Check out the big brain on [googles]…Mike Matheny? “Matheny’s old-school advice might not always be popular or politically correct, but it works.”
Thurs: Mike Minor (“but preventing the home run ball was a problem”) vs Frankie Montas.
Fri: Brady Singer (2.2 barrels per PA is best in mlb) vs Cole Irvin
Sat: Jackson Kowar (“MLB debut was shorter than expected. He only went two-thirds of an inning”) vs James Kaprelian. Maybe the first JK vs JK matchup in big league history?
Sun: Kris Bubic (“struggled to limit the long ball”) vs Chris Bassitt. Can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a (K/Ch)ris B.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
Speaking of
Dorian GrayMark Kotsay…The Royals come in fresh off getting swept 8-3, 8-1, 6-1 by the Angels, part of a five-game losing streak that includes the previously mentioned game where they bunted into a 3-6-4 triple play. They are somehow only two games under .500 and comfortably in third place in the Central.
I have a bad feeling about this
I’ve been sharing that image a lot lately; Segundo Upgrade will be a matriculating slug in Sept.
Excellent. Your kids like beach towns. Enjoy them now because you can’t afford to live there after college.
“Politically correct?” Is he a racist or something?
God squad.
“I believe that the fear of God is the beginning of all understanding and that’s a love-based fear,”
Yikes.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI197605270.shtml
Damn, that’s some top notch bref searching. Quite a few names of note in those lineups too.
Probably gets along very well with Dayton Moore.
I find no previous games in Oakland A’s history with a JK vs. JK pitching matchup.
Only one JK prior to Kaprielian has ever started a game on the mound for the Oakland A’s. He started 16 games, and in 13 of them the starting catcher was also JK. This should be fairly easy.
Pitcher: Joe Kennedy
Catcher: Jason Kendall
A JK reliever who faced one batter, walking him, in the 1990 World Series:
Joe Klink
And the other two Oakland JKs:
Relief pitcher, 16-2/3 innings in 1985: Jeff Kaiser
Outfielder, 110 PA in 1968, uncle of a later Oakland player with the same last name: Joe Keough
And “Jackson Kowar” is going to turn out to be Jurickson Profar with a fake mustache anyway.
Having trouble remembering anything Minor did in an A’s uniform.
he did alright in the ALDS
We had a pitcher do well in that series?
3 scoreless appearances in the 3 losses.
chapman. Its tough to listen to
can’t stay mad
Even Ray is getting exasperated by Chapman getting beat by mediocre fastballs.
Damn Olson is slick. Between the flips like that and the foul fly catches running away from the field, he may be the best at literally using his glove of any first baseman I’ve ever seen.
frankie being frankie
+1 to Skye Bolt for picking The Chain as his walkup. Maybe see another pitch or three next time though.
Assigning other Rumours tracks…
Second Hand News – Andrus
Dreams – Luzardo
Never Going Back Again – Lowrie
Don’t Stop – Olson
Go Your Own Way – Canha
You Make Loving Fun – Ramon
I Don’t Want to Know – Chapman
Silver Springs – Petit
Jed! Nice lesson to the young fellas on how to keep your hands back on the slow stuff,
first place for another day
piscotty trying to make me forget about the chapman at bat
It’s gotta be nice pitching against a team that’s bottom five in walks and homers.
Not really happy to see the A’s doing Royals things on the basepaths.
Frankie FKing Magic showed up tonight. Did you guys all go in on some supplements for him while I wasnt looking?
Probably the best fastball velocity/command he’s shown this year. I’m always wary of the patented Montas Meltdown inning around the corner though.
One of these starts he’ll just not melt down. [knocks wood / throws salt over left shoulder / says three Hail Marys / farts]
catchers interference is maybe the thing that does it
Dang, Chapman fails to make the (spectacular for most / routine for him) play to end the innings.
sigh
Deliberately trying for that is bush league horseshit.
seems like the rule is overly harsh
Me and my big mouth.
I feel like the A’s have a half dozen legit All-Star candidates, which probably means we’ll get one guy and he won’t play.
Laureano, Canha and olson should be higher, but not much, really.
OK, so canha should be much higher, and Laureano isn’t qualified anymore so it’s hard to blame informed voters. Admittedly, the voters aren’t informed.
