Pitching for the M’s: Godless communist Venezuelan-not-man-candy Felix Hernandez. I am so sick of opening the season against this guy.
On the side of good: All-american funnyman twittering demigod, Brandon McCarthy.
#Athletics Opening Night lineup: Weeks 2B, Pennington SS, Crisp LF, Smith DH, Suzuki C, Reddick RF, Cespedes CF, Allen 1B, Sogard 3B.
— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) March 28, 2012
I’ll be asleep but dreaming of the A’s whiffing and grounding out softly. Despite his Felixness, I’m calling this one for the A’s, 3-1.
Yay, baseball
Yay!
M’s:
Figgins 3B, Ackley 2B, Ichiro RF, Smoak 1B, Montero DH, Carp LF, Olivo C, Saunders CF, Ryan SS.
I think I might actually stay up for this, really weird to see Ichiro batting third…
Also Kurt batting 5th?
I can’t wait for the pop ups!
This whole lineup is weird.
I’d swap Pennington and Reddick too.
Even on this team, Pennington has done nothing to show he’s any better than a bottom 3 hitter in the lineup.
I’ve heard he was a bottom.
What the hell does this mean?
Wait….you want me to explain my posts now? I was told there would be no math.
Melvin says that Kurt has been swinging the bat well lately and he has good career stats against Felix.
I predict 0-4 with 2 Ks.
I predict 4-4 with 2 HR
So 2 K’s and 2 pop ups
1 pop up and one GIDP in a gamechanging situation.
Well, I’ve seen 5 of our guys play before which I think makes me an expert on this years team.
If you put the Mariners and A’s hitters together could you come up with a good hitting team?
Only after you remove the A’s players
That’s Beane’s job I think.
Hmmm…..C Montero, 1B Nobody, 2B Weeks, SS Nobody, 3B Ackley, LF Nobody, CF Cespedes, RF Ichiro…..eh not really
Man oh man, this is gonna be a long next hour, I keep dozing off….must….fight….the urge….baseba….ll….
Greetings from the viewing party at the Red Lion. All those within striking distance of Hegenberger are welcome! We have food and drink (nonalcoholic of course) and are listening to Townie and watching the 1989 World Series highlights.
1989 when A’s players were big (naturally of course) and earthquakes were bigger.
So what kind of a hitter is Montero going to end up being? Yankees prospects tend to get a lot of hype.
I’ve never been a big fan of Montero, but I’m kind of rooting for him to be a decent hitter just so that NY doesn’t win that trade.
But in reality he’d have to absolutely mash to be worth more than Pineda, seeing as he’ll be DH-ing sooner than later.
If you mean today, then sooner it is!
I was surprised the M’s gave up Pineda.
Me too
I think he can really hit and the Mariners got the better of the trade. I’d always trade an excellent pitcher for an excellent position player. Of course I’d probably have traded Randy Johnson for Tim Salmon or someone like that, but those are the chances you take.
I’m an A’s fan so I’d only trade for people I’ve never heard of.
Unfortunately, those are already on A’s roster
Tell me about it. In my 30+ years of being an A’s fan I think this is the team I know the least about.
You knew the ’79 team better?
Didn’t become a fan until 81.
Smart
I was a 7 year old with a plan.
2 billion for the Dodgers?….How much are the Yankees worth then? 4 billion?
and the A’s are worth an expired coupon to Burger King.
Yum!
And Weeks sends the first pitch of 2012 season over the fence!
I know nobody cares, but I ended up with Weeks on my fantasy team by mistake. It was an auction draft, I was not active for a while and some sort of autopilot turned on and bid $12 for Weeks. Of course, nobody bid more, so I’m stuck with him.
Oof
I put in a $10 on him but didn’t get him. He was the only A’s hitter I bid on.
I grabbed Yoenis for $2 and Suzuki for $1, value?
Is it an A’s-only league?
Heh, I plan too trade one to an A’s homer.
As far as Suzuki, I only like to draft $1 catchers.
So do the A’s
A 10 man A’s only league….that would be fun….or not…..I’m going with not.
… they’d still be battling for third place
I wanted Yoenis but he went for $16 in our auction and I blew too much on Longoria and Ellsbury.
Great Yoenis value. He’s a lottery ticket, but if he produces it’ll be in fantasy-relevant ways.
I thought Figgins batted first
I thought he was in the Mexican League.
