The A’s open a three-city, ten-game West Coast road trip with four in T-Mobile Park. It’s a great chance to remind the Mariners that they haven’t seen postseason play since 2001 and should make it 20 straight seasons this year. The pitching by most measures is around major league average to slightly below, but on the offensive side they’re pretty close to bottom of the barrel, at dead last in OBP and 26th in SLG for a #28 ranking in OPS. They are 51-45 coming into the series, but Pythagorean W-L is an ominous 43-53. They’ve done it by going 20-8 in one-run games and 10-1 in extra innings.
Three night games and a day game should be played with the roof open in glorious late-July Seattle weather, with high temperature around 78 +/- each day. There are fires east of the Cascades but the smoke is all being pushed east for now.
Tonight at 7:10: Manaea vs. Chris Flexen
Friday at 7:10: Montas vs. Yusei Kikuchi
Saturday at 7:10: Bassitt vs. Logan Gilbert
Sunday at 1:10: Irvin vs. Marco Gonzales
If we play well can we have Cruz after all?
The last thing Chapman needs right now is being called out on a pitch that’s not in the strike zone.
And Manaea didn’t get a couple pitches that were far better than the one to Chapman. Can already see Bob getting Scioscia’ed late in the game if the evening doesn’t go well for the Green and Gold.
He even fouled off some pitches! Progress!
The Aviators have 12 straight home games starting a week from tonight, and I’m close to thinking, hmmm, there’s a way to get his bat going. As to the loss in defense, would note that the A’s have 3 off-days during that 12-game Vegas span.
Signs of life.
“America’s Leanest Bacon”????
Well at least their good relievers are throwing a ton of pitches.
Romo is the eighth inning guy now?
The heck with Victory Cabbage. Strips of delicious, crispy, lean bacon for all! (except batgirl)
I went to San jose to see the ports. Of course I saw no superstar
Lawrence butler hit the ball very hard and ran well. Pauson hit the ball hard until he didn’t and then he didn’t.
I sat next to an aunt of TJ Scofield sam. WHen I asked if she heard anything about the accommodations, she tightened her lips and steeled her eyes. then we had a very diplomatic discussion around the issue with her being clear without using any direct words. (she is canadian who lived in Dubai for 20 years, so not the typical baseball family)
anyway, good fun
Guardians is fine. They could have done much, much worse.
Granted that my kneejerk reaction on these things is almost always thumbs down. I give it thumbs down for blandness, much like Nationals which is one I’ve never warmed up to. Is “Guardians” a baseball team or an insurance company?
My mind went first to comic books and then to in loco parentis, neither of which seems particularly inspiring as a source for a sports team name. But then, the teams I root for don’t really have great names either if I think about it, which mostly I don’t.
Bland can be ok. It doesn’t get much blander than “Athletics,” after all. When teams go too far into not bland – “Diamondbacks” and “Pelicans” come to mind – it clangs hard for me.
I don’t think “Guardians” is as bland as “Nationals,” and at least they have continuity with their good color scheme and typography, as opposed to the boring, mailed-in look of Washington.
Should have been spiders, but I agree. Could have been the Cleveland Zoom or something.
I hated the spiders idea and am very pleased it is not that. I love art deco and am pleased with this.
Defector pointed out the logo is a fastball grip, but it, ironically, looks more like a sinker to me, also a defector commenter indicated the statues were to guard the whites from indians. Also ironic
they coulda done…
a google.
If any of you have friends or family who own small businesses who were impacted by covid, please tell them not to miss the Employer Retention credit. It’s not getting a lot of publicity like the PPP and it can really result in helpful $$ for these business owners.
Hmm no starry eyed Vegas related tweets from Kaval on this trip. Maybe even he knows that’ll be a bad look after Tuesday’s vote.
Puk has allowed one run in his last nine innings (five appearances). 10K, 1 BB, 0 HR in that stretch. Trade him now, I guess.
Think the Rays will part with Cruz?