Side note, per fangraphs WAR, Elvis is 34th if you open up shortstops from qualified to 170 PAs
We have 5 good candidates, all deserving on a strictly 2021 stats basis, but only Olson will feel like a clear snub if he doesn’t:
1. Olson. 2.4 fWAR (2nd AL 1B), 2.2 bWAR. Stuck behind the clear MVP so far.
2. Canha. 2.0 fWAR (4th AL OF), 2.2 bWAR. Does a lot of things well but not well-known. You don’t HBP your way to the ASG.
3. Laureano. 2.0 fWAR (6th AL OF), 1.8 bWAR. Better known, but hurt by recent injury.
4/5.Manaea. 1.7 fWAR (9th AL SP), 2.1 bWAR (10th AL SP)
Bassitt. 1.7 fWAR (8th AL SP), 2.0 bWAR
Manaea has the slight lead in ERA, though Bassitt feels like he has been the ace, and also has a few more IP. Bassitt is probably our best candidate to get chosen after Olson.
olson is very deserving of a selection, but Vlad Jr should be the starter.
I agree on Laureano and canha, but I am guessing they get snubbed
gak
Argh
Chapman’s got to make that fucking play.
Murphy needs to hit a 3 run home run
The comeback is going to feel so great
Smart of Bob to limit the frustration quotient to just one game by pitching Montas and Luzardo in the same game.
I think the A’s lost the doolittle trade due to the heighten expectations after 2018 trienen and whatever this luzardo is
Tend to agree. Luzardo is starting to frustrate. You can see it in bits and pieces, but it just doesnt seem to be coming together.
And LC is right-great that I can get all this wasted talent commentary out at the same time and just go back to complaining about the bullpen causing my 1st stroke for 4 days..
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that mop-up innings do not suit Luzardo’s disposition.
How soon can he get here?
Gonna have to get out to stockton sooner than later
I’m going to have to go to Fresno at some point this summer. Maybe I need to time it with Ports/Grizz and pray he is still there.
think I am going to go wednesday
at san jose this week!
ESPN’s Euro 2020 intro is narrated by Ian McShane. If I wasn’t ready before, I am now.
i’m hearing a split decision on italy’s kits.
I wasn’t looking too closely at the kits because Mancini was cutting such a bella figura in his Armani tournament blazer.
I love these Portugal kits. Best I’ve seen so far.
cute! the bees knees.
These are hideous.
dazzle ships!
honestly wouldn’t mind them if every jersey had a different pattern. and black/white.
a fan.
Sinead hasn’t aged a day.
the back plain blue field made them worse
It’s worse for the women. the break is poorly aligned.
New Fuson interview
tl;dr: Soderstrom good, everyone else bad (especially Beck/Puk)
Re Puk, yikes.
It’s kind of hilarious how brutally honest Fuson comes off in these.
Diaz: “a little bit slow-footed”
Criswell: “He’s got a rough delivery, so him getting hurt is not a complete shocker to me.”
Beck: “he swore to me he was in the weight room every day. He’s just not as physical as he once was.”
Reminds me that at one point in the 2018 draft it was thought the A’s, with the #9 pick, might go for tonight’s Royals starting pitcher, Brady Singer. Singer was taken by KC at #18, while the A’s went in a, ummm, different direction.
Stupid successful final season at OU…
Still could come back!!
His trade value will never be higher.
Bo knows e-sports!
Also I like that NO ONE liked the idea (because it was stupid..).
It remains totally insane that they drafted a guy who already hadn’t played very much baseball in the top 10 fully intending to let him miss out on a year of baseball development while he risked his life playing college football. That was the plan. Let him have fun playing the football and then, a year later, start teaching him how to play baseball if he still had working knees.
That’s already crazy, even setting aside there being very little reason to think he was a first round baseball talent, that he might just be using them as an insurance policy for his NFL dreams, and that they were in a position of taking Scott Boras’ word for something.
The pick itself is (maybe almost) defensible on the grounds that they (maybe) thought they could get him to commit to baseball. When he wouldn’t they could have just walked away and taken the #10 pick the following year instead. The really insane part is signing and paying him in those circumstances.
