The World Famous Linda’s Doll Hut in Anaheim is noted mostly for beginnings. Its where SLF and I met while her band was playing. (A better trailer for the doll hut)
The Marte era begins. I really think this will be the last watchable A’s baseball for a while. 6 down to houston, 2 up on seattle, 3 on new york, 4 on toronto (assuming a win today).
Dontrell Willis is on the teevee
marte in center
Montas v Bundy
Bassitt v Sandoval
Irvin v Barria
Kaprilian v Ohtani Reid Detmers
Canha got away with that
Big time. Scioscia’s gonna have him drilled in the ribs next chance he gets.
Dontrelle in the booth, Ed you’ve been advocating this a long time.
he already made a mild swear (hell)
I thought he did a nice job.
Agreed. Took him a few innings to learn you can’t talk over the end of your partner’s sentences the way you can in the studio, then he adjusted and was great. Glen OTOH struck me as a bit patronizing.
Something you probably won’t say about Shooty today. What the hell is he doing in that chair?
(The game is also on FS1 if you can’t handle Shooty.)
Shooty’s arms are pretty impressive though. Really filling out that polo shirt.
My many complaints notwithstanding, it takes a lot to move me off the local TV feed. Shooty has accomplished it.
The Hudler Baseball is an amusing addition to Dontrelle’s game.
Ramon! Smacks another terrible pitch from Bundy.
hopefully chapman can pick him up
It’s going to be satisfying beating them
For who?
Now any angel gets hit, the pitcher is getting tossed
two two strike weak hits
a home run would be nice mark
I don’t like the zone on the teevee, but it seems like A’s don’t get as many strikes as the angels
you guys are missing a frustrating game
My TV was commandeered by gymnastics fans.
lucky
I bet the Scioscias are frustrated too.
this is fucking ridiculous. quintana has struck out 5 in a row. two outs on balls in the dirt.
Defense is good, though
montas gets his first generous call anf upton drops his bat in protest
now stassi complains about a pitch he has been getting all night
Botched pickoff on an 0-2 count gifts the A’s a run. The Angels are bad.
thank god
Big league debut with the bases loaded, nice spot Scioscia.
hood for that kid, but fuck me this really sucks
Nice win
Marte undefeated in green and gold. Chafin too.
Watching USA vs Israel Olympic baseball right now. It’s not live, but still I am confused how Scioscia is able to be there and also in Anaheim.
Also confusing: no names on the USA uniforms. Come on, man, these guys are hard enough to remember already.
Loving the Japanese stretch limo-style bullpen carts though.
How does/did Nick Allen look?
I picked up the game in the 6th and only saw one Allen AB, a fly out. I gather that he singled and scored earlier.
One of those guys (a pitcher) just got traded from the Blue Jays to the Twins for Jose Berrios.
Should probably be acknowledged that Iglesias’ glove flip last night was incredible. This is me acknowledging that.
We are stuck with hoping moreland figures it out and whatever andrus is, yeah?
And if good Chappy can show up for a month or 2.
Gomes replaces Garcia, obviously.
Who loses their spot for Harrison? Piscotty? Moreland? Or Brown, because he has options?
And while it would be better if Harrison were a SS, overall I am pleasantly surprised by the number of holes being filled.
205 innings most recently 2014
Piscotty is the obvious choice, with Moreland being a close second (brown and moreland are essentially the same with brown being slightly better this year) but i bet the choice is sending brown down
They’re all bad, but I have a hard time seeing them dump Piscotty with another year left on his contract, and I imagine they’d like to keep Moreland around for his veteraniness. Send down Brown and reassess in a few weeks is probably the move.
Love this for so many reasons, not least because we have our first Brazilian A.
This is really confusing to me. I have no idea where Harrison will go, I guess maybe an every-day version of what Pinder was doing. Hate to say it but some possibility the best use of him to get an uprade could be 3B, but that of course isn’t happening…
Gomes is good so that’s good, but getting a C seems strange when they’re doing well at that position. Having Gomes/Murphy DH when not catching might make some sense, but not clear that’s an upgrade vs Moreland against Rhp.
