over him.
Per this Athletic article:
-ESPN made Flemming fly to Charlotte to call the games from an ESPN studio there. They let him call college football games from his house in San Francisco, but that wouldn’t cut it for playoff baseball I guess.
-Mendoza, meanwhile, is commentating from her house in Bend, Oregon. Apparently the studio requirement is only for play-by-play announcers. She was getting Flemming’s audio on a slight delay in the first game, which is part of why she kept talking over him.
-Flemming thinks Bob’s headset was working during the on-field interview, but that he couldn’t hear it because the between innings music at the Coliseum is extra loud this year at the request of the players. “They were supposed to turn down the music for us so that we could do those interviews, and they didn’t.”
good god that is all such garbage
Honestly just hire Dallas Braden to do the color on site. Pair him with Benetti if you need to balance it out.
Flemming should be at the Coliseum, period. Disney has been trying to move to these remote calls even before COVID and I guess they’re trying to prove it works, but they’re doing the opposite.
I won’t work as well as live for any sport. the trick is to make us not care/
That second pitch to Abreu was scary but otherwise good beginning for the Hound
Gameday appears to want to wait and send me 2 pitches at a time. So that’s fun.
Woooooo!!!!!
A lead! Hooray, a lead!
Feels like the clouds parting. I just hope we’re not in the eye of the hurricane.
the radio seems to have theweekday summer day campers shouting “let’s go Oakland”
That is a strong endorsement.
hell and yes
It’s nice to have a lead – now we just need a SDI.
Did anyone else catch the Reds tootblan-ing their way into these extra innings? World class effort there.
Reds have stranded five runners without scoring in three extra innings so far.
36 K’s in that game so far.
And the Reds leave ’em loaded in the 13th!
A’s finally play decently in a postseason game and it’s on ESPN Catorce.
On ESPN2 now that the Twins/*s ended.
And now (finally) switched to ESPN five minutes later.
I wasn’t happy that MLB Network went to their studio right in the middle of an at bat. Wait until the next natural break in the game to do that.
Really seems like it should be Luis Ro-bear
I had only seen his name in print, and was surprised by that yesterday.
it is. He was asked to pronounce it. he said I dont care, after much haranguing, he said it, but I think the rolling r at the beginning make the white sox press give up and call him Bob Clemete or Mike Cuellar or whatever
home run home run home run
I can’t imagine any replay angle can be definitive on a ball like that.
Fosse thinks homer.
Surely replay will go in our favor.
blarg
My inner air horn lady is yearning to burst free
That’s what I’m talking about!
A Semien! Maybe the best Semien ever!
Semien!!!!!!’
Fair or foul for marcus?
Nice call by Ken, doesn’t get much better.
What is going on in Oakland?
CANHA!!!
Wow, nice call vince
Whoa! Great catch Canha!
I had Canha wish my buddy happy birthday on Cameo. My present is double cool right now.
I’m wearing my Canha t-shirt.
He just seems like a curious, reasonable, grounded guy. More importantly he may have just saved the season.
Mark from health class?
Yeah he doesn’t drive the coolest car and he’s a ginger but I like him anyway.
Really want to step on their throats in the 3rd and 4th and save Hendriks and the other top relievers for max use tomorrow.
I will be satisfied to win the game for now.
Agree with both of you. Really want to, but will be thrilled with a win.
Glad you got your wish, Mike.
The Twins are really Twinsing it up.
Buxton TOOTBLAN
Picked off as a pinch runner, down a run in the eight inning of an elimination game is a special category of TOOTBLAN.
LOL “It was executed to perfection on my part.”
Call me a boomer or whatever but I’m not on board with the in-game interview.
That said, Canha was smooth, and it was neat to hear him talk about reading hitters’ swings for positioning.
If I were asked to do that I would be sure to run it by the manager, which evidently did not happen.
mlb.com and at bat not working
cool
Khris!!!
KHRUSHED!
Vince said he liked Khris’ confidence at the start of that AB.
Maybe if the A’s play on he can find a bit of consistency.
Give that man an extension!
