NBCSNCA (whatever) has a live reporter out there during the pregame show, which was nice. In the North Lot where the SELL tailgaters set up. Seemed crowded.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
That’s a good question. The announcement coverage from February doesn’t say. Another question I have, since the home opener is just two months away, is whether one can see work in progress at Raimondi right now. Because the money part of the Oakland Ballers / Yolo High Wheelers plans still feels quite wish-casty.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
Season attendance at the Coliseum is right around 600K, down from 832K last year. The median crowd is 5K but a few Dodgers and Giants games plus fireworks nights push the mean up to more like 7.5K. That week of games vs. the Pirates and Marlins at the end of April, oh my
Through 3 games the mean is 7595 and the median is 5425.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
26,902 for the opening 3 game series.I started taking notes expecting most sunday games to beat those 4 games. I was wrong! Most teams did not have higher attendance this sunday than the A’s 4 game series.
Appropriately for a combined andeux/Soaker birthday, I was considering today the math behind that very question.
Assume you have a team with a .400 chance of winning each game. (That’s a 65-win team, a little better than you and I both think they are.) If they are currently N games below .500, what is the probability P(N) that they will ever make it back to .500. (For simplicity, this assumes an infinite number of games. But since the central limit theorem says that in the long run they will drift far below .500, the chances of them getting to .500 after more than 162 games are basically zero. So the probabilities for a 162-game season and an infinite season are essentially the same).
So we have
P(0) = 1 [If they are currently at .500, then they have achieved the goal of being .500]
and for N >= 1
P(N) = .4 * P(N-1) + .6 * P(N+1)
Now we can assume (with my second bit of hand-waving) an answer of the form P(N) = r^N, and so we have
r = .4 + .6 r^2
This has two solutions, 1 and 2/3, the second of which (third bit of hand-waving) is our answer.
That is, once a .400 team is 1 game below .500, they still have a 2/3 (67%) chance of making it back to .500 at some point, but once they are 2 games below .500 that falls to 4/9 (44%), 3 games below it is only 8/27 (30%) etc.
Earliest in Oakland history the A’s have fallen below .500 and never gotten back there:
1979: Game 1 on 4/6 (54-108)
1998: Game 1 on 4/1 (74-88)
2023: Game 3 on 4/2 (50-112)
1993: Game 9 on 4/17 (68-94)
2009: Game 11 on 4/18 (75-87)
1994: Game 15 on 4/21 (51-63)
2015: Game 17 on 4/23 (68-94)
At this point they are clinging to the slim hope that the Nationals series (Games 14-16) will keep them off the top of that list.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
Now at 1-6, and in the last two seasons the A’s have had only two stretches of play in which they gained as many as 5 games on .500 from beginning to end.
1. From 7/21/22 (gm 2 of DH) to 7/29/22 they were 7-1. In the previous 6 games they alternated wins and losses so they were 10-4 from July 12-29, their longest stretch of that level of success.
2. The 7-game winning streak from 6/6/23-6/13/23. It was immediately preceded by a 5-game losing streak and immediately followed by an 8-game losing streak.
They don’t have to win 5 in a row; it could be 10-5, 40-35, whatever. Prospects are kind of bleak though. By andeux’s formula I get a probability of 13.17%.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
I just wanted to check your work, so I wrote a brute force simulation. Model in blue dots, simulation in red line.
Bravo – you were spot on!
I also included lines for teams of true talent .300 – .700. A .600 team that falls ten games under, like the 2001 A’s (started 8-18, ended with 102 wins = .630 team) is almost certain to hit .500. It took those A’s until game 44 to do so, and game 86 to get there to stay.
Thanks!
For a win percentage p < .500 it is always a decaying exponential, just plug in p and (1-p) in the quadratic equation above and solve for r.
When p>=.500, the probability of getting back to .500, given an infinite number of games remaining, is always 1, but the approximation that let us treat a long but finite season as (more or less) the same as an infinite season is no longer valid, both because of the central limit theorem again.
In the case p>.500 a different approximation, of the chance that they are above .500 at the end of the season assuming a normal distribution, should work pretty well.
I don’t immediately see an easy way to get an estimate for p=.500, though the line in your simulations looks awfully close to straight.
Inyeresting points. In my simulation I approximated infinite as 10000 games. But that’s not valid for p>.5 as you point out,because given an infinite number of games that team should always get over .500. If I’m feeling ambitious ill do a parameter sweep from 100 to 1e6 with p =.55. We should see a dependence per your comment.
Champions Golf tournament is lost on one of the real bonehead moves I’ve seen. Tied going to 18, Goosen puts second shot in water. So Alker obviously should lay up, except he doesn’t, and he goes in the water too. Alker misses his par putt, Goosen makes his and wins. Alker’s caddie needed to lay down the law there.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
Golf 101: Par 5 with water in front, go for it if you’re in the fairway but lay up if you’re not. Going to the final hole of the tournament, these guys are tied, and the drives are right next to each other, neither in the fairway.
Goosen plays first, and I sort of get his thought about going for it (“don’t lose by playing it safe”). Not the right decision, but I understand. He fails dismally.
So all Alker had to do was lay up, and he would be playing his third shot from the same place Goosen has to play his fourth from. A free one-shot advantage which he fails to take. It’s not clear on the video but his ball hit across the penalty line and then rolled back into the water. Goosen got to drop in the fairway, Alker had to drop in the rough adjacent to the water, and Goosen made the better approach shot and was able to sink the putt.
Joe Boyle is impressive when he gets anywhere near the strike zone.
Otherwise, this team is terrible at everything. I know that isn’t news to anyone here, but I have been reminded of it every time I’ve watched. (I did not see any of yesterday’s game).
Ruiz was sent to AAA
a) to work on his swing (Forst)
b) to reduce his service time (SF Gate)
c) to punish him for wearing Last Dive Bar merchandise (LDB)
It seemed like last summer at some point the A’s soured on Esteury. He went from exciting young guy (steals! glove!) to 4th or 5th outfielder rather quickly. Yes, struggling to hit like you expect from rookies who aren’t really ready yet. I still couldn’t shake the feeling he got himself into the doghouse and never got out. Being sent down with a 1.200 OPS is an odd look, though I don’t doubt the underlying hitting concerns.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
It appears the A’s will travel on the Dallas Mavericks’ team plane again this year. The Mavericks would have priority as long as they stay in the NBA playoffs.
I’ve assumed Fisher and Cuban have a friendship and that’s the reason for that arrangement. However it worked out that way the travel arrangements are one thing Fisher has been first class about.
The CBA provides that an off day is not supposed to be a travel day, so if that were being followed to the letter the A’s would have left Oakland immediately after today’s game. More often than not they do that, but instead they are scheduled to depart at 10:30 tomorrow morning. The players can waive the requirement, and I’ve noticed that when the first game of a road trip is in Detroit or Cleveland they say, “Nah, we’ll hang back here in the Bay Area and travel on the off day, no need to get to those places before we absolutely have to.”
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
I don’t know what I think about Sacramento yet. Just another nail in the coffin, and perhaps it’s better to rip the bandaid? Not sure I can take 3 more years of this heartache.
I’m mixed about it. I lived there for 18 months or so and loved it. And Im a central CA person for better or worse no matter where I live now.