We coulda had Rich Hill.
scioscia, up three in the bottom of the first and one out, challenged and lost on an infield single by donaldson where the throwed pulled the fielder off first and he seemingly missed the bag when he put his foot down
LLHR
this Kyle Seagar AB is frankie in a nutshell. as I was typing he grounded out that is better
nope. foreshadowing
Stealing second with Chapman batting and two out does nothing to increase the A’s chances of scoring. Just let Chapman make the third out and move on to the next inning.
Pphhhbbbtt!
Hey, if he reads FK between innings and I lit a fire under his butt, good.
I agree. Tough love, Soaker!
sigh
Maybe Aramis for men needs to be Frankie’s personal C.
Streaker in the stands?
And supposedly about Vax..YAY!
Someone hold Kendall Graveman back.
I’m not touching him..
we found a suspect
click on it for a surprising not surprising reply
Looking at that guy’s other responses, I’m not sure that’s legit.
LOL, Wilson was out by 15 feet.
Bad process, good result. Wilson should’ve been out by 5ft.
15 might be “exaggerating as usual” but it was more than 5. He was a full stride outside the dirt circle around the plate.
I was going to say 10 but wanted to be considerate.
ray said ten
I do have somebody on my side.
Jacob Wilson might be the new slowest Athletic.
Uh, good send, Kotsay.
who was on deck?
Can we please just bat Olson second instead of this rotating cavalcade of shittiness.
kemp seems ok for today, but in the future…
Hey, it’s A’s legend Hideki Matsui accompanying Sadaharu Oh with the torch.
@GM did the announcers discuss his massive porn collection?
What a shame…
The teams have combined for 41 K through 15 innings in this series.
Having to watch an Andrus at bat right after a Canha at bat is so irritating.
That was so promising with Olson facing the righty due to the three batter rule. Instead we get a Bobby Crosby.
If I was pitching against the A’s I’d immediately load the bases to prevent them from ever scoring.
fk you Diekman.
my goodness indeed vince
Fucking Diekman, why am I surprised by something that I expect to happen every time he comes in.
Jesus Christ
This inning is horrifying.
I remember a similar inning Diekman threw against the A’s. That game is why I’ve never really trusted the guy.
He can have 20 clean innings in a row and I would still expect this type of meltdown the next time he comes in.
Norm Charlton, doing a guest inning on Mariners radio tonight, blames Murphy for not corralling Diekman’s wild pitches. Spoken like a long-retired hard-throwing pitcher; I didn’t think Murphy had much of a chance on any of those.
takes one to win anyway
And huge shout out to TX for turning back into shit.
i somehow don’t put the blame on them
sigh
It was good to come back from down 3, but in the end, seems self-inflicted.
Another loss that shows just how incomplete this team is. If we just had another great hitter that could complement Canha and Olson. If we had a reliever that wasn’t always on the verge of Steve Blass disease. If Brown/Piscotty could just be jettisoned somewhere where they can’t kill rallies…
One player could replace brown/piscotty.
And yes diekman was hard to listen to, but this game like all the losses back to long before the all star game cold have been won with 1 or 2 hits.
The worst part is that the holes are what we have all known they were since the off-season: one corner OF, DH, SS, and RP.
Yours for $39.99. I suppose it could be a slot machine. (I happened to be looking at Grant’s tweets and saw this abomination.)
john fischer doesn’t see a problem
7 pm game is bad, 7 pm on a saturday is a crime against humanity
“Crime against humanity”? Unless you would prefer 8:30…STOP ACTING SO DAMNED OLD.
i had dinner 3 hours before first pitch and now i am hungry
Early bird special?
I liked the A’s 6:40 starts early in the season when the weather was still cold and I was in for the evening by 4:30 or so, but as the weather warmed up I found that 6:40 sometimes sneaks up a little too quickly.
They had a retro powder blue jersey giveaway, but the Mariners players aren’t wearing them. Boo.
click
Bassitt running a little hot in the dugout after the inning…
Jed, still alive in late July against all odds.