He is in the Not Mexican Enough League
It was harder to tell how douchebaggy he looks back when he wore glasses.
Figgins doesn’t bat, period.
Watching the Andromeda Strain keeping the hopes up for 2012!
How can llama sleep at a time like this?
I went to bed early so I could be ready for the game….well, not really I actually thought the game was tomorrow.
I don’t get mixed league fantasy baseball…..too easy. AL only…. where men are men and back up 3B are nervous.
I’m not seeing the game on my DirecTV MLB package. Is this thing being shown anywhere?
It looks like I missed some interesting programming on Cinemax however.
Looks like atdhe.tv has a link
So I count three Mariners I’d pay to watch play….Ichiro, King Felix and Montero. For the A’s I count 2….Weeks, Cespedes.
I’ve paid to watch much crappier A’s than those 2
I’d include B-Mac on my list.
I’m very interested in Milone, Colon, FDLS too
ROOT is on!
!
If you put a gun to my head and said name 15 A’s players I’d say pull the trigger.
The bullpen’s where I’m very iffy. I have no clue who’s back there right now other than Balfour and Fuentes.
Fautino’s there, no?
The kid from Married with Children?
Bud Bundy
Now working at a Red Lobster near you.
Damn, I’ve gotta say that mlb.tv has really improved this year. And without a price increase…damn.
Some dumb intern at MLB.tv got the audio overlay wrong. The KGMZ audio links to the M’s radio broadcast. I’m actually trying to listen to Controneo and Fosse but they won’t let me.
They’re just doing what’s best for you
How does the overlay feature work? Is it a feature once you download Nextdef or will it work without? I can’t figure it out…
Yeah, you need Nexdef.
Nexdef pros:
-audio overlay
-live dvr
-slightly better quality
cons:
-last year, the Nexdef-enabled MLB.tv was a few seconds behind non Nexdef MLB.tv
Yeah, I had it last year but for some reason I have to download once every couple of months.
Thanks for the help.
I wouldn’t bother for today. It seems as if the M’s radio overlay is a few seconds ahead of the video broadcast.
Okay I got my chew and seeds going and I just shot up with some HGH…..I’m ready for baseball!
Are you 42 feet tall now?
Nope….5 inches but it’s thick.
If you aren’t up at 3 am to watch your A’s your either a pussy or smart…..probably smart.
and my first your instead of you’re error of the season. Yay for me!
Bullpens are underneath the stands?! That is wild.
Damn.
McCarthy so far:
7 batters faced, 6 groundballs, 1 K.
Shit, that sinker is looking deadly.
Yay Brandon!
1 down! weird to see them in home whites but not at the coli
Have we won yet?
Ichiro chopper, stunned!
Yay Brandon!!
Smoaked, LETS GO AAAA’s
Well, that half inning was some pretty pitching by McCarthy.
JEMILE!
WEEKS!!!!
Yay Jemile!
Ohayou gozaimasu, FKers!
What’s for breakfast?
Hi there, welcome to FK!
Howdy! Glad to be here and completely awake now!
Oh that’s good, another season of guys swinging at Ball 4. That was my pet peeve last year…
Hope they can make something happen while Felix is still human
Nope
I find Pennington hitting second to be very annoying but on this team, it’s almost reasonable.
Such is the state of this team.
I just hope it’s not a regular occurrence. Crossing my fingers that Smith and Reddick hit themselves in to the top of the order…
Or Cespedes
I like him 9th
Nice to see Weeks looking less like Willie May Hayes this year.
He hates pushups
We got a feed working just in time to see Jemile steal. About 35 people are here now.
Hi 35 people!
Nice!
Oh, it’s that jagoff doing the work behind home plate.
I cannot STAND his stupid 180 strikeout spin move.
Oh Kurt, don’t prove me right.
Well at least we’re making contact on him.
Damn almost plunked Cespedes
Heh, definitely some “welcome to me m’FKer!” action going on there.
That was an ugly AB.
Yeah, that swinging 3rd strike was ugly, but that 2nd strike was a dirty pitch. I think most guys on this team would look silly on that pitch.
looked pretty 12-6, dirty is right.
Opening Day is second only to Festivus for holidays I hold dear in my heart.
Heads up play Pennington!
Thank the lawd.
HAHAHAHAHA
This made me LOL for some reason.