But it adds another layer of crap that the city that had to go through almost this exact scenario with their NBA team is now a willing participant in taking a team away. This whole thing continues to suck and congrats Fisher and Manfred for destroying the fandom of thousands of fans.
Hopefully they’ll ditch green and gold and (foolishly) try for a new Vegas image, maybe black and gold like the Knights. In that event, the classic Oakland A’s gear would still be cool. Much like seeing a Montreal Expos hat today.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
I’m not terribly surprised by the Sacramento decision. It’s cheap and easy, Fisher’s preferred approach to everything.
As always, I can’t fully predict how I’ll feel until I am feeling it. I expect that my A’s fandom ends when they leave Oakland. I certainly won’t go to Sacramento to watch. Who knows where my fan eyeballs will land? Looking forward to some Ballers games this year regardless.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
I’m just angry and tired of this shit. And Fisher can FK right off with this celebrate the final year in Oakland crap. Get out of our lives and let us remember our team without you.
I haven’t been to the Coliseum yet this year, but I will. I’ll absolutely be there for the 9/28/24 last ever Coliseum game. How could I not? It’s like the last show at Winterland. 2024 will be like an Irish wake where I mourn the (soon-to-be) departed and remember the good times, while cursing the son of a bitch that killed my friend.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
That would bring things full circle in a satisfying way. Let’s agree on a plan and take RVSPs over the summer, give folks time to contemplate but still far enough ahead to avoid the rush of nostalgic ticket buyers (if any).
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
Wondering if we should ponder tickets sooner rather than later? Someone just posted this on twitter:
Want to put this out there: If you plan on attending what could be the A’s final game in Oakland (Sep 26), I would buy your tickets sooner than later. Already quite a few sections completely sold out. They’ve began to open additional sections in 3rd deck that aren’t usually open.
Re Paris/London MLB spotting – saw 2 A’s caps (plus our friend Dave’s), one on a young woman who said it was her boyfriend’s. Mostly Yankees and most seemed to be fashion statements with colors all over except traditional blue/white. Quite a few Boston, some LA Dodgers (mostly worn by Asians), and a scattering of other teams. Overall not a lot of baseball love.
Sorry to back out of the seat portion of this party, but my longstanding seat-mate and I decided we want to sit closer for this game. Will not need tickets but will DEFINITELY tailgate with you!
The A’s final regular season game at the Coliseum is Thursday, Sept. 26. The first 25,000 fans into the stadium for the 12:37 p.m. game against the Rangers will receive a replica of the Coliseum.
All of which will be thrown on to the field in the ninth inning, along with various other items.
I will not be there to see the shit show that turns into.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
I had already accepted this outcome and I guess I’d say I feel relief more than anything else. The Players Association statement says they are still in discussion with MLB about playing in Sac and I’d think they will be thrown some bone (some minor tweak to the CBA that they didn’t get in 2022) but I don’t see them blocking this.
There has to be some degree of happiness in Oakland City Hall. That’s an underutilized property and its emptiness most of the time probably has some synergy with the recent well-publicized decline of the Hegenberger corridor. What a golden opportunity to rehabilitate that part of the city. The Coliseum has never generated any ancillary development in that surrounding area; people from outlying areas come in and park or arrive on BART but otherwise spend their money elsewhere. With the right development plan the city has a chance to create many good new jobs and realize a LOT of new tax revenue.
Meanwhile over in the Giants offices today, they’ve been drinking mimosas, but it’s almost noon so they’ll soon forget about the orange juice and just go with straight champagne. They now own the wealthiest single-team market in baseball.
So my final game in Oakland was May 30, 2022. They will be about 2 hours drive from me now rather than nearly 4 (and about 7 when they get to Vegas) but considering how I’ve responded in the first week of this season I’m more likely to just turn the page.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
I thought the city played it well, offering a lease extension at ~$20M/year, enough to make some money and potentially make delaying redevelopment worth it. At the current rate ($1.5M) they may well be directly losing money, even without taking into account that opportunity cost. And it really would not have been that much for the team to pay, especially when the TV issue is taken into account:
By staying in Northern California, the A’s are hopeful of keeping a large share of their local television rights held by NBC Sports California, which is worth a reported $67 million a year.
I remember thinking when that deal (averaging about $40M/year) was signed way back in 2009 that it seemed pretty generous, compared to what other teams were getting, given the A’s low viewership numbers. It has of course gotten even more so.
From the numbers I can find, it looks like they were averaging a little below 10k viewers last year. That means NBC was paying the team something like $44 every time a person watched a single game. I am sure that the team is indeed “hopeful” they can keep that revenue, but if NBC can get out of that because the team is no longer in the bay area TV market then they are the biggest winners in all of this.
One might suppose that the A’s came to some sort of agreement on this before announcing their move, but on the other hand we’ve already seen how they operate. I don’t pretend to understand the economics of this franchise in general, but I have a hard time seeing how this works out well for them. Presumably they are expecting some interest from Sacramento locals excited to have a nominally major-league team, albeit temporarily. But between that tv money issue, the minor-league stadium size (“10,624 fixed seats and can currently hold 14,014 fans with lawn seating and standing room”) and the fact that the team will almost certainly remain terrible, it’s hard to see how they are going to get much local revenue.
If they haven’t made any agreement with NBC Sports Group yet then NBC now has all the leverage there. MLB is already selling the Padres, Diamondbacks and Rockies telecasts direct to consumers and yes, I’d bet NBC would be thrilled to dump the mess on MLB.
Further on property redevelopment, I’m wondering what the current economics of the arena are without a major tenant. That place was fully renovated in the late 1990s, so it’s going on 30 years old in that respect, nearly 60 years since opening and is clearly the third-most desirable facility of its type in the area. If a new development incorporates an arena-type facility it would probably make the most sense to demolish that place at the same time as the stadium goes and build an all-new smaller (7K-8K capacity) building with the goal of grabbing lesser events that can’t fill an NBA or NHL sized arena and requiring a much smaller footprint for both building and parking. But if the developer with the best plan doesn’t want to be in the events business at all, that’s fine too.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
This is what the African American Sports group hopes to accomplish. Also don’t overlook the arena, which still has concerts and ice shows and stuff regularly. There’s still more demand for dates than SF Oracle and SJ (name?) can satisfy.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
Like every development team their pitch is wildly rosy. And ptbnl can tell you about the value of “Specific Plans”. But that site lays out the vision. Long way to go before that, though, including regaining the half of the site which the County idiotically sold to Fisher
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
One of our most talked about ventures is the formation of the first majority Black owned NFL franchise here in Oakland, CA accompanied by a thriving sports, entertainment, educational and business district in East Oakland at the Coliseum Site. The development will serve as the catalyst for the implementation of the Coliseum Site Specific Plan.
The NFL has left the city twice, plus the NBA and now MLB. Why on earth would Oakland put itself in the position of being jerked around by these people yet again? Hell, the voters in Kansas City just rejected a plan to extend a sales tax for a new ballpark for the Royals and stadium improvements for the Chiefs. And there’s not a single thing to do in Kansas City when the Royals and Chiefs aren’t playing, except eat barbecue. Good for those voters. The message to the City of Oakland seems clear to me: stop wasting money on toys that largely benefit people from the suburbs and stick with the meat and potatoes of quality housing, quality commercial development and good full-time jobs that make your city a nice place to live.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
Fans will be able to find the Sacramento-era broadcasts on NBC Sports California just as they do today.
