Bay Area Babble

So the Athletics got thumped in the final game of the series, Gio Gonzlez looks favourite to miss out on being in next years rotation, starting to look decidedly too unreliable. Won the series though, so things looking reasonably bright. After a dodgy spell Pennington seems to have locked down the starting Short Stop position for next year, as one guy on another forum put it he has one massive advantage, he's not Bobby Crosby!

The Giants managed to salvage the last game of their series and keep their faint hopes of post season play alive, not looking good though. Nice to see them scoring runs for once mind, good game for Travis, but he needs several more of them to position himself as the starting 1st baseman next year.

Gio not in the rotation next year thats a disapointment.

Means I'm going to have to carry him in the dynasty league on the bench and waste a roster spot for him, unless we bring in the Sending down ruling whcih is a discussion for the dynasty boards.

He has really struggled in putting consistent starts together, Striking out a ton but walking way too many

He kind of reminds me of Andrew Miller on our team, so infuriatingly inconsistent and when hes not on it for a certain start he is so bad its untrue.

Thats why he keeps boucing around

It's not a given Lee, just my twe penneth. Dallas Braden and |Outman will be back hopefully. That'll give us a front four of Braden, Anderson, Cahill and Outman, leaving Gio to fight it out with Vinny Mazarro, Tomko and Mortenson for the fifth spot. Recent performance would give Tomko the edge right now, but ST is where it'll all shake out. Gio needed a good outing last night and he'd have been in pole position, he really needs to nail the next couple of starts.

Brett Tomko helped his chances of being in someone's rotation next year last night. A five hit complete game shutout in Arlington certainly will mkae some people do a double take. Is Curt Young the best pitching coach in the majors, or is Tomko just on a lucky streak? Probably the latter, but if Tomko can close out the season on anything like last night's form he'll probably get more than a minor league contract this winter.

Nice to see our offence scoring soem runs again too, and see the Giants breath more life into their post season hopes. Another Cy Young performance form Tim, and another strong outing for Ishikawa. Keep it going, a sweep here and the last ten days of the season could be very interesting.

Last season still hadn't finished when I wrote the previous post, much has happened since then.

The A's projected line-up now looks something ike this:

1B Daric Barton, Eric Chavez, Jake Fox
2B Mark Ellis, Adam Rosales, Eric Patterson
3B Kevin Kouzmanoff, Adam Rosales, Jake Fox
SS Chad Pennington, Adam Rosales
LF Rajai Davis, Eric Patterson
CF Coco Crisp, Rajai Davis
RF Ryan Sweeney, Gabe Gross, Travis Buck

SP Ben Sheets, Dallas Braden, Trevor Cahil, Vinny Mazarro, Bret Anderson

RP Brad Ziegler, Joey Devine, Michael Wuertz, Craig Breslow, Brad Kilby, Jerry Blevins
CL Andrew Bailey

Not a team that on the face of it can score enough runs to win the division, but which, if things work out, could surprise a few people and finish at or slightly above .500, which would be good progress for a team still in rebuild mode.

is Devine going to be ready Gal? Just picked him up in one of the fantasy leagues.

The pitching could be very good and may have a shot at leading the league in ERA but as you say the problem is going to be scoring enough runs.

I fancy the A’s to finish at about .500 but I wouldn’t be that shocked to see them do better than that.

We're hoping so Ritch, he may have to have an extended ST, but should be with the team shortly after the season starts; he's ready to start working though.

Two news items today.

1. Brett Anderson is not going to have surgery and has had injections, he is slated for a 6 week rehab stint. I just hope this is the right thing to do; if this doesn't work then we'll end up losing him for all of next year as well.

2. Chris Carter comes off the Minor League DL. First base is his if he can take it, anything like .270/.350/.400 will get him to the majors and see Barton and him swap places.

Well to paraphrase The Who, 'Meet the new Bob, same as the old Bob'.

When will we get a manager who will get i through his thick head that Fuentes is crap and should only be used in a mop up situation? Even tehn have the brains to have a righty warming up so you can yank the bum when a right handed batsman comes up.

Having vented my frustration with Melvin, I should correct things by pointing out that the real problem with the A's isn't really either Bob, but Billy Beane.

I’m not the biggest Brain Fuentes fan but I’m amazed by how much he seems to be struggling. I had a look at his numbers and the thing that would concern me is how badly he is doing against lefties.

That was what got me so mad last night, he can't even do a decent job against lefties, so why on earth didn't we have a righty warming up in the pen for the inevitable pinch hitter? Melvin screwed up big time.

It seems like a big mistake from Melvin.

If he isn’t fooling lefties then he is in big trouble. He probably should have gone back to the NL where he has had some success. The Twins would maybe take him back after the success that he had at the end of last season.

Sad an glad news today, Mark Ellis has been traded to the Rockies. I wish him nothing but the best, he's been a favourite of mine for years, never number one on my list of favourites, but not far behind. I hope the Rockies know what a class act he is, they'll soon find out they've got one of the best defensive second basemen in the game, and his bat can't continue to suck the way it has this year. He's usually a second half player, expect him to heat up in Colorado.