Bullpen still seems like the most obvious need.
Harrison to 2B, Lowrie to DH, Moreland to bench. Gomes is an upgrade on Garcia that is basically free, so why not. Harrison also gives Chapman the occasional day off (or allows Chapman to play shortstop in a pinch???)
Would love for them to scrape another reliever off the floor somewhere in the next 18 minutes.
this is how I see it. Cuts kemp and moreland playing time
but if you would have said josh bell instead I think it might have been better
That makes sense.
One thing I like is that I’m sort of a believer in low-K hitters for the playoffs, and it now looks like a low K lineup pretty much everywhere except 3B.
Yes I agree with this.
Astros traded Myles Straw…do they have a center fielder now? I’m lost.
profar?
Seriously mateo is probably D’dFA
Hmm
Maybe they’ll just quit on the season.
“Minor leaguers Junk” describes what the A’s sent to Washington too.
In fairness to the Nat’s, that’s kind of what we have to offer…
With Gibson and Kennedy gone I’ll accept no further losses to Texas this season.
not sure this is a good one for the giants
Joey El
Fake news, sadly.
Ernie Banks
Kerry Wood
Joe(I think?) Tinker
Eric Sogard?
That kid who broke his arm
Andre Dawson
I’ll bet most of them are married or dead, so try again!
And yes Joe Tinker. But instead we can use Frank Chance from Fresno. (Just looked this up and actually born in Salida, which I cant believe someone would admit. But did grow up and go to HS in Fresno.)
sammy sosa’s all i got. but that’s probably enough.
Did I miss the big Jerry DiPoto follow up trade that would make it all make sense?
They got Diego Castillo from the Rays so now they have a closer again.
LOST made more sense…
If you are on the Cubs or nationals are you sad because no one wanted you?
You tell yourself it’s because your current team liked you the best. Same delusion that sustained my first marriage.
They could increase payroll by 50K…as a treat.
Overall I’m pleased and excited for the next couple months of A’s baseball. They sold low on Luzardo, but honestly his destiny in Oakland was being a bright spot in the next Billy Butler/Trevor Plouffe era that seems likely to commence in this offseason. They have a fighting chance against the Yankees in the final 60 games and there’s always the possibility that one of Houston, Boston or Tampa Bay pulls a 2014 A’s sort of August/September which opens another spot.
The starting pitching does have to survive the mounting innings test, and that’s going to be a challenge, starting with Kaprielian. Where they will fall short if they make it to October is the bullpen. Man, a healthy Rosenthal returning for the end of the season would have made that group so much better by shoving everybody down one notch to their effective level.
It seems like a reliever could have gotten a lot of bang for the buck
As for the starting pitching, yeah, I am guessing everyone is in that boat. Seems like bailey and jeffries are going to be at least on the september roster (we get 2 now, yeah?) to get rest.
Now that you put names (butler/plouffe) on it, maybe I don’t look forward to it
I really like today’s trades. Harrison is needed with Pinder gone for a long time and Pinder has been pretty bad since the beginning of 2020 (playoffs aside). Just look at the lineup tonight where Kemp is starting at 2B against a lefty.
And I think Garcia is absolutely horrible so any kind of catcher upgrade is appreciated, especially one that may be better than Murphy right now.
The prospects given up aren’t nothing, but I don’t think any of them are impact level MLB players. Millas’s likely outcome is similar to Jonah Heim’s. Shuman is the type of great control, meh stuff 5th starter type the A’s draft every year. Guasch is more of a wild card but not too concerned about losing a prospect like this for a chance to win right now.
Between the front office actually trying stuff and Ed’s infectious live-for-today optimism I am feeling better about the A’s than I have since mid-May.
One interesting bit is that all our decent RH hitters (including Marte now) have reverse splits for their careers (not unusual for the younger hitters), while Gomes and Harrison have both hit lefties hard.
Please let tonight be the last night this happens.
Kemp: 2 ABs, 6 runners LOB.
They were always the California Angels to me. I preferred the lower case “a” on the cap and jersey though.
It offends my typographical sensibilities.