Had they stayed in Oakland, the A’s would have been owed roughly $70 million annually in rights fees from NBC Sports California. They negotiated a reduced rights fee to stay on the station when they’re Sacramento. Kaval declined to disclose specifics.
People briefed on the process had previously said the A’s likely could keep a significant amount of the money if they indeed moved to Sacramento.
“It had to be altered, because this was a slightly different territory,” Kaval said. “We don’t get into the exact numbers. It’s a confidential agreement. … They saw the value, we saw the value.”
An NBC Sports California spokesperson said the company does not comment on rights deals.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
As it turns out, the last game I would ever attend at the Oakland Coliseum was on Sept 11, 2021.
The A’s were playing a hapless Rangers team and had been in the midst of a 2014-esque slow collapse. But I was in town for the last time that year, the matchup was Kaprielian vs Wes Benjamin (likely W I figured), and the team had shown some signs of life recently. The game started out well enough, but when the A’s are in one of those collapses, they really do commit. Eventually, their fate was sealed on an 8th inning go ahead home run by Jonah Heim (thanks Forst) after the bullpen blew a 6-2 lead.
I remember having a sense of foreboding at the time. I figured it was because a) blowing a game against Wes Benjamin was as sure a sign as any this team didn’t have it, and b) I was pretty sure this was the last time I would see Olson, Chapman, Marte, etc in A’s jerseys. I did not realize it would be because of a more insidious, existential reason.
There’s a Fisher quote today at the press conference that, to me, pretty much encapsulates how he views this franchise. Paraphrashing, but he basically said it’s going to be really exciting watching someone like Aaron Judge come in and hit home runs at the Sacramento park.
To most people, this would be a pretty innocuous remark, maybe a stupid faux pas at worst, but to someone who understands the mindset of a fan, it’s pretty sad. Your owner is essentially saying that the best thing that could happen to your team was the opponent coming in and beating up on them. That it doesn’t matter whether the team he owns wins or loses, but that it’s able to draw and provide spectacle. The implicit understanding being that this franchise and brand itself is no longer a worthy draw on its own more merits; it needs an attractive opponent to come in and do that heavy lifting.
Because as long as the dollars roll in, Fisher is perfectly fine with this franchise being the Washington Generals to the rest of the league’s Harlem Globetrotters.
It’s a comment about as tone deaf as Manfred’s “just a piece of metal” remark. But this is how these so called stewards of the game perceive of it now.
For the fans who’ve lived and died with each win, with each trade and FA signing that worked out or didn’t, that followed Zach Gelof and Tyler Soderstrom since their draft, hoping they can be the next Olson and Chapman, that’s just heartbreaking. To know that your owner is not a fan of his own franchise (that was always clear), but that he can’t even come close to conceptualizing a fan’s mindset.
So in the end, this is the saddest thing of all. And it explains perfectly why Fisher has done everything he has to this point.
"Nobody in the ballpark. 0-5. Hitless through 7. It feels like rock bottom." – Gary Cohen on the state of the Mets.
A reminder that this is game 6 of 162. The Mets still have 156 games left to play, and boy, are things getting late early in Flushing… pic.twitter.com/zYPjye0PGX
July 1st – the one true date for retiring from the University of California. Any other date and you miss a year’s pay rise or cost of living increase.
I’d originally planned on early January for complicated reasons to do with the lab being on a different pay cycle to campus, and even went as far as to book a post-retirement European brewers’ tour for April, before agreeing to delay to July to give them more time to replace me.
The tour will go ahead anyway using up some of my accumulated vacation … Edinburgh, London, Brussels, Cologne, Munich, Prague and Berlin, starting Friday.
A few years ago a senior (director-level) person in my office was very suddenly “no longer employed by this company.” It turned out he had been using a powerful GPU machine in his office for crypto mining.
He was a machine-learning guy, so had a plausible excuse for having such a system in the first place, but using company resources (network and power) for it got him fired once corporate IT noticed it. (Our local lower-level IT guy told a bunch of people that he had already suspected that’s what the machine was for, but didn’t bother to report it.)
Of course, he got a job at the same level at a better-known tech company like a week later.
(And, yeah, I realize that the machine you’re talking about is probably orders of magnitude bigger.)
Baseball hats of Madrid report: Far more widespread fashion accessory than when I was in Barcelona seven years ago. Yankees hats everywhere, in every color. Also quite a few Dodgers caps, all in the traditional blue. A smattering of Red Sox, two Nationals, and one A’s cap, in red. No other MLB teams seen. Also many Raiders logos on hats jackets and shirts.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
I still think the A’s aren’t doing Joe Boyle any favors by having him in the major league rotation right now.
And same with Hernaiz being on the roster, although that is probably a consequence of not having a real option at back up SS (or starting SS, for that matter…).
Braden just pointed out that Langeliers is just setting up the target in the middle of the zone every pitch and hoping that the ball ends up somewhere in the strike zone.
Good start from the results perspective: 5 IP, 0 R, 2 H, 6K, in line for the win.
The process still leaves something to be desired: 3 walks and a HBP, a WP, 43 strikes + 44 balls.
Jenny Cavnar just said (multiple times, over the course of a couple minutes) that the A’s were ahead 1-0 when it’s actually 1-1.
So far I think she’s pretty bad in general.
Nice win by the Dubs in LA, bringing them a game closer to passing the Lakers. They have really turned it around in the last few weeks – too bad it took them so long to find their game. It looks like we’ll miss the play-in games, but if they go further we’ll need to find a late-night sports bar in London.
I was surprised at how not obvious it was that Real Madrid was playing a big game as we walked through town. I figured there’d be crowds in bars hollering everywhere, but in the three blocks from Metro to hotel, during the 2nd half, it was just like every other night. We’re in the gay district so maybe that was a factor? Sounds like it was a dramatic match too.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
Confirms my feeling that the city did the right thing by making a tough but reasonable offer and letting the team walk away (again). Fuck Dave Kaval.
And this is great:
Broome is undeterred. “All we need is a 19-year-old kid named Vida Blue, a 20-year-old guy named Reggie Jackson,” he said. “We just need three, four, five guys. We need to look in the Dominican Republic for a shortstop, for Omar Vizquel.” (Vizquel is Venezuelan.)
It was settled when Ranadive said the four-letter F word, FREE.
Even if the Players’ Association makes them put as much as $30M into improvements in the West Sac ballpark, which would be a lot, that’s only $10M/year effective rent for the three years stated, or $6M/year if/when it extends through 2029. It would not make sense for Oakland to go that low plus tie up the property for another five years with the games pulling in ever-dwindling attendance.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
Yeah, that’s about it. I’m sure they are getting much less from the renegotiated TV deal, but sleeping on the Rivercats couch until they get a job makes up for it.
Hard to argue with Ranadive’s play. Put Fisher up for the low, low price of on the house and then try to take the team off his hands in the not unlikely event Vegas goes bust.
Tim Keown has become the journalist of record on Oakland Athletics franchise news the last few years. I’d imagine he’s got a book in mind, and I’ll read it. Interesting parallels between the demise of sports in Oakland and the demise of sports journalism; Keown had to leave the local paper to do it right.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
I had today’s game on the whole time, but didn’t even realize Sears had a no-hitter going until it got broken up in the 7th.
Bullpen held on for the 1-0, combined 1-hitter victory, helped in part by a weird double play (4-1-5-6) when Gelof dropped a pop fly near the mound (not on purpose) and the infield fly rule was not called.