I think they had convinced themselves that he was committed to baseball as a profession, but that he wouldn’t sign unless he was paid first round money and was allowed to play that last season of amateur football. They were wrong, in part because he and his family bullshitted them, and in part because they didn’t understand how good he actually was at football.
In fairness, no one expected him to be that good at football.
Trying to build a new football stadium at the Coliseum site with the hope of attracting a new NFL team is an obviously stupid idea, and yet still a more plausible threat from the city’s side than anything Fisher/Kaval have come up with from theirs. They are so bad at this.
Is your thinking that Kaplan (or whoever) is using the threat of selling the Coliseum site to someone else to get the A’s to take less future tax revenue for HT infrastructure? I’ve lost the plot.
Part of what makes this so convoluted is that the A’s supposedly need to buy and develop the Coliseum site to finance HT, but the fact of their trying to purchase the Coliseum site emboldens groups like the “East Oakland Stadium Alliance” to say they should just build at the Coliseum.
Yes, leverage for some aspect of the negotiation, infrastructure costs being the most likely candidate.
My sense was that the Portland/Vegas/wherever thing was a bit of brinksmanship trying to insist on a take-it-or-leave-it vote on the entire (yes, very convoluted) package with no further negotiation possible. But it just wasn’t credible enough.
Rebecca Kaplan’s only interest is making Libby look bad. Kaplan’s capacity for self-promotion is staggering, even by politician standards.
Robert Bobb is interesting. Very very smart guy. He wants a piece of the action and this seems like a clever way to get in.
Wait…what?
Interesting. First, Kaplan’s assertion is somewhere between disingenuous and a lie. While the A’s may not have formally delivered a check to buy the land, that’s not how negotiations work and Kaplan knows this. Over the past years the A’s have clearly discussed such a purchase with the City, as was discussed in numerous Council closed sessions.
But the bit about “in recent weeks have said they don’t want it” is also really interesting. The Coliseum land is just a financing mechanism for HT. The A’s may have concluded they can finance HT any number of other ways (including the formerly County-owned half of the Coliseum site the A’s bought), and by telling the City ok never mind it potentially removes a bunch of the City’s negotiating leverage. Would not be the first time Kaplan badly overplayed her hand.
God this is really a classic case of the resistible force vs the moveable object.
The Diamondbacks would rather have Buchter. Sigh.
Not to be morbid, but Forst should really look into the Nationals fire sale that is imminent
Daniel Hudson is the classic A’s pick up
This guy does not seem to throw a lot of strikes.
Meanwhile Irvin isn’t messing around.
Kowar is worse. 26 pitches, 12 strikes so far, and two of them were gifts from the ump.
They should have a place where recent draft picks play to refine their craft. Maybe get other teams to have groups of younger guys play against each other, like a U19 league, or U21.
Maybe pitchers could learn to throw more strikes there
ken and vince and townsend are talking a lot about degrom and not mentioning he left the game with an injury
Also, sidney burke goes to a’s games “all the time”
champman 105, moreland 105, garcia 99, lowrie 98, elvis 98
Hey, the Twins tied it up!
Oh, Shoemaker in for the top of the ninth…
matt?
Time for him to return to his original profession.
Maybe Altuve can help him.
Im such a sucker. Any decent contact from Chappy and I think “Is he back?”
Also-SB&HBoR!!
Somewhere, I can imagine **** saying that Irvin’s ability to induce crushed line drives right into fielders’ gloves is a testament to his savviness or something.
giving up solo home runs is a skill
What the hell happens to us in the last 3 innings?
Flashes the Nick Allen signal…
Andrus is so bad. So, so bad.
Checking Cot’s:
FWIW he’s on pace for 531 PA this year.
Libby Schaaf need to offer to agree to the HT plan if Fischer agrees to eat the rest of that contract
Terrible fielder, but they need his bat in there.
I think the announcers were right that he probably didn’t have a play on the first one anyway.
Don’t know what the hell he was doing on the second one.
Had his mind made up to make the easy flip to second, without bothering to check where the incoming runner was.
man o man
sigh
Diehangingsliderman
at least there was no preceding walk
What exactly is “the plan” here?
hit dingers
Guess it’s better than the HT plan.
i am radio only, but I assume its going to end up in a run
If the initial call had been safe it would have stayed too.