I like Vlad’s cap there. Oddly, there was a period where they changed the cap but not the jersey.
On the current version, the capital A extends below the other letters. Weird.
Might need a ruling from AV on this.
the A is below baseline, yes. looks crooked.
Every Olympics one event comes from nowhere to dominate my viewing attention. This year’s surprise winner is archery. Hella fun.
I’m not into the Olympics but I’ll spend Saturday evening watching the final round of the golf. The final group tees off at 7:09 pm Pacific: Xander Schauffele (USA), hometown favorite Hideki Matsuyama (1 back) and England’s Paul Casey (2 back). With threesomes they will be done around midnight. Rory McIlroy (3 back) is in the next to last group.
That’s a good tip, thanks, I’ll get that on the laptop tonight. It’s mostly been too much work for me to accommodate the 15 hour time difference so I’ve defaulted to whatever’s on the six or so cable channels at any time.
If you’re looking for another fringe sport, I can’t recommend watching the table tennis enough. The commentator on the NBC stream will suck you in.
This ended up being quite entertaining, very happy for Xander and the other wondertwin.
I dozed off for a few minutes during one of the bronze playoff holes but revived for Morikawa’s bitter end.
Rory Sabbatini is one of the old veterans who shows up at the PGA event up here (was in south Reno but moved to Truckee last year; I’ll go to the second round this Friday). I followed him for 18 holes one day, and that guy has the foulest mouth I’ve ever heard on the course. His wife was carrying his bag in Tokyo so he probably cleaned it up a little.
The acne-afflicted dweeb from Turkey wins gold with a last shot bullseye, defeating the buff brooding Italian.
Water polo for me.
I’ve watched bits and pieces of a lot of events. Haven’t gotten totally hooked on anything, but have spent the most time on track and field. Good mix of extremely skinny people seeing who can run the fastest, extremely large people seeing who can throw things farthest, the jumpers, the steeplechase (what a weird event). Usually multiple events going on at the same time, so there is not much downtime. Plus, Gabby Thomas.
I’m really enjoying watching the track and field sessions on the world feed, rather than with NBC announcers. Lack of obsessive focus on American athletes, and full attention to all events, is wonderful.
Just after I sent this comment, I was watching the replay of the medal ceremony for the amazing Puerto Rican hurdler, and heard the world feed Ian tell us we were about to hear “the national anthem of Costa Rica.” So it’s not exactly perfect.
Ian during the medal ceremony for the Norwegian who won the epic men’s 400 hurdles: “Cometh the hour, cometh the Viking.”
I dunno, man.
On the whole the track commentators have been some of my faves across all events. And I’ve seen some folks compare Warholm’s run to Bob Belmont and Usain Bolt in epic terms
I’m only the most casual of “athletics” fans, but it was pretty astonishing to me watching live. He ran away for the first half of the race, the American nearly caught up to him on the final straightaway, and then he ran away again to win comfortably, even while the American was beating the previous world record.
Three of the four fastest times in world history were run in that final.
Now we got “cometh the hour, cometh the Canadian.” Ian needs a new cliche.
Currently live is the downright psycho 10K open water swim. Best bit so far is there’s a point where people on the shore hold long sticks out that look kind of like a church collection basket with a bottle or cup of energy drink at the end of it as the swimmers go by. There’s a flag on each stick and the swimmers grab theirs and pound it while doing a few meters of one-armed backstroke.
These are apparently called “feed stations.” Some of these nuts pass up the delicious drink to grab a couple of strokes on the people who briefly indulge.
Brazil!!!
thank you whoever fixed the sunday matchup
I liked the shot of chapman and his “dad”
maybe it was laureano and chapman’s “dad”
I’m going to Las Vegas for the Aviators’ Monday and Tuesday games. This series or part of it would have been a logical companion but when I did the money part I couldn’t justify Anaheim. Seattle is a great in-division road trip, but Anaheim…blah, been there, done that, it’s just not worth an extra several hundred dollars.
It looked like there was a lot of Green and Gold in the stands in San Diego, and the Padres announcers commented several times about that. Not nearly so much in Anaheim, so I guess I’m not the only A’s fan who thinks that about the relative merits of those two stops on the tour.