Miller hit 104 in the 9th.
Tour journeyman Ben An is -1 so Cal has 3 of the 14 who are under par.
We do have a ways to go to catch Stanford for Green Jackets. Tiger is 7 shots back but with 21 players ahead of him plus having to walk 36 more holes he’s out of contention. In 2026 he’s eligible for Champions Tour where they can drive a cart, and about 1/3 of the players do. If he chooses to play that tour and doesn’t have to walk he’s going to win pretty often.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
Morikawa crashed and burned at 9, and going into the water at 11 was just more salt in the wound. Homa hung in there until he went into the bushes behind the green at 12 and that was that. Anyway, after Scheffler had the three-shot turnaround over Morikawa at 9, nobody was going to catch him on the back nine.
After making the cut at +1, Tiger shot 82 and 77 to finish last, pretty much confirming that he can’t go more than 36 holes right now.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
Somehow the Yankees didn’t do any better, getting 1 or 2 WAR (depending on which source you use) out of him before trading his last and best pre-free-agency year to the Reds for Shed Long.
I think he may be “better” at it but it still anticeptic. And when I think about it gross. I would much rather have a confused Johnny doskow, or a pleaseant Alex Jensen over a failgreatgrandson.
Caray has good technique, he might develop an authentic voice some day. So far it’s so aw-shucks that it’s cringy. Also the elder statesman role does not suit Dallas, at all. He’s gotten worse.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
Harry called the A’s games along with Monte in 1970, when I was an impressionable 9 years old.
So every time I was at the Coliseum and an A’s player hit a routine fly ball, I would jump up and yell “IT MIGHT BE…IT COULD BE…”, much to the annoyance of everyone within a couple rows.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
In other broadcaster news, there’s a flaw in my Phillie fan exit strategy: John Kruk is intolerable. Today he spent a whole inning (during a close game mind you) on a story about how college student Kruk proudly walked out of a Philosophy class because the professor tried to teach him to question opinions.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
Don’t know if today’s Real/City tilt qualifies as great, but it sure was riveting. Kinda of stunned at the result, City looked like it could’ve scored five or six times. Also Primera reports that in Madrid people did in fact pour out of the bars in jubilation after the PK win.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
I didn’t really get an opportunity to declare an official Soaker Day this year. Even I am not quite glum enough to say “Opening Night, duh”. And I’m not doing it for the Las Vegas Athletics of West Sacramento so that minor tradition is over.
I think the A’s have made their run back toward .500 but at four games under with a 10-game East Coast Death March impending that looks over.
So, starting on May 1, 2022, the A’s will play their final 465 games as the Oakland A’s starting only 4 of them with a non-losing record: the first 3 games last season (0-0, 1-0, 1-1) plus Opening Night this year.
Treacherous chasms of half-truth and despair. -- Ken Korach
Uncharacteristically, I (sort of) beat you to it this year by calling it in the first inning of game 2.
Technically this was premature: fangraphs says we still had a 30% chance of winning that game, and by my own calculations the next day that gave us an overall chance of returning to .500 at some point of well over 60%. It was not until the fifth inning that our win probability fell below 10%, putting the chance of ever returning to .500 below 50%.
Nevertheless, I stand by that call.
That was nice of them to play Stephen Vogt’s walk up song
Bob II found out that the bullpen is not better in san francisco
there is a guy in amets coat and Guardians cap i John fishers seat.
Did he put it on stub hub?
A’s batters are really trying to get Bieber’s pitch count up
Will they give the attendance on the broadcasts this year?
13,522 (per the box score)
Any estimates on the number of people in the parking lot?
NBCSNCA (whatever) has a live reporter out there during the pregame show, which was nice. In the North Lot where the SELL tailgaters set up. Seemed crowded.
Looks pretty robust in the pics with this article. Also LOL at the Dave Kaval impersonator.
Officially 3,837 for game 2 … how many people will Raimondi Park hold?
That’s a good question. The announcement coverage from February doesn’t say. Another question I have, since the home opener is just two months away, is whether one can see work in progress at Raimondi right now. Because the money part of the Oakland Ballers / Yolo High Wheelers plans still feels quite wish-casty.
Through 3 games the mean is 7595 and the median is 5425.
18,000 at Bay FC of the WSL homoe opener.
4118 for a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
26,902 for the opening 3 game series.I started taking notes expecting most sunday games to beat those 4 games. I was wrong! Most teams did not have higher attendance this sunday than the A’s 4 game series.
mets (22K)
orioles (20k)
reds (13k)
rays (14k)
marlins (15k)
whie sox (17k)
royals (13k)
dbacks (21k)
Easter Sunday, when it falls during baseball season, and Mother’s Day are both tough draws for everybody.
The announced attendance for today’s game in Detroit was 99.2% of the total announced attendance for the seven games at the Coliseum.
A’s hitters are 2-for-2 on balls in play!
Halftime of the Carolina game, got to hear Dallas describe a double play as “roll me up something tight”
Turns out that was the high point.
Do you think Dallas has a spot where he can go smoke out to make it through games like this, or does he just pop an edible before it starts?
Before it starts, end of the 3rd, and 7th inning stretch perhaps.
(click)
I walked away to talk to slf for maybe 5 minutes? It was 1-0
Implies you watched at all, which is on you.
true
Not that bad. some decent at bats. One bad inning.
-1296
-810
-1026
-729 after 4 is exactly the same as last year … consistency!
I think MLBTV had 1 free game yesterday. Good way to grow the game, morans.
I just saw matt olson double, but since the sound is off and it is on an ipad screen, I didn’t recognize him because his stance looked different.
Soaker Day may have come early this year after all.
And speaking of holidays, happy 15th krautversary.
15th is the Crystal Anniversary. I will observe by drinking cheap bourbon from a fancy glass.
Even in a great A’s year this would be a miserable night to be at the Coliseum, I am shocked anyone is there at all.
Five are family for the big league debut of Mitch Spence. He did great! They looked cold
JD Davis is matching matt chapman
At least there was a tease in this one
A lead!
Yay, lawyerball.
I hope everyone enjoyed those 7 minutes.
I was on the bus and missed it. I did see that it happened
I considered naming our mutual birthday as Soaker Day this year, but it looks like it’s a couple days too late. Happy Birthday anyway!
Happy Birthday Soaker!
Appropriately for a combined andeux/Soaker birthday, I was considering today the math behind that very question.
Assume you have a team with a .400 chance of winning each game. (That’s a 65-win team, a little better than you and I both think they are.) If they are currently N games below .500, what is the probability P(N) that they will ever make it back to .500. (For simplicity, this assumes an infinite number of games. But since the central limit theorem says that in the long run they will drift far below .500, the chances of them getting to .500 after more than 162 games are basically zero. So the probabilities for a 162-game season and an infinite season are essentially the same).
So we have
P(0) = 1 [If they are currently at .500, then they have achieved the goal of being .500]
and for N >= 1
P(N) = .4 * P(N-1) + .6 * P(N+1)
Now we can assume (with my second bit of hand-waving) an answer of the form P(N) = r^N, and so we have
r = .4 + .6 r^2
This has two solutions, 1 and 2/3, the second of which (third bit of hand-waving) is our answer.