My gawd, we are watching 2 terrible teams right now.
Well at least that half wasn’t a yawner, Kurt looked good on that second throw.
So is Kila with the team still?
Not that I’m not happy to see Allen out there.
yes. not at 1st because melvin thought he wouldn’t handle mccarthy’s groundballs well. snerk. he’ll be there tomorrow.
Holy crap that place is spotless.
at the red lion. thought i’d have more use for my computer but i forgot i even had it with.
HR. boooooooo!
ok, I’m back from my lunch-date. what did I miss?
the winning run?
Hee
Well, there’s the mlb.tv I know. Was working just fine and then 10 minutes ago it just stopped and will not get the feed back up for now.
@#$%^&!
Same here…
erm, um… lone stranger posted the justin.tv link on his FB.
Yeah, I’ve lost the feed 3 times already. You just got to keep reloading it.
Penny!
yeah, nice one.
which keeps getting better.
That ballpark food looks amazing.
Take some pitches at least
great, authoritative, resounding grounders with RISP. That’s my A’s
WOOOO
How great of season is this going to be with Suzuki playing like this ALL YEAR!
kurzuki’s first popup!
ouch!
yoenis’s first ouch!
Well, the important thing is that Allen looks like a ballplayer – he has a plan when he goes out there!
how much are those jeans?
Okay I took a Justified break….have the A’s scored and more importantly is Melvin trying to kill Raylan Givens?
Big zone for felix?
In my mind it looks about right….also in my mind I’ve gone to Carolina.
it seems different for the two pitchers.
That’s what it looks like to me
It’s a conspiracy….a C-O-N spiracy.
I thought that Felix benefited from some calls on the inside corner vs lefties. But they were also super nasty pitches, so maybe he just hit the spots.
So FKing sick of facing Felix every FKing opening day
I’d love to see him go to the National League.
unicorn sighting! (replay from yesteryear…)
chone!!!! (shakes fist for bloom’s sake.)
DP time please
16 ground ball outs – yowza.
M’s invited 170 season ticket holders to Safeco for a live viewing.
Classy.
All I got was a call from the A’s begging me to buy greatly reduced season tickets today.
Yay, productive outs!
Boo, unproductive popups.
A hit would be lovely
FML, that ball was hit really well. It finds the gap, 3:1 A’s
UUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
JOBU!!!
Wow, Yoenis has some powerful wrists!
Me too from all the jer…..uh….um….jersey shore watching I do…..wait that’s actually worse.
Really?!
DUMBEST MOVE EVER
FK all managers.
Why oh why, way to stunt the ol’ confidence there Bob…
Did anyone vote Bob for goat of the series?
Melvin was definitely the goat of the game.
Chooooooone! *shakes fist*
It sure is shocking that this is a low scoring game.
Another wasted leadoff double, really?
C’mon A’s
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
This does not bode well.
I sure hope this series doesn’t sap all joy the Tokyo fans derive from baseball.
heh, my neck and shoulders are already in mid-season form.
A’s Baseball : It will sap all the joy in the world.
One can only hope that will get Felix out of the game
What do I know about Ryan Cook? He’s named Ryan Cook.
Any idea why McCarthy was pulled? Only 82 pitches.
He had some tweeting he had to take care of.
That’s what every other half-inning is for.
I thought that was for groupies?
How many actual good DH’s are there these days?
RISP : A’s 1-13, M’s 0-5
RIP scoring during A’s games.
As if that was ever alive.
Hmm….good point.
It must be fun to pitch against the A’s or the Mariners.
I wonder if managers with struggling pitchers plan ahead for slump-busters like the A’s.
The A’s hitters are the slump busting chicks of Major League Baseball.
a 3-4-5 of Crisp, Smith and Suzuki is sure to put fear in the hearts of little league pitchers everywhere.
It puts fear in the hearts of A’s fans, that’s for sure.
Well, at least the game is moving quickly. The lack of Major League hitters helps.
If Crisp has a slow start how many articles are going to be written that it’s due to him playing in LF instead of CF?
None, because no one pays attention to A’s baseball.
I think it’s the Coliseum’s fault.
Sleepytime beddybye’s greatest hopes:
Suzuki/ Smoak/ Montero
Suzuki/ Cespedes/ Allen
If the A’s don’t win this game I’ll never get over it….or more likely I’ll forget it ever happened by Noon. Time to go to work.