Dunno if it’s the channel switch to MLB or what but we’re getting some choice bottom-tier commercials here, Brett Favre hawking copper back pain remedies and fringe mattress companies.
Nice no FKing around performance by the Hound so far.
I know there was a mass firing at MLBAM and they moved offices from NYC to new jersey, but hasn’t AI advanced enough, or we could have actual humans tagging videos so we don’t get titles like “Mark Canha’s impeccable catch”
I just noticed the cubs marlins
If you’re looking for a makes-nobody-happy winner this year, you could do a lot worse than the Marlins.
That would certainly enrage me.
How about an all-Florida World Series with Tampa Bay winning two championships inside of a month.
Then the Bucs take the SB?
If Tom Brady wins another Super Bowl, oh god.
Against the Pats. That might be enough for me to swear it off entirely.
Ugh. The “GOAT” acronym will get more use in the next couple days than in all of previous recorded history.
Had an interview then had to lead a meeting. Thank God for Gameday.
Also Im almost glad I couldnt be listening when Krush went yard-I may have started to cry if I had heard it live.
We didn’t have anyone throwing already?
Vince thinks if the A’s manage to hold on to this game, a fella named Dane Dunning would pitch tomorrow
Too bad Bill Krueger isn’t available to oppose him.
That’s what they were saying on tv too. The other option, Dylan Cease, was warming up in this game.
Way to go Hound!
the curse of Jeff Samardjiza has bitten them so far in this game.
I’m waiting for Michael Ynoa to come out of their bullpen.
Trips over bullpen mound and hasto go to the IL.
NOT to get ahead of ourselves, but Bassitt would have to pitch game 1 against the Astros.
no one up?
They cant send Hound back out for the 8th can they?
I’m waiting for “Diekman up-Melvin just called us and told us he knows best…”.
Make this easy, Hendriks.
I don’t get this. I know Liam thinks he is invincible and wants to go three days in a row, but someone else has to be ablt to get three outs before 4 runs score
The espn crew speculates he’s in for the tough hitters and someone else could take the 9th, but that seems unlike the A’s.
I hope. but…
Well, that ain’t happening now.
They are not using him for 6 outs, right? Just for the heart of the order.
A 3-run homer in the bottom of the 8th would be more than a little welcome.
5 run homer?
Fuck. Now what Bob? Hendriks is missing his spots.
Trying to decide if I want Petit, Soria, or Diekman to give me the ninth inning heart attack, assuming I survive this inning.
It’s five o’clock somewhere…
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
Flashbacks to Game 4 in 1992 aren’t good.
Eck threw 41 pitches that day, 1.2 IP, 5 H, gave up 2 inherited runs and then the 2 runs on the homer that was basically the moment that ended that era in A’s history.
Hendriks has nothing get the pen up now.
Agree. He has zero control of any of his pitches.
as shown by that strike three to mazara
Beane is somewhere kicking the shit out of some exercise equipment right now.
That was a gift.
“Taken inside…..CORNER ring him up!” -Korach
Yes, that was a great call adjustment
Wow, what an atrocious call.
May the spirit of livan Verlander bless you
Now we can’t say we’re never on the right end of those.
This has to be his last batter right?
Phew.
Soria? Petit? Wendelken? Montas? Dare I say Diekman?
Diekman for engle (r) Hitter for dyson Jimenez (r) and madrigal?
I mean I accept that they kill LHs but it is also the bottom of the order.
Montas gets the 12th or 13th.
If it gets that far, Bob vs. Dusty is going to be an epic showdown of postseason pitching management.
If its the A’s or the white sox, Dusty’s smoke and mirror using his starters to piggyback is not gonna flay in a longer series. Maybe 5 game, but not a 7 game series
And here I thought a 5 run lead in the 8th would be a fun time to tune in.
Fiers complete game tomorrow will solve all our problems.
At the cut to commercials it looked like Hendricks is…going back out…?
Ken and Ray are confused. they don’t understand that Lastella and Kemp are bad at defense
Perhaps Hendriks just needed to get more angry at himself. Advice from Grant Balfour no doubt.