That is, once a .400 team is 1 game below .500, they still have a 2/3 (67%) chance of making it back to .500 at some point, but once they are 2 games below .500 that falls to 4/9 (44%), 3 games below it is only 8/27 (30%) etc.
Excellent prestidigitation. I am hearing that the Blackburn in a box tomorrow is 70% dead.
Earliest in Oakland history the A’s have fallen below .500 and never gotten back there:
1979: Game 1 on 4/6 (54-108)
1998: Game 1 on 4/1 (74-88)
2023: Game 3 on 4/2 (50-112)
1993: Game 9 on 4/17 (68-94)
2009: Game 11 on 4/18 (75-87)
1994: Game 15 on 4/21 (51-63)
2015: Game 17 on 4/23 (68-94)
At this point they are clinging to the slim hope that the Nationals series (Games 14-16) will keep them off the top of that list.
Now at 1-6, and in the last two seasons the A’s have had only two stretches of play in which they gained as many as 5 games on .500 from beginning to end.
1. From 7/21/22 (gm 2 of DH) to 7/29/22 they were 7-1. In the previous 6 games they alternated wins and losses so they were 10-4 from July 12-29, their longest stretch of that level of success.
2. The 7-game winning streak from 6/6/23-6/13/23. It was immediately preceded by a 5-game losing streak and immediately followed by an 8-game losing streak.
They don’t have to win 5 in a row; it could be 10-5, 40-35, whatever. Prospects are kind of bleak though. By andeux’s formula I get a probability of 13.17%.
You gotta scores runs to win, yeah?
I just wanted to check your work, so I wrote a brute force simulation. Model in blue dots, simulation in red line.
Bravo – you were spot on!
I also included lines for teams of true talent .300 – .700. A .600 team that falls ten games under, like the 2001 A’s (started 8-18, ended with 102 wins = .630 team) is almost certain to hit .500. It took those A’s until game 44 to do so, and game 86 to get there to stay.
Thanks!
For a win percentage p < .500 it is always a decaying exponential, just plug in p and (1-p) in the quadratic equation above and solve for r.
When p>=.500, the probability of getting back to .500, given an infinite number of games remaining, is always 1, but the approximation that let us treat a long but finite season as (more or less) the same as an infinite season is no longer valid, both because of the central limit theorem again.
In the case p>.500 a different approximation, of the chance that they are above .500 at the end of the season assuming a normal distribution, should work pretty well.
I don’t immediately see an easy way to get an estimate for p=.500, though the line in your simulations looks awfully close to straight.
Inyeresting points. In my simulation I approximated infinite as 10000 games. But that’s not valid for p>.5 as you point out,because given an infinite number of games that team should always get over .500. If I’m feeling ambitious ill do a parameter sweep from 100 to 1e6 with p =.55. We should see a dependence per your comment.
happy borthday guys.
I had the radio going for those seven minutes. Vince gave the call the extra excitement befitting an unusual event.
That will be the station break next year
FSUs Seaguls were a cog in the title chase and played their roll perfectly
They held a lead for way longer than the A’s
I meant that is the powers that be want liverpool/man city/arsenal to be fighting it out for every one of thelast games
Arsenal-City was kind of boring today.
the a’s had a lead for almost 2 hours today. that is progress
Mrs. A just came across this on fb.

Presumably for their U14 team or the like.
The guardians get their first hit in the 5th
3 errors on Nick allen to start the season
Being Nicky Pick-it is pretty much why he’s here, so…
Champions Golf tournament is lost on one of the real bonehead moves I’ve seen. Tied going to 18, Goosen puts second shot in water. So Alker obviously should lay up, except he doesn’t, and he goes in the water too. Alker misses his par putt, Goosen makes his and wins. Alker’s caddie needed to lay down the law there.
it’s like todays 8th and 9th inning!
Golf 101: Par 5 with water in front, go for it if you’re in the fairway but lay up if you’re not. Going to the final hole of the tournament, these guys are tied, and the drives are right next to each other, neither in the fairway.
Goosen plays first, and I sort of get his thought about going for it (“don’t lose by playing it safe”). Not the right decision, but I understand. He fails dismally.
So all Alker had to do was lay up, and he would be playing his third shot from the same place Goosen has to play his fourth from. A free one-shot advantage which he fails to take. It’s not clear on the video but his ball hit across the penalty line and then rolled back into the water. Goosen got to drop in the fairway, Alker had to drop in the rough adjacent to the water, and Goosen made the better approach shot and was able to sink the putt.
During the on field interview with Kike Hernandez, you could hear his pitchcom
First half of the Iowa-LSU game was great. So far the second half has been 75% Iowa.
Joe Boyle is impressive when he gets anywhere near the strike zone.
Otherwise, this team is terrible at everything. I know that isn’t news to anyone here, but I have been reminded of it every time I’ve watched. (I did not see any of yesterday’s game).
fubo won’t let me watch. I figured Fisher cut off CSNCA in advance of the meeting tomorrow
It’s the mlbtv free game of the day, lucky!
Posted that in the 1st inning.
I too missed all of yesterday’s non-suckitude. This team’s marketing slogan could be “watch every day or risk missing the rare wins.”
Worst win % (minimum 315 games managed)
Bo porter 300 games
110-190 .367
Ruiz was sent to AAA
a) to work on his swing (Forst)
b) to reduce his service time (SF Gate)
c) to punish him for wearing Last Dive Bar merchandise (LDB)
It is a).
He is bad; no one cares about his service time.
He is not good.
I don’t think this will stop him from wearing LDB merchandise
Why isn’t Laureano?
I’ll tune in for a possible walk off
Feels like Lawrence Butler’s night to shine.
I spelled shite wrong.
It seemed like last summer at some point the A’s soured on Esteury. He went from exciting young guy (steals! glove!) to 4th or 5th outfielder rather quickly. Yes, struggling to hit like you expect from rookies who aren’t really ready yet. I still couldn’t shake the feeling he got himself into the doghouse and never got out. Being sent down with a 1.200 OPS is an odd look, though I don’t doubt the underlying hitting concerns.
I listened to the end of this game. It seemed exciting. Even a game they should have won, alas, One was a thing they could not do
It appears the A’s will travel on the Dallas Mavericks’ team plane again this year. The Mavericks would have priority as long as they stay in the NBA playoffs.
I’ve assumed Fisher and Cuban have a friendship and that’s the reason for that arrangement. However it worked out that way the travel arrangements are one thing Fisher has been first class about.
The CBA provides that an off day is not supposed to be a travel day, so if that were being followed to the letter the A’s would have left Oakland immediately after today’s game. More often than not they do that, but instead they are scheduled to depart at 10:30 tomorrow morning. The players can waive the requirement, and I’ve noticed that when the first game of a road trip is in Detroit or Cleveland they say, “Nah, we’ll hang back here in the Bay Area and travel on the off day, no need to get to those places before we absolutely have to.”
I don’t know what I think about Sacramento yet. Just another nail in the coffin, and perhaps it’s better to rip the bandaid? Not sure I can take 3 more years of this heartache.
I’m mixed about it. I lived there for 18 months or so and loved it. And Im a central CA person for better or worse no matter where I live now.
But it adds another layer of crap that the city that had to go through almost this exact scenario with their NBA team is now a willing participant in taking a team away. This whole thing continues to suck and congrats Fisher and Manfred for destroying the fandom of thousands of fans.