Care for some MOJO anyone?
That Wilhelmsen kid seems to be pretty good. Last year he had two saves in zero opportunitites.
AND he wears high socks and can make you a fine Long Island Iced Tea.
I wish he was on the A’s.
AHAHHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
That was an awkward looking catch
As annoying as all the “We’re in Japan! How weird!” commentary is from these Mariners announcers, I have to admit that watching this game makes me miss living in Japan a little bit. But not the part where I had to do this waking-up-before-dawn-to-watch-baseball thing on a regular basis.
F_ck, poor Reddick
Extra innings BOOBIES
1-13 is all I gotta say, Think Allen will get subbed next AB?
With Kila?
FUUUUUUU in…
and not a bad little half-inning from him.
Bottom of the tenth! Time to scare the cat by yelling at the TV!
Incredible – FUUUUUU didn’t FK it up.
Two lefties and Olivo. I’m glad FUUUUUUU met that incredibly low standard.
Meet the new A’s – same as the old A’s
But I’m still getting fooled again
I knew I shoulda stayed in bed.
Even Beds in bed…
Feel free to go back.
We’ll wake you up when September ends.
Actually, my favorite Green Day song is “Chump”
Happy Opening Day, everyone!
That’s funny.
Over/ under on a tease?
Terrible…
Fucking umpire wants to go home early.
That was ball four to Crisp.
Damn… two inches to the right and League would’a got Dickie Thon-ned
Well Sal, you got the final score right…
Well, that didn’t make me feel much better.
sigh – one down, 96 to go
It’s very strange waking up to catch a disheartening A’s loss. But then I see our lineup, and bullpen, and am surprised the team hung around as long as it did.
I didn’t find this one particularly crushing. It sucks to lose a close game, but I don’t think anyone realistically expected this offense to score a lot of runs against Felix.
Things I was happy to see:
* McCarthy looked sharp, though that pitch to Ackley was a definite mistake. I started to see more pitches up in the zone from him in the later innings — maybe that’s why he got pulled with such a low pitch count.
* Pretty good bullpen performance.
* Cespedes showing very easy power on that double.
* A good day for Pennington, at the plate and in the field.
Things I was not so happy to see:
*
CespedesPedro Cerrano getting brutalized on curveballs. I’m sure he be seeing many more.* No walks (and barely any three ball counts) against 10 Ks, but it seemed like a pitcher’s strike zone.
* Allen had a very rough night. That one play where he had to quickly step on first base after receiving a throw from Sogard makes me think that he could really cost a lot of runs if he gets regular playing time at first.
* That stupid bunt decision from Melvin.
Another thing that impressed me, was how quickly Weeks ran down Ichiro. He just EXPLODED!
Yeah, I noticed that too. I don’t think Ichiro was going full speed there, but Weeks is very fast.
True, but Ichiro did pull away from Pennington in the same rundown.
I mean that I think Ichiro didn’t bother to accelerate much after turning back towards 2B. But don’t let any of this take away from the main point that Weeks was clearly hauling ass there.
Yeah, he wasn’t about to let that “old man” out run him :)
I fixed that for you.
I take it Cespedes’ double came on a fastball?
I don’t remember. I think it was a low pitch that he hit, so it might have even been a curve. But even if that is the case, it wouldn’t really make up for the pitches he swung at in the AB against Wilhelmsen.
It’s possible that Cespedes just had a tough night against some pitchers with really good curves (Felix is awesome, of course, but Wilhelmsen’s curve was nasty too). I stand by my prediction that he’ll see plenty of curveballs this season, so we’ll have a better idea soon enough.
Please someone tell me that this morning was a dream.
yes, it was. but it was one of those dreams that are also true, like when you dream about peeing and peeing and peeing and you wake up with a squirt.
That wasn’t pee. And stop spying on me.
True story: in my pre-teens/teens, I would often dream about opening the sports section and looking at the score of the previous day’s A’s game. Invariably, when I got up and actually looked at the paper, the result would be the opposite of that in my dream. It didn’t happen every night, but a few times a season.
like, the scores were right but opposite? or just who W/L was opposite without the numbers matching?
just checking how wowed i should be.
Just W/L.
fairly wowed.