Seems like a bob fail having kemp in there today. Canha DH, Piscotty in left and lowrie at second.
Oof, yeah, having Kemp against the lefty there was not ideal.
Mark Canha, Esq.
Bassitt with a nice no FKing around performance vs. a crappy team so far. Another couple runs of support wouldn’t hurt.
7 LOB.
these weren’t supposed to be replies.
8 LOB for kemp
this is so frustrationing
he didn’t look out
Thank you so much for throwing low curves to Chapman.
Useless giants
Never in doubt
Remember when there was a week or so that Glen wouldn’t shut up about Kemp not striking out? Yeah..memories.
Well done FKers.
Excellent game there. I’ll take another 40 or so of those.
Have you looked into Flights from Dullas or national to LAX?
:(
Both are more important tomorrow
doing the math on a flight landing at SNA or LAX from the east coast is…yuck, when did they leave?
United has a direct flight leaving from IAD at 10:30 Eastern, arriving LAX at 12:38 Pacific. (well, 20 minutes later than that now)
Garcia and…somebody…appreciate the 24-hour stay on their executions.
One would think Brown; all of the bats they acquired are right-handed though…
There is a place for a lefty DH (essentially platooning with Harrison, with Lowrie switching between 2B and DH). They will probably prefer Moreland (92 OPS+, but better average and OBP) to Brown (98 OPS+, more power).
After that there probably aren’t many AB’s left for Brown OR Piscotty. I think you guys are right that they’ll choose to option Brown rather than DFA Piscotty.
Or
monday and thursday off this week
Good time for an off day heavy schedule. Then I guess it’s Homer Bailey time.
If Kaprilian is actually hurt, sure, but I am thinking with the extra inning rules as they are, why not option Burch Yabu and roll the dice. I mean I would still DFA piscotty if I were cold bloded.
Smith had 5 innings in 3 games this month. Its 4 weeks to september, off days on the 2nd, 4th, 9th, 25th and 30th
Kaprielian was scheduled tomorrow. Jefferies is scheduled to Aviate tonight so he’s logical unless they want to bullpen it.
*I was counting days and forgot Vegas’ off day. Blackburn tonight, Jefferies tomorrow.
soothsayer
Shoot, he was scheduled sunday…
not for nothin
First play of the game vs. S. Korea is a bang-bang play at first on a slow roller to Nick Allen, ruled safe.
Scioscia challenges and loses.
Edwin Jackson pitching the 7th.
is that team 15?
Now replaced by Anthony Gose (former MLB OF).
A new ballpark on the Strip on the Tropicana property?. Now that would be successful. The answer to the guy’s question about the acreage is: the footprint of the ballpark is a minimum 8.5 (Target Field) to 9 (Fenway Park) acres. The Golden Knights’ arena is right there so presumably parking has been addressed for crowds of up to 20K or so.
I’d think Bally’s would want a significant ownership stake in the team if that deal were to be made.
If Fisher wanted to trade ownership share for a ballpark I would imagine it would be more lucrative, long-term, in Oakland. Unless he got stupid amounts of money like Mark Davis got.
So if Murphy gets hurt early in today’s game and can’t stay in, Bob has to try to drag his feet. “I think the doctor had better attend to this right here on the field right now. There’s WHAT? A crash on the 405? ALL LANES BLOCKED?? CRAP!”
LAX is 105-5, SNA is 55-5 (or 55-22-57)
Should be OK
…to the Santa Monica Freeway to the San Diego Freeway to the Slauson Cutoff. CUTOFF YOUR SLAUSONS.
trick is there are 2 katella off ramps, one for the big A one for cal state fullerton
(edited)
Til you get to the FORK IN THE ROAD.
Was actually considering 405-110-91-5 for a second but someone would get screwed up and miss an exit.
This Angels lineup is appalling. Their fans must be disgusted.
I have zero sympathy for anyone in orange county
not even my niece?
I’ll allow Irvin that one run but only because it was Ohtani who got the RBI.
The names on the helmets with the 70/80s label maker is a great touch.