Jesus. I clicked it off B1 and watched the last hour of a movie I was watching. Didn’t think I was skipping an inning.
The top of the third is one of the great Ed build-the-pitch-count innings of the year.
And now they need 6-1/3 innings from their bullpen with a quick turnaround to a day game tomorrow.
that’s why the late start sucks
I thought I had enough dinner but we’re going to be here until after 11 so I have a quesadilla working.
I be at third dinner by the 8th
Ramon should have knocked over about 6 beers while he had the opportunity.
He should have drank one.
nice of the director to linger on chapman while he was clearly prepping to refill his dip
I don’t understand the eco tank message. Although is is frustrating when you run out of ink, you just need to order it or replace it. You still will run out of ink at some point.
It’s like you can turn it up to 11, you know?
Mr Ceja is not real generous
He hasn’t helped, but I think it’s just a clunker for our All Star pitcher regardless of the umpiring.
oh for sure
Can we say it again that one more bat in the line up makes non sharp bassitt less of a problem?
326.32 feet for Aramis there.
imagine how disappointed I was to see garcia when I expected olson after elvis popped out
now I am confused
no
Yes, I stuck it out to the bitter end. Very loud sounds of cracking ice under the bullpen.
They will regress, sure, but they have been pretty solid for months, and these two losses are on the batters, 100%
Moreland, Chapman, Andrus vs. Graveman in the top of the 9th…I considered giving up and going to bed right then.
I was watching an epic table tennis five-setter between Hong Kong and India at that point while tracking the inevitable on gameday. I have my limits for watching such dreadful and drawn out baseball.
I turned it off around the 6th inning.
The whole series has been low-scoring and yet slow (3:23, 3:17, 3:26) games. So tedious.
For the year, A’s are averaging 3:05, and Seattle 3:07, both in the top (fastest) third of the league, so I’m not sure why they’re playing so slowly now.
Professional mathematician wins the Olympic cycling road race out of nowhere because none of the favorites realized she had broken away from the peloton hours before the finish.
Sounding like we probably won’t see Trout next week after all. I’m OK with that.
Made him throw 24 pitches, got two baserunners. No runs, no balls hit out of the infield.
A’s fever, catch it.
no baserunners were scored in the filming of this series.
4 is the absolute limit the A’s can score
Went to turn the game on and MLBTV did a random “you can’t watch this game”. Think I will thank them and try to fix my work laptop instead.
Also Cruz homered again.
Not an enjoyable team to watch right now.
Payroll around $50M next year
“Wouldn’t A’s fans be better off without the A’s in their lives making them sad?” -Future Scott Ostler column
Future Scott Ostler has a valid point.
I’ve started to consider a move to the Inland Empire. I could then easily follow a Cal League team and just sort of act like MLB doesn’t exist. I guess that goes in the “pro” column.
excellent
that was even more pathetic than the rangers series.
Meanwhile, one of these teams is also trying to get better:
when you are within striking distance of a playoff spot, you have to, right?
That’s why the A’s are calling the Kia Tigers to see if Daniel Mengden is available
it feels a little like climate change. I think there are things that we can do to get back to the playoffs, but the inaction through june and july might be too much to overcome.
I have watched fewer A’s game this year than any of the last 15-20. You could say maybe it’s because I have an almost 1 year old. Maybe you could say this team inspires ennui. I’m leaning towards the latter.
Like the groundhog, I have emerged from the woods, checked the standings, and can now plan to return to the wilderness in September and October without missing anything.
1 am in Tokyo and an excellent Brazil-Argentina volleyball clash reaching its climax.
Love In Vain
Salt of the Earth
What shitty team was the last one they beat?
Good mustache, good shirt.
Probably pointless if we don’t add a bat also.
Seems like quite a character
Memorable guy!
Our friend who is a huge Cubs fan loves him
We can now go 1 extra inning before the WPs end a game where we left 15 on base…
It’s so “future GM” comments “A’s acquire Sam Moll. It says here he last appeared in the majors 3 years ago in 2021 with the A’s. I have no recollection of that”
Future Aces won’t have time to watch a 60 win team as he will be hopefully moving the lilest Ace off to college.