Jarrod Dyson at the plate in the ninth is a sight for sore eyes too.
Dyson?
Fosse name checks fake fosse twitter
40 pitches. cool
He was shaking out his arm before he pitched to Anderson too. Both of those were nothing hangers at 88 mph.
Jeebus
What a fking disaster.
GET SOMEONE UP IN THE PEN DAMNIT!
It is different than the last couple I guess.
This is criminal.
This has a chance to be quite a coda to the Melvin Era.
This is the most Oakland A’s thing ever.
If they’d gone to Petit/Soria/Diek the 8th and 9th and we ended up here we’d at least have Hendriks available both today and tomorrow.
Walk Grandal hit abreu in about 14 pitches, then we get the showdown for the win
never in doubt
beat me to it
Speechless
JFC did gamblers get to BoMel or something?
A’s don’t do that to me again.
Oh thank fucking goodness that was the most horrible playoff win I can remember. I’m livid.
It overshadows from how awesome Bassitt was, and yet, I totally, fully, 100% concur.
dead
bob
not good bob
It *has* to be Fiers tomorrow…
… and while Fiers wasn’t great this season, on the whole, he was more effective than Manaea and would be facing a team that has decapitated LHP (and demonstrated these only 24 hours ago against a much better pitcher).
Fiers and a cast of thousands in the pen.
Specifically a bridge plan, a few guys (JBW or even Petit) to immediately bail out Fiers as first sign of trouble, then warm up Montas long and slow to throw the next 2-5 innings.
Agreed. Would prefer Petit late but he is the situational option. Would also plan for 1-2 of the right hitters for Diekman.
Great, looking forward to it.
I’m available too for at least a batter.
Not me. I’m out with a heart.
I would suspect he’ll be fine for an inning tomorrow.
I think we’ve seen this before from him, coming back the next day after a bad, long outing and dominating. Anger gives him strength, and he’ll know he has three days off to follow.
Key to the game is not the starter, its the 100 runs they need to score in the 1st
Agreed. Heck, I’d settle for 85.
Road Trip!
This Naylor guy on the Clevelands is a lot of fun.
“A better hitting Matt Stairs.”
WHAT ARE YOU DOING ALOMAR
OK he knows his team better than I do.
Higher-seeded home teams fall to 2-5 in Game 1’s with the Dodgers pending.
PSA: When Jeopardy is preempted, Channel 7 and the on-screen guide don’t always do a good job of communicating when it will air instead, but apparently the official site has it covered.
Starting pitching for the Clevelands isn’t quite getting it done here.
i tuned in to sterling to say “well, susyn” and within moments “Gio urshela what a happy fella” after the grand slam
Isn’t this game like 3 hours in, even after the rain delay?
First pitch 751…eastern?
The Dodgers game is going to pass this one.
Also, I didn’t see any of the Reds-Braves game earlier today but that was 4:39 and apparently Vasgersian and Rodriguez called that one too, so they are going to pile up about 9 hours on-air. If the Cleveland Baseball Team were to win tonight they are *scheduled* to call both of those games tomorrow as well.
Top of the 9th, coming up on 5 hours. I keep checking to make sure I am doing that math correctly.
And it’s tied again. Dodgers game finishing before this one may not have been exaggerating (as usual).
My apologies.
can we change the rul so they can have a runner at second next inning?
This Defector piece today talks about the ways they’re also cutting huge #s of camera and production people, who are largely freelancers.
Woohoo! We won today!
And now waking up to ARod praising hitting shitty ground balls. Great
I want the yankees to win, but watching the game I cannot help but reflexively root against them
I can’t bring myself to do it. Too bullying and too full of themselves. They are to baseball what Trump is to America and what America is to the rest of the world.
Indians, down to the last AB, send up the guy who had .348 OPS in the regular season
And he promptly reaches on a strikeout. Good call, skipper!
Hey, any way you can get on base and keep it going.
“We had a tough year since the start of Spring Training, but now it’s all about playing great baseball,” Correa said. “I think we showed everybody we have a solid team. Minnesota, in a lot of brackets, was supposed to win the World Series. We swept a great team in Minnesota, and I think we deserve a lot of respect as a team.”