There is nothing definitive
This seems like exactly the same play that gets called inconclusive when our guy is called out.
So it will be deemed conclusively safe this time.
No! Terrible call in our favor! Yay!
2 in a row? Are they making up for the last 2 seasons?? Time to start challenging!
nope. can’t. PTSD
My TV just shut off for a second for no reason. It is clearly smarter than I am.
1 A’s run please.
No PH for Elvis?
LOL ok I’ll take it
wtf?
of course what I meant is what the fuck matheney, why walk brown to get to Andrus
Did Pinder die and no one told me?
Well that was improbable. I doubt I was the only one thinking “Just don’t GIDP”.
It is only one game, but Chapman really did look better today.
I thought he might cry after scoring the winner
LOL slegna closer gives up a tying home run with 2 outs in the 9th.
I didn’t understand all the ohtani balks
Buchter in the 10th against 3 righties, this should go well.
Strikeout, balk, HBP, DBacks manager tried to take him out but it was only 2 batters faced, HBP
Bases loaded 1 out
How far did Buchter get from the mound before the ump stepped in?
Dugout, umpire didn’t notice. Only Scioscia did.
Amazing.
Scioscia just had to make another pitching change for the (potential) last batter of the game.
Ugh … looks like one of the Danish players just had a heart attack mid-game.
oh my
You rang?
Melvin to fans: It’s a nice day, spend it hiking away from internet or radio reception
[gets back from walk, checks score]
Melvin to fans: we got this
Woulda been nice to get more than one there.
Kaprielian dominating so far.
Chapman!
Having Chappy back would be a good thing.
cautiously optimistic
Opposite field HR!
Tripping over the bullpen mound yesterday reset him somehow.
On 100 mph fastball no less.
Holy hell. That’s progress.
On the bright side for this kid, he double the number of out he got vs his last start. If he keeps that up he will have a complete game in 3 more starts.
Skye Bolt not making a very good case for more playing time.
Come on.
there is a team in las vegas too
Starting to think Jesus needs a month long all expense paid trip there.
If you don’t love him now, you will never love him again.
Heh heh, very nice. Fitting tagline for a guy who’s been cut twice already this year.
Before he homered I was going with “damn your glove, damn your flies.”
wade davis doesn’t have it
Loving the contrast between the PTBNLs coach in a suit and tie and the elcroatas coach in a plain white t-shirt.
I usually don’t endorse retaliation against political rivals, but is it too much to ask that William Barr be publicly disemboweled and hung by his own intestines? Really, I ask for so little.
in a true and just society they would all be shunned and jailed, but, you know
Boobish
Korach using the preferred Slavic pronunciation Boob Itch.
That’s better.
Chapman!!
Everything says HBP but that looked like (if anything) another catcher interference.
Matheny has a surly look about him.
You would too if you lived in Missouri.
By now you should have an attractive enough resume that you’d have options elsewhere if you wanted to seek them out.
My dad had three brain surgeries in May. I’m not going anywhere soon.
Well I hope that turns out OK. I guessed there might be something that kept you anchored there.
I have a house and a dog now. I live two blocks away from work.
nice
But I sure miss you.
we all miss you. Theo was using your gift bat yesterday in a game of house ball.
my house you can play ball
Sorry, that’s rough Jennifer. Hopefully better days ahead.
Cal > Stanford
Another good start by the offense. The way Bassitt was laboring we may need to keep it up.
C Bass left out in the sun doesnt do well.
Something about the Coliseum makes a normal 75° day outside feel like the surface of the sun inside.
I cant tell you how many times I left Fresno for a day game in Oakland thrilled to “escape the heat” only to have to retreat to find shade by the 3rd inning.
Related, anytime my family of friends asks if Im going to move back I am glad to show them the forecast this week: 109 Fresno vs 80 or so in Lomita.
I was giving some thought to driving down to Las Vegas for a couple Aviators games this coming Thursday and Friday nights.
I am 90% going to stockton wednesday
Not to see Soderstrom and the Ports, though, because they will be in Fresno.
dammit. I thought i checked the schedule right.
crap-no way to adjust my schedule for that, plus Id prefer not to be in the 103 or whatever it will be that day if I can.