This morning I set my alarm for 6, planning to get up and hopefully catch the tail end of the game on the radio. I decided, though, that I was too sleepy to get out of bed without knowing whether the game was still going, so I would just check the score on my phone, which was next to my bed. Only I guess I was too lazy to actually check the score. Instead, I dreamed that I checked the score and that the A’s had lost 5-0, justifying my return to sleep.
That would have been preferable to following the game by phone, which is what I did because I was too lazy to get up and go downstairs to watch TV and, but for insomnia, would have preferred the sleep over the game. I ended up falling back asleep as we went into extra innings.
This is very close to what I did this morning — set my alarm to get up at 6:30 (central time), but decided when the time came that I was far too comfortable to get up and watch baseball. At one point, though, I did check the score on my phone, and even though it was tied 1-1, I still went back to sleep. Eventually managed to catch the last half inning (you know, the part when we lost), so that was good, I guess. I realized I have a lot of catching up to do on who’s on the roster and what they all look like. (Seth Smith? Okay…)
https://twitter.com/#!/BMcCarthy32/status/185034963110998016
Thanks, and go As.
Someone needs to tweet him that image.
if I had it I would
Thanks, and go As.
you mean this one?
Speaking of which, I heart Jeff:
Jeff raises a good point there. Why let Carignan face the lefty Ackley when you have Blevins ready to face the lefty Ichiro up next? They both got hits, so whatever, but it still seems dumb.
Yeah, I thought the bullpen decisions were weird . Cook was brought in to face a righty, followed by 3 lefties and a switch hitter. It worked out fine, but still, I would have preferred Cook to be a ROOGY, followed by Blevins for the next 3-4 batters.
Based on his comments this spring, I get the impression that Melvin really likes Cook. I could see him ending up as a primary setup guy later this year if the A’s trade Fuentes and/or Balfour.
I thought Cook looked pretty good in his inning. Looked like he was around the strike zone with pretty good stuff. But maybe he just looked good because he was facing Mariners hitters…
Melvin used Cook first so I could get some points in FAIL#1.
Why let Carignan pitch at all when DLS was still available?
Why take out Balfour after 1 inning when there’s a week of off days coming up?
Why take out McCarthy after just 82 pitches?
I’m with you on the first two. McCarthy tweeted that he was starting to feel a little tired and he’s still working his pitch count up.
Good thing Bob follows him
asvd
That one!
Thanks, and go As.
Tweak it to say FK and send him an invitation.
I added it to our tagline rotator. Also added “Stealing taglines from Lookout Landing since 2012.”
excellent
I’m surprised it took us that long.
Paging JediLeroy
Thanks, and go As.
YES!
Thanks, and go As.
I feel like we need our scoreboard on there. Otterpops for sale! Otterpops! Otterpops for sale!
I love this guy so much.
Oh, Brandon. Never ever change.
When he retires, can we sign him to a life-time deal as a fan? That’ll be his job title with the A’s: Fan.
Fucking douchebags.
https://twitter.com/#!/EricFisherSBJ/status/185040927235121152
Thanks, and go As.
Yay!
(Still going to sleep through it)
(Don’t have MLB Network anyway)
Conveniently starting just as my 2-hour conference call will be ending.
Conveniently starting just in the middle of my dream. Or possibly at Bathroom Break #1 or #2.
What the fuck? Come on. I’m tired, I was going to get up at 6:00 or whatever to watch the replay before starting my 12-hour work day. I can’t stay up to watch a 2:00 live broadcast and THEN work 12 hours (I’m not good at napping). But now that I know there will be a live broadcast, I’m probably going to be stupid and stay up anyway.
So the A’s lost! Those sons of bitches. I think this pretty much means they won’t win the World Series now.
At the end of the season, we’ll be able to point to this day and say, “Our season ended in Tokyo.”
Jeez…I wake up, go to work, bust ass relentlessly, finally get home and check the internet, and the A’s are the worst team in baseball.
Yes, but we are only ONE GAME OUT of first!
nice.
I fear we will need to keep a positive outlook this season.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
Was today first day back? That’s always a tough one.
i don’t think i’m going to make it to the red lion tonight. and i think i discovered it’s tougher to stay up the next day after 3 hours of sleep than after no sleep at all. i’m done here.
In 2008, I went to the Ricky’s meetup for the first game (didn’t sleep before or after), then slept for only a couple of hours before watching the 2nd game on TV, then went to a job interview that involved an aptitude test with math. That was super fun.