Remembering Guys gets tougher and tougher each year.
meh.
I hope Piscotty is the other one.
Mariners gave up 6 in the first against houston
And the Astros pen does its team Dynamite impression.
Don’t like this at all. This is a significant return for a rental reliever. Not to mention this was also precipitated by the failed Kolarek trade. The A’s should be asking themselves why they have to expend so many resources just to find a viable second lefty in the pen when a team of their limited means should be smart about filling holes like this.
I mean, Puk is probably ready for another go now since his latest scouting reports are positive. But I guess maybe this frees him up for another trade.
At this point it’s obvious they didn’t believe in Deichmann.
I’m into Olympic surfing, but these waves suck.
vert is over. long live street.
shit, Fischer’s plan is working
I guess I understand if they are letting seager go and all, but, aren’t they a game out of a playoff position?
But DONT TRADE THEM TO THE ASTROS. DAMMIT.
Secret plot to keep the Yankees alive? Pox on both the M’s and A’s houses seems an odd choice. And they still play the Stros like 10 more times.
Will be fascinating to see the context that makes trading a good closer to a division rival for a utility infielder make sense.
Also probably not that helpful to signal to the partners in those other potential trades that you are now pot committed to their players.
I was just about to say that if I am a team talking to SEA my prices just went up.
Even if other trades are imminent, haivng 2 good relievers is better than one,
And $15M for seager next year isn’t bad
Maybe. I’ll give him until the deadline to prove this. He might be in a similar position to where Billy was at the deadline in 1999, probably not ready to contend this year (I figure if the A’s pull a 2014 August-September both wild cards would come from the AL East) but making a series of deals that put the A’s in contention in 2000 and beyond, dealing Kenny Rogers and Bill Taylor but acquiring some useful pieces like Izzy, Velarde and (the one that almost made me drive off the road) Kevin Appier.
Someone had the angle that maybe they had a trade worked out for kimbrell, but even then, why make the astros better?
They really, really like Toro? I don’t know.
well, the mariners did send a pox to the astros
(gets masks out again) Why are we trying to protect unvaccinated people from each other by forcing vaccinated people to wear masks? They made their choice, they are the ones perpetuating the problem, they are still welcome to get vaccinated, but if they don’t, tough shit. The message should be that “since it’s your choice, don’t expect government to protect you, please feel free to live in fear”.
A huge population of unvaxxed almost guarantees new variants which will be more infectious and/or lethal. Early evidence suggests us vaccinated people are now catching and spreading delta COVID. Yes we’re not getting as sick, now. But we maybe won’t be so lucky with the theta or sigma variant. Failure to reach herd immunity ultimately threatens all of us.
Also the unvaxed wouldn’t be living in fear, they are mostly the same people who won’t wear a mask unless forced to.
I’m so sick of all this. Bring on vaccine mandates everywhere (schools, jobs, restaurants, stores).
“So sick of all this” is where my objection to new mask mandates lies. We did that for months and months. It was a band-aid but didn’t address the root cause of the problem, which has unsurprisingly resurfaced. Vaccines address the root cause, and evidently the only solution is to let enough unvaccinated people die to scare the rest of them into getting the shots.
saving grace of having been in a frat is learning the greek alphabet (and how early delta actually comes). or,
THETA CHI VARIANT SPRING BREAK 2027 YEAHHHHH!
oh. here it is. woke up thinking i had tweeted that.
Note to Pfizer: deliver vaccine via Jello shots, achieve 100% vax rate on college campuses.
the tri-delts feel attacked.
This argument will feel better to me when my kids can be vaccinated than it does now…
shoulda planned ahead. what were you doing in 2008 that was more important?
Not having triplets (thank god!)
we have not covered the most important issue.
Marte wears #6
Guess he didn’t offer BoMel enough.
The regular season months he will be playing in Oakland. (plus a couple of spare days.)
Semien is still using his glove with green highlights