When they’re fully out of Oakland I can throw away my gear, so there’s that.
Closet reorg here we come!
I got rid of nearly all my bobbleheads and giveaways earlier this year and it was liberating.
Not quite there (I’d be right back on board if there were new owners in Oakland). But looks inevitable.
Hopefully they’ll ditch green and gold and (foolishly) try for a new Vegas image, maybe black and gold like the Knights. In that event, the classic Oakland A’s gear would still be cool. Much like seeing a Montreal Expos hat today.
I’m not terribly surprised by the Sacramento decision. It’s cheap and easy, Fisher’s preferred approach to everything.
As always, I can’t fully predict how I’ll feel until I am feeling it. I expect that my A’s fandom ends when they leave Oakland. I certainly won’t go to Sacramento to watch. Who knows where my fan eyeballs will land? Looking forward to some Ballers games this year regardless.
I’m just angry and tired of this shit. And Fisher can FK right off with this celebrate the final year in Oakland crap. Get out of our lives and let us remember our team without you.
I haven’t been to the Coliseum yet this year, but I will. I’ll absolutely be there for the 9/28/24 last ever Coliseum game. How could I not? It’s like the last show at Winterland. 2024 will be like an Irish wake where I mourn the (soon-to-be) departed and remember the good times, while cursing the son of a bitch that killed my friend.
I will definitely be there for the last game and hope to attend with a fondness in my heart. Right now I just want to cry.
Should we plan for a FKing tailgate? Get seats together?
I’m in for a tailgate and also tickets together.
How about 317 for old times sake
That would bring things full circle in a satisfying way. Let’s agree on a plan and take RVSPs over the summer, give folks time to contemplate but still far enough ahead to avoid the rush of nostalgic ticket buyers (if any).
I’m not at all sure I have it in me. I’ll consider, though.
Wondering if we should ponder tickets sooner rather than later? Someone just posted this on twitter:
Just the one seat left in 317!
Seat map here.
If someone else wants to buy a block of tix now I’m in for four, anywhere except bleachers. Not ready to organize it myself just yet though.
The 3rd deck price has also gone up $3/seat since yesterday (now $28).
I’m seeing 10 definite expressions of interest so far (FSU x 4, ptbnl x 2, batgirl, llama, oblique, mikeA) and 1 maybe (5aces).
Any other interest? Is anyone else looking for more than 1 seat?
You can count me in for 2.
Re Paris/London MLB spotting – saw 2 A’s caps (plus our friend Dave’s), one on a young woman who said it was her boyfriend’s. Mostly Yankees and most seemed to be fashion statements with colors all over except traditional blue/white. Quite a few Boston, some LA Dodgers (mostly worn by Asians), and a scattering of other teams. Overall not a lot of baseball love.
2 for me as well.
me one
Let me check how many I need. Likely 2-3. I’ll find out tonight.
Make it FSU x 6 for me please, and thanks!
Sorry to back out of the seat portion of this party, but my longstanding seat-mate and I decided we want to sit closer for this game. Will not need tickets but will DEFINITELY tailgate with you!
If you’ll take a fool back, I’m in.
Oh hell yes
Hi. Can I join you guys?
Of course!
Shit yeah!!
I might see if I could make the trek up north for that.
Yes
Isn’t the last game 9/26? Thursday afternoon against the Rangers …
Yes, damn these old man eyes!
All of which will be thrown on to the field in the ninth inning, along with various other items.
I will not be there to see the shit show that turns into.
I had already accepted this outcome and I guess I’d say I feel relief more than anything else. The Players Association statement says they are still in discussion with MLB about playing in Sac and I’d think they will be thrown some bone (some minor tweak to the CBA that they didn’t get in 2022) but I don’t see them blocking this.
There has to be some degree of happiness in Oakland City Hall. That’s an underutilized property and its emptiness most of the time probably has some synergy with the recent well-publicized decline of the Hegenberger corridor. What a golden opportunity to rehabilitate that part of the city. The Coliseum has never generated any ancillary development in that surrounding area; people from outlying areas come in and park or arrive on BART but otherwise spend their money elsewhere. With the right development plan the city has a chance to create many good new jobs and realize a LOT of new tax revenue.
Meanwhile over in the Giants offices today, they’ve been drinking mimosas, but it’s almost noon so they’ll soon forget about the orange juice and just go with straight champagne. They now own the wealthiest single-team market in baseball.
So my final game in Oakland was May 30, 2022. They will be about 2 hours drive from me now rather than nearly 4 (and about 7 when they get to Vegas) but considering how I’ve responded in the first week of this season I’m more likely to just turn the page.
I thought the city played it well, offering a lease extension at ~$20M/year, enough to make some money and potentially make delaying redevelopment worth it. At the current rate ($1.5M) they may well be directly losing money, even without taking into account that opportunity cost. And it really would not have been that much for the team to pay, especially when the TV issue is taken into account:
I remember thinking when that deal (averaging about $40M/year) was signed way back in 2009 that it seemed pretty generous, compared to what other teams were getting, given the A’s low viewership numbers. It has of course gotten even more so.
From the numbers I can find, it looks like they were averaging a little below 10k viewers last year. That means NBC was paying the team something like $44 every time a person watched a single game. I am sure that the team is indeed “hopeful” they can keep that revenue, but if NBC can get out of that because the team is no longer in the bay area TV market then they are the biggest winners in all of this.
One might suppose that the A’s came to some sort of agreement on this before announcing their move, but on the other hand we’ve already seen how they operate. I don’t pretend to understand the economics of this franchise in general, but I have a hard time seeing how this works out well for them. Presumably they are expecting some interest from Sacramento locals excited to have a nominally major-league team, albeit temporarily. But between that tv money issue, the minor-league stadium size (“10,624 fixed seats and can currently hold 14,014 fans with lawn seating and standing room”) and the fact that the team will almost certainly remain terrible, it’s hard to see how they are going to get much local revenue.
If they haven’t made any agreement with NBC Sports Group yet then NBC now has all the leverage there. MLB is already selling the Padres, Diamondbacks and Rockies telecasts direct to consumers and yes, I’d bet NBC would be thrilled to dump the mess on MLB.
Further on property redevelopment, I’m wondering what the current economics of the arena are without a major tenant. That place was fully renovated in the late 1990s, so it’s going on 30 years old in that respect, nearly 60 years since opening and is clearly the third-most desirable facility of its type in the area. If a new development incorporates an arena-type facility it would probably make the most sense to demolish that place at the same time as the stadium goes and build an all-new smaller (7K-8K capacity) building with the goal of grabbing lesser events that can’t fill an NBA or NHL sized arena and requiring a much smaller footprint for both building and parking. But if the developer with the best plan doesn’t want to be in the events business at all, that’s fine too.
This is what the African American Sports group hopes to accomplish. Also don’t overlook the arena, which still has concerts and ice shows and stuff regularly. There’s still more demand for dates than SF Oracle and SJ (name?) can satisfy.
https://www.aasegoakland.com/
Like every development team their pitch is wildly rosy. And ptbnl can tell you about the value of “Specific Plans”. But that site lays out the vision. Long way to go before that, though, including regaining the half of the site which the County idiotically sold to Fisher
The first thing I see on that site is
The NFL has left the city twice, plus the NBA and now MLB. Why on earth would Oakland put itself in the position of being jerked around by these people yet again? Hell, the voters in Kansas City just rejected a plan to extend a sales tax for a new ballpark for the Royals and stadium improvements for the Chiefs. And there’s not a single thing to do in Kansas City when the Royals and Chiefs aren’t playing, except eat barbecue. Good for those voters. The message to the City of Oakland seems clear to me: stop wasting money on toys that largely benefit people from the suburbs and stick with the meat and potatoes of quality housing, quality commercial development and good full-time jobs that make your city a nice place to live.