It was 111°F at first pitch at Las Vegas Ballpark tonight. It is $2 beer night, however (presumably for Bud Light; the good stuff at those things is always regular price).
The Royals may have something with their young starters but they’ve been a little tedious to watch these last few days, and Bassitt has been compounding the issue today.
Confused by Salvador Perez suddenly being Pudge Rodriguez at the plate.
Suggestion: instead of the usual home run derby format that we’re all bored by, this year in Denver choose the winner by distance.
Columnists gonna columnize, and the Chronicle’s sports columnists clearly detest the A’s ownership and take a patronizing approach to Oakland in general. But playing them above the fold every Sunday, including treating one of Ostler’s as a straight news piece, is an editorial choice. Christina Kahrl is too new here to hold a grudge. I have to question whether she is getting instructions from on high to do this.
Hard to dismiss all the hints of an agenda from the paper that gets many of its clicks courtesy of the team that already has a cool waterfront park.
Ostler is just a prick. He spent the last five years relentlessly mocking Fisher for not taking tangible action, now has spent the last year mocking the tangible actions he took.
Ostler is really worried about the continuing vitality of this polluter for some reason.
Wow, another terrible call in our favor upheld.
I feel we are still not even.
Bassitt settled down, made it through 5 at 88 pitches. I would still give him only a very short leash.
Fosse thinks the past tense of pinch hit is “pinched hit.”
Not sure I would call John Mabry a “great hitter.”
I summed Mabry’s first 41 games with the A’s, for which “great hitter” is fair, but he never did anything else like that in his career.
Not sure who brought the referee’s whistle to the ballpark today but they’ve gotta go.
They just are not going to stop walking Kemp I guess.
Louuu
KC isn’t going to challenge for a postseason spot this year but they aren’t a pushover. Nice series, bitches.
Bartolo Colon pitched a complete game yesterday!
Addison Russell plays every day for that team. Chris Carter (still only 34!) has played in 8 of the team’s 20 games, with 3 HR.
Great, now half of FK will want to bring Carter back.
I guess Moreland,KD,Carter is what I should prefer, but given the options yeah…
Oh Scotland …
Pretty good day for Czechoslovakia.
Interesting. Wouldn’t be shocking to see this at some point when the A’s play a Comcast team like the White Sox.
I have a decent streaming setup, so it is about the same to me, but I don’t understand that part of the plan. Exploring streaming options, with the eye toward a future a la carte service, makes sense, but why take the game away from the people who are already paying $100+/month for cable (which is also owned by Comcast, after all) to see the games? Seems like they are just hastening the death of their own cable cash cow by doing that.
Also seems like it could be an issue for restaurants/bars that would show the game.
“Sweden Survive the Spanish Inquisition”
Too soon, Ian.
There’s a good chance the A’s will be heading to the Bronx this weekend in the middle of a full-fledged Yankees media freakout. Those are always fun.
This is an informative article and I like what andrew bailey says here
It is interesting, how widespread it is, and how his particular stuff spread around the league by word of mouth as players changed teams.
And while it does seem unfair that a clubbie selling sticky stuff at $100 per 1 year batch to stars making millions (and in some cases more millions because of the sticky stuff) lost his job over this while the players themselves haven’t been punished, he kind of set himself up as that kind of scapegoat. By selling to players on different teams, he not only gave his own team no incentive to protect him, but also left the trail of texts, packages, payments, etc. The same thing happened around steroids 20 years ago, and for that matter it’s probably pretty much the same as a lot of small-time drug dealers of other sorts, who start out selling to people they know and then expand a little too much without getting more careful. (Props to Adam Wainwright for the “kale salad and beans” venmo payment though.)
Also, IANAL, but even I could have told him this:
Just my luck, radio ballgame coincides perfectly with my grilling plans and Korach has the night off.
I have literally never heard the “old saying” just cited by not-Ken, “you throw strikes to get strikes”
not gonna look in the game thread, but this is a real WTF
Burch Smith is someone to keep an eye as to whether he can maintain his spin rates.
Why are games against this team always so unpleasant.
My avoidance move makes for a more pleasant evening
Seriously. I was having a good evening, then my buddy started to offer PxP in our group chat. Sucked me in and got me to put the last 2 innings on the radio.
I am scrolling twitter so i get a sense, but mostly i ignore