New guys in uniform in the dugout!
Josh Harrison is watching this and thinking, ooh, it was good to be traded to a place where I’m needed this badly.
come on, really? now that we get things set up?
fuck fuxk fuxk
If they would just score runs when the opportunity showed itself
kurt gave us a kurt special, too bad about the sun
I think we’ve had a discussion about the relative unimportance of Olympic soccer before. Still, FS1 is promoting a USA-Mexico “Concacaf Gold Cup” final tomorrow? That seems a little ballsy to go head-to-head with the Olympics.
six runs please
Barria’s giant mouth wad is starting to gross me out.
He was looking at his hand while pitching to Andrus, maybe a blister or torn nail, so he might be done.
this game is just as frustrating as the rest.
need some BABIP luck
Shooty talks an incredible amount of nonsense. An overwhelming stream of bullshit coming out of his mouth.
Blabby Shootshit
In the open for today’s game they had a shot of Glen and Shooty. I had the sound muted, of course, but Glen had a look on his face that reminded me of Jane Curtin when she was sitting at the Weekend Update desk while Gilda Radner was doing a commentary.
Missing Shooty makes me rather happy to for MLB blackout rules.
giants/astros is not going to be decided anytime soon
With the production from Irvin and Kaprielian I’m a little surprised that B-R has the A’s only at #10 out of 30 in starting pitchers’ Wins Above Average. The Reds are #1 but they are kind of bad at almost every other position.
Argh
Fletcher K?!
OK fellows time to make it past third base.
That’s a tough one to swallow.
6/28 on balls in play is pretty unlucky.
I said “left-handed Saarloos”, GM said “Dallas Braden”, I don’t know whether Irvin has much more than 4 months in him but if not it has been a hella-good 4 months.
Brown optioned, as expected.
“look, david, I am going to pay mitch moreland a little over $700,000 in the next 2 months, you are telling me you want him to not work for it? And Piscott??? I don’t even want to talk about the money i have to pay because you told me it was ‘PR gold.’ Uhg, stop talking to me, I am about to hurl thinking about it”
And we can’t afford to lose the sponsorship money from those Cheesesteak Shop hometown heroes commercials.
Lou Trivino does a good job in the Shift dot com commercial
Speaking of which, does Piscotty have a role on this team?
The Bobby keilty “stealing my money” role
He might want to get on the bullpen mound a few times to be ready for position player mop-up. Emergency catcher helps keep a fringe player in the majors as well.
great profile for mid inning time filler if we made it all the way.
Oh man, I missed Djokovic melting down on court after being a gratuitous dick about Biles. That’s delicious.
Perhaps not the GOAT of sports assholes, but almost certainly the current champ.
Meet the new guys, hopefully not the same as the old guys:
So, I popped on the BMX freestyle and go me thinking about the runners disqualified for weed and missing tests.
How did any of these dirtbags or the Sk8ers pass with all the meth and weed they smoke?
As unlikely as it seems, they actually stay clean for however long the testing period is. A snowboarder or two gets popped every winter.
Today’s starting pitchers have combined to throw 53 major league pitches.
Always going to take 3 Ed?
Good thing this new lineup is built for a slugfest. Otherwise 2-0 would feel insurmountable.
I do have a good feeling about today, but I have a hard time not thinking of this as a commanding 3-0 lead
Good call.
Maybe stop walking people
Olson can slugfest!
Gomesing, Gomesing, Gome!
First A’s homer by Gomes since October 2, 2012.
(incidentally that was in a win the night before Hamilton…DROPPED THE BALL! HE DROPPED THE BASE BALL!!)
Gomes v3 has surpassed Gomes v2 in XBHs and RBIs already.
Gomes’s alternate in a manner opposite to Star Trek films. So we really don’t want v4.
Would it count as v4 if we re-sign him this offseason? Cause I wouldn’t mind that.
I think that’s the extended cut of Gomes III: The Search For Yan.
And I’d be OK with it too.
New guy!
Muito bom
69 pitches through 3 for detmers is good
Nice Ed, it is NICE….