I trust Dave Stewart to build something at the Coliseum about as much as John Fisher. Maybe less, since Fisher at least has (some) money.
Per the article in The Athletic the TV situation has been resolved.
Chelsea-United is a hilarious match
https://x.com/Votto007/status/1776040160527798308
I laughed
As it turns out, the last game I would ever attend at the Oakland Coliseum was on Sept 11, 2021.
The A’s were playing a hapless Rangers team and had been in the midst of a 2014-esque slow collapse. But I was in town for the last time that year, the matchup was Kaprielian vs Wes Benjamin (likely W I figured), and the team had shown some signs of life recently. The game started out well enough, but when the A’s are in one of those collapses, they really do commit. Eventually, their fate was sealed on an 8th inning go ahead home run by Jonah Heim (thanks Forst) after the bullpen blew a 6-2 lead.
I remember having a sense of foreboding at the time. I figured it was because a) blowing a game against Wes Benjamin was as sure a sign as any this team didn’t have it, and b) I was pretty sure this was the last time I would see Olson, Chapman, Marte, etc in A’s jerseys. I did not realize it would be because of a more insidious, existential reason.
There’s a Fisher quote today at the press conference that, to me, pretty much encapsulates how he views this franchise. Paraphrashing, but he basically said it’s going to be really exciting watching someone like Aaron Judge come in and hit home runs at the Sacramento park.
To most people, this would be a pretty innocuous remark, maybe a stupid faux pas at worst, but to someone who understands the mindset of a fan, it’s pretty sad. Your owner is essentially saying that the best thing that could happen to your team was the opponent coming in and beating up on them. That it doesn’t matter whether the team he owns wins or loses, but that it’s able to draw and provide spectacle. The implicit understanding being that this franchise and brand itself is no longer a worthy draw on its own more merits; it needs an attractive opponent to come in and do that heavy lifting.
Because as long as the dollars roll in, Fisher is perfectly fine with this franchise being the Washington Generals to the rest of the league’s Harlem Globetrotters.
It’s a comment about as tone deaf as Manfred’s “just a piece of metal” remark. But this is how these so called stewards of the game perceive of it now.
For the fans who’ve lived and died with each win, with each trade and FA signing that worked out or didn’t, that followed Zach Gelof and Tyler Soderstrom since their draft, hoping they can be the next Olson and Chapman, that’s just heartbreaking. To know that your owner is not a fan of his own franchise (that was always clear), but that he can’t even come close to conceptualizing a fan’s mindset.
So in the end, this is the saddest thing of all. And it explains perfectly why Fisher has done everything he has to this point.
Oh, Gary, you have no idea…
Steven Strasburg beats me to retirement … I don’t know whether to feel old or young.
Beat you by how much, i.e. when is the big day?
July 1st – the one true date for retiring from the University of California. Any other date and you miss a year’s pay rise or cost of living increase.
I’d originally planned on early January for complicated reasons to do with the lab being on a different pay cycle to campus, and even went as far as to book a post-retirement European brewers’ tour for April, before agreeing to delay to July to give them more time to replace me.
The tour will go ahead anyway using up some of my accumulated vacation … Edinburgh, London, Brussels, Cologne, Munich, Prague and Berlin, starting Friday.
The second you are gone we are going to start using NERSC cycles to mine crypto
They actually monitor for that (and have found and expelled culprits)
A few years ago a senior (director-level) person in my office was very suddenly “no longer employed by this company.” It turned out he had been using a powerful GPU machine in his office for crypto mining.
He was a machine-learning guy, so had a plausible excuse for having such a system in the first place, but using company resources (network and power) for it got him fired once corporate IT noticed it. (Our local lower-level IT guy told a bunch of people that he had already suspected that’s what the machine was for, but didn’t bother to report it.)
Of course, he got a job at the same level at a better-known tech company like a week later.
(And, yeah, I realize that the machine you’re talking about is probably orders of magnitude bigger.)
Sadly only the 12th fastest supercomputer in the world.
Congrats!!
Not the worst record in MLB, except in karma
16-0 on shots but only 1-0 on goals at half-time is making me nervous.
And rightly so
A tie. Hmph.
Baseball hats of Madrid report: Far more widespread fashion accessory than when I was in Barcelona seven years ago. Yankees hats everywhere, in every color. Also quite a few Dodgers caps, all in the traditional blue. A smattering of Red Sox, two Nationals, and one A’s cap, in red. No other MLB teams seen. Also many Raiders logos on hats jackets and shirts.
Have now also sighted two Tigers, one Mets, and one Giants hat.
Just happened on a bar filled with Man City supporters. They were animated. The 20 cops nearby, less so.
Baseball hats of London, new year ro Yankees. End of list
More Yankees, but one black cardinals hat
Forgot that one teen had a 80s A’s home white pullover. But he came with me
Saw a giants hat today
MLB at bat is weird in the uk. Some teams have two days off and others play two
I still think the A’s aren’t doing Joe Boyle any favors by having him in the major league rotation right now.
And same with Hernaiz being on the roster, although that is probably a consequence of not having a real option at back up SS (or starting SS, for that matter…).
Braden just pointed out that Langeliers is just setting up the target in the middle of the zone every pitch and hoping that the ball ends up somewhere in the strike zone.
Good start from the results perspective: 5 IP, 0 R, 2 H, 6K, in line for the win.
The process still leaves something to be desired: 3 walks and a HBP, a WP, 43 strikes + 44 balls.
Jenny Cavnar just said (multiple times, over the course of a couple minutes) that the A’s were ahead 1-0 when it’s actually 1-1.
So far I think she’s pretty bad in general.
Bangeliers x3!
Now in 3rd place.
Nice win by the Dubs in LA, bringing them a game closer to passing the Lakers. They have really turned it around in the last few weeks – too bad it took them so long to find their game. It looks like we’ll miss the play-in games, but if they go further we’ll need to find a late-night sports bar in London.
I was surprised at how not obvious it was that Real Madrid was playing a big game as we walked through town. I figured there’d be crowds in bars hollering everywhere, but in the three blocks from Metro to hotel, during the 2nd half, it was just like every other night. We’re in the gay district so maybe that was a factor? Sounds like it was a dramatic match too.
Excellent/maddening Tim Keown piece on how the extension “negotiations” went down
Confirms my feeling that the city did the right thing by making a tough but reasonable offer and letting the team walk away (again). Fuck Dave Kaval.
And this is great:
Imagine the vibe in the room when Kaval said he’d like the Raiders deal, please.
I’m trying to decide if Kaval is actually that stupid or actually that much of a troll. Leaning B.
Also he needs to keep the voice of Oakland fans out of his mouth or he’s gonna get his tongue cut out.
It was settled when Ranadive said the four-letter F word, FREE.
Even if the Players’ Association makes them put as much as $30M into improvements in the West Sac ballpark, which would be a lot, that’s only $10M/year effective rent for the three years stated, or $6M/year if/when it extends through 2029. It would not make sense for Oakland to go that low plus tie up the property for another five years with the games pulling in ever-dwindling attendance.