Can someone please let me in on some of the brackets that Correa is in? I’m not a betting man but I feel like I could make a lot of $ against all of these people who are favoring MIN to win the series.
THey have never gotten it. The victim mentality is so strong in all of them.
My God, I just made the mistake of venturing into a Twitter search of Mike Fiers to see what the world is talking about. Dont ever do a search on Twitter..I now have to go wash my soul.
Scrappy fighters with the heart of gold going against a rigged system
I’m going out on a limb and predicting Wendelken getting the start tomorrow. Wendelken for 2+, then you bring in Montas for 2, maybe Fiers for a couple if the A’s are ahead by 3+ at that point. Soria/Petit as the bridge to Hendriks if available.
The main thing I think is not falling behind early, and I think Wendelken is probably the best righty on the roster to do that right now, excluding the guys you can’t pitch in the early innings (Soria/Hendriks). Hope Wendelken starts off with a couple of 0s and then you score early and often on Dunning like you did today.
Dunning, from his fangraphs profile seemed like the generic 92 fastball slider guy that the A’s beat up on this year which means a perfect game for 5
Pretty lukewarm vote of confidence here.
The last part is definitely true. If they sent Fiers out there throwing left handed I would be super concerned.
All I’m saying is that they’d never expect it.
Honestly, I’ve always quite liked Melvin (especially when he’s replacing OldBob, Ken, and Art). But yesterday was probably his roughest moment as a manager. Starting lefty Fiers in the smoke? That’s just pizzazz.
My sole goal at work today is to avoid getting scheduled for any meetings this afternoon.
I had one during the ninth yesterday. Bad experience, would not recommend.
I am nearly mirroring my schedule of meeting from yesterday. Hopefully good for us-but I am sure it isnt good for the consultant who wants my input on a new report we need designed.
Looking ahead a round, which I should not be doing, it looks like TBS has slots on Monday at 2 and 5:30 pacific. Would they start the Yankees at 8:30 eastern?
Those time slots for future rounds can be and often have been changed. Pulling them forward to 1 and 4:30 would work better.
Would they run the Yankees against Monday Night Football is another question.
It really is bullshit.
The players clearly hate it. And it’s probably a slight advantage for the team from the earlier time zone, taking away some of our earned home-field advantage.
And it’s not really a good time for fans of either team playing.
And even for a national TV audience it doesn’t make much sense to me, as they scheduled more (overlapping) games during those daytime hours and fewer for prime time. (Plus, let’s face it, the national audience doesn’t care about a White Sox/A’s series anyway.)
They should really give the home team some say in the schedule for early-round games, but it seems like that will just never happen.
Oh Im sure some home teams get some say…
True power is not even having to say
It pisses me off, and is one of the reasons I could not bring myself to root for the Yankees, no matter the opponent
Although “only” 90 when you include the wood-smoke correction factor.
For as PO’d as we get at the A’s, it’s the Cincinnati Reds who are about to redefine “epic failure”.
Trevor Bauer’s comments at the end of this one are going to be choice.
I just hope they finish doing it in the next 37 minutes.
Turned up the sound on this game just in time to hear them talking about DJ LaMahieu and Aaron Judge.
ESPN orders all their announcers to do that. It’s awful in college football. “While this game between Cal and Colorado goes on below us, let’s talk about Alabama, Clemson and what the playoff standings might look like this week.”
OK Atlanta, you can stop scoring now and just get this over with.
I’ve been in Cincinnati for four years now, and that’s long enough to know that this is the most Cincinnati-sports thing ever.
At least they’re not going to lose both 1-0.
This is getting very sad.
I will assume the A’s are going to lose until I see Jose Abreu on the mound in the 8th
I thought this was a joke.
Marcel Ozuna just stopped halfway to first during his home run trot to strike a pose. That’s a new one.
It’s gotten so bad in Cincinnati, they’ve put in a position player
Bumped to ESPN2 for the first few minutes.