Matt Olson was this kids first big league K, HR and HBP
Really no reason for Jefferies to face Ohtani a third time.
A pretty good day for the Golden Bears with the solid run at the bronze in Tokyo and a chance for a first big league win in Anaheim.
Jonah Heim with two walk off home runs against the Ms yesterday and today.
1-4 since trading Graveman, including those two blown leads.
Good point there that a guy who steals a lot of bases maybe shouldn’t be hitting right in front of Olson.
I like the stealing-lots-of-bases thing though.
Scioscia will at least get a chance to take some long looks at his AAA and AA pitchers in August and September. Also, the “Rocket City Trash Pandas”?
you obviously don’t play MLB the show
Scoring in 3 different innings? that’s umpossible
Korach is calling Harrison “J Hey.” That’s Jason Heyward to me.
It is in bb-ref (and his twitter handle).
I’m suddenly a lot more excited about taking the kids to their first game since 2019 on Tuesday.
Me and Nurse Upgrade will be there also. Sec. 222, but will relocate if other fans are seated too close. Might even grill a dog or two if I can get out of work early enough.
I’ll be at the Aviators home game that night. Yay for live attendance. I watch all these games on TV but baseball needs the in-person experience a few times a year.
Awesome. We’ll be in 127/7 (better Matt Chapman viewing for Owen, who is a total fan) but would love to say hello at some point. We’ll be arriving in two cars, so open question on when we’ll be arriving, but a pre-game is probably not super likely if there’s Bay Bridge traffic these days.
Very good day for new guys.
No Tatis for the Padres.
Also, I’m curious what we do with the rotation now. With all the off days coming up, they don’t need a 5th starter for 13 more days. They could send Jefferies down, and still be able to call him back up by then if Kap isn’t back yet. But they also might want to keep people on turn and give all the other starters a little more rest.
I am thinking rest.
After SD, TX-CLE-TX, then CHW-SF then SEA to NYY for the month.
My hope is Bos-NYY-TOR-TBR beat each other up so they can’t get ahead.
I’d set the rotation for the NYY series
That TX-CLE-TX must go better than the last time we were facing them or NYY becomes even more important.
A 1-0 loss is frustrating as hell, but 3 out of 4 on the road against some team that’s playing out the schedule, with only 4 runs allowed over the 4 games, that does check pretty much all the boxes, and salvages a 5-5 road trip.
So far the Marte era is like a Renaissance, plague included.
Burch Smith made 3 appearances in July and has just 2 Ks in 7 IP since sticky stuff enforcement began.
Gold Cup champs!
Yeah, that was a fun game to watch.
NFL owners continue to operate on a separate plane of reality.
Yet the A’s are assholes for wanting some tax credits…
wiki:
I woke up just in time to see the USA blow a one-run lead over Japan in the ninth, fail to score either of the extra-inning runners placed on first and second (yuck), and then lose on a perfectly executed bunt + deep fly ball against Edwin Jackson. Much Scioscia Face was observed.
Nick Allen 1-4 with an RBI double.
The tournament set-up seems weird.
AFAICT, the group play only affects seeding in the subsequent double-elimination knockout, and by winning their group, the US ends up having to play one fewer game, but also gets the tougher draw of playing the other group winner (Japan) first, which means the winner of Dominican Republic (1-2 overall) and Israel (1-3, including being mercy ruled in their second loss to S. Korea) will get to play an elimination game with the US (2-1).
whatever they did against fletcher and ohtani, they should keep doing it
no doubt a win for the A’s, but this reeks of a game 161 dagger crawford box HR
i think bregman is further away
Skye Bolt now uses The Outfield’s “Your Love” as his walk up music. On a brighter note he hit a legitimate inside the park home run.
Homer Bailey is giving up line drives all over the yard. Nothing to see there, tonight at least.
what’s with the TBD for pitching today and tomorrow?
There is nothing good that can be coming from that. We cant trade, there isnt anyone we would be calling up that would start. Unless Fiers magically healed, built up his pitch count without anyone knowing, and found 5mph…
Just lit my first Coliseum coals of the season and it feels fucking great.