Yeah, that’s about it. I’m sure they are getting much less from the renegotiated TV deal, but sleeping on the Rivercats couch until they get a job makes up for it.
Hard to argue with Ranadive’s play. Put Fisher up for the low, low price of on the house and then try to take the team off his hands in the not unlikely event Vegas goes bust.
Tim Keown has become the journalist of record on Oakland Athletics franchise news the last few years. I’d imagine he’s got a book in mind, and I’ll read it. Interesting parallels between the demise of sports in Oakland and the demise of sports journalism; Keown had to leave the local paper to do it right.
I had today’s game on the whole time, but didn’t even realize Sears had a no-hitter going until it got broken up in the 7th.
Bullpen held on for the 1-0, combined 1-hitter victory, helped in part by a weird double play (4-1-5-6) when Gelof dropped a pop fly near the mound (not on purpose) and the infield fly rule was not called.
Miller hit 104 in the 9th.
Second series win of the season. In 2023 that came in Games 56-58 at the end of May.
Even more excitingly, they are a tantalizing home sweep of the Nationals away from the .500 mark.
OMG. This place still exists!
Keeping the lights on for ya.
Hey hey hey.
I too rediscovered Narnia after a long sojurn in the grown up world.
Ooh, Oaklandish now has fitted Ballers caps.
The Cal guys Homa and Morikawa playing well in high winds at Masters, half way through.
Tour journeyman Ben An is -1 so Cal has 3 of the 14 who are under par.
We do have a ways to go to catch Stanford for Green Jackets. Tiger is 7 shots back but with 21 players ahead of him plus having to walk 36 more holes he’s out of contention. In 2026 he’s eligible for Champions Tour where they can drive a cart, and about 1/3 of the players do. If he chooses to play that tour and doesn’t have to walk he’s going to win pretty often.
Morikawa crashed and burned at 9, and going into the water at 11 was just more salt in the wound. Homa hung in there until he went into the bushes behind the green at 12 and that was that. Anyway, after Scheffler had the three-shot turnaround over Morikawa at 9, nobody was going to catch him on the back nine.
After making the cut at +1, Tiger shot 82 and 77 to finish last, pretty much confirming that he can’t go more than 36 holes right now.
I just got me a dad hat (of course). 10% off with a free new Oaklandish account.
I guess this is the Caray scion doing pxp tonight?
He’s ok. Has that old Midwest cadence like Bob Eucker, a rising lilt on calls. “THE pitch…(pause)..outside” or “the three-OH…(pause)…ball four.”
How do you not call an infield pop-up in a totally silent stadium?
Jordan Weems vs TJ McFarland, how fucking long have I been asleep?
Woof, these pics of the Saturday afternoon crowd
https://bsky.app/profile/louisgray.bsky.social/post/3kpzzklq4d52y
That is seriously insane. MLB should be so ashamed of this whole mess.
I do hope this run of “success” keeps the team on the heels of the Angels all year.
Sonny Gray starting for the Cards tonight, in case you want to watch a player you care about.
And Esteury is back, with J.D. Davis going on the IL.
I’m watching Montas start against the Mariners. He has faced three batters so far — walk, walk, 3-run HR. True Athletic.
In other alumni news, Christian Pache got the 10th inning walk-off hit for the Phillies today.
The A’s didn’t get a heck of a lot for Gray, did they.
Kaprielian: 1.8 fWAR (doesn’t currently have a job)
Fowler: -0.6 fWAR
Mateo: Didn’t play for the A’s; traded for an outfielder who’s in Midland now.
Gray has put up 18.6 fWAR since leaving Oakland.
Somehow the Yankees didn’t do any better, getting 1 or 2 WAR (depending on which source you use) out of him before trading his last and best pre-free-agency year to the Reds for Shed Long.
Just one more series win and Soaker Day is postponed.
I watched all nine innings tonight, but in my defense I have a bad head cold.
Today’s sports-while-sick offering is the second leg of Barca-PSG in the Champions League, and so far it’s totally nuts.
Caray is getting a little over-excited about some fly balls to left.
Overall, I think he is significantly better than Cavnar at p-x-p though.
I think he may be “better” at it but it still anticeptic. And when I think about it gross. I would much rather have a confused Johnny doskow, or a pleaseant Alex Jensen over a failgreatgrandson.
Caray has good technique, he might develop an authentic voice some day. So far it’s so aw-shucks that it’s cringy. Also the elder statesman role does not suit Dallas, at all. He’s gotten worse.
Harry called the A’s games along with Monte in 1970, when I was an impressionable 9 years old.
So every time I was at the Coliseum and an A’s player hit a routine fly ball, I would jump up and yell “IT MIGHT BE…IT COULD BE…”, much to the annoyance of everyone within a couple rows.
In other broadcaster news, there’s a flaw in my Phillie fan exit strategy: John Kruk is intolerable. Today he spent a whole inning (during a close game mind you) on a story about how college student Kruk proudly walked out of a Philosophy class because the professor tried to teach him to question opinions.
While the Kings were ending the Warriors season, the Roots ended El Farolito’s US Open Cup run in the third round. Salute to the burrito boys.
Such a cool story, of a kind that really doesn’t exist in any other part of the US sports world.
Meanwhile being home sick continues to pay dividends as I’m excited to tune in for part 2 of Real vs Man City.
The Champions League quarterfinals have been utterly insane so far. Today’s games should be great too.
Don’t know if today’s Real/City tilt qualifies as great, but it sure was riveting. Kinda of stunned at the result, City looked like it could’ve scored five or six times. Also Primera reports that in Madrid people did in fact pour out of the bars in jubilation after the PK win.
Fun news from the Open Cup draw for the next round: The Roots get John Fisher’s SJ Earthquakes. That should be spirited.
oooo. where is that?
May 7
Roots Quakes stream link, 7pm. Unfortunately the Roots might suck (2-5-2, one fired coach).
Robust loud Roots crowd at the otherwise mostly empty Quakes home stadium, including “Sell the Team” and “Fuck John Fisher” chants.
Slusser on the soccer beat with the story of two teams’ fans united by disdain for John Fisher.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/article/protest-a-s-owner-john-fisher-unites-fans-19444959.php
spirited match, but the stream is bad for me
Roots worked hard, I gather their D had been awful, was strong today against a more talented (but horrible) SJ team.
I didn’t really get an opportunity to declare an official Soaker Day this year. Even I am not quite glum enough to say “Opening Night, duh”. And I’m not doing it for the Las Vegas Athletics of West Sacramento so that minor tradition is over.
I think the A’s have made their run back toward .500 but at four games under with a 10-game East Coast Death March impending that looks over.
So, starting on May 1, 2022, the A’s will play their final 465 games as the Oakland A’s starting only 4 of them with a non-losing record: the first 3 games last season (0-0, 1-0, 1-1) plus Opening Night this year.
Uncharacteristically, I (sort of) beat you to it this year by calling it in the first inning of game 2.
Technically this was premature: fangraphs says we still had a 30% chance of winning that game, and by my own calculations the next day that gave us an overall chance of returning to .500 at some point of well over 60%. It was not until the fifth inning that our win probability fell below 10%, putting the chance of ever returning to .500 below 50%.
Nevertheless, I stand by that call.