Coco Crisp has been about as controversial a player as the Oakland Athletics could have in 2011.While he has been fairly steady offensively, he has been hurt for significant amounts of time during his stay in Oakland, having only played in 211 games in his two seasons there.For now, his stay in Oakland is up. The only question left is whether or not the A's will try to re-sign him.Here's why they should.Begin Slideshow
Ron Washington. Or Bob Geren. Ron Washington or Bob Geren. Ron Washington or Bob Geren? That was the question that general manager Billy Beane had to answer when trying to fill the position of skipper of the Oakland Athletics following the 2006 season.The A’s had been swept out of the playoffs by the Detroit Tigers, and Ken Macha was subsequently fired—despite leading them to the ALCS for the first time in 14 seasons. Whatever Macha lacked needed to be fulfilled by the incoming new manager. Beane’s decision to name the replacement rested on the teeter-totter of Ron Washington and Bob ...
Let’s begin our offseason with a look at where the A’s stand at each of their positions heading into next year. With nine weeks remaining before the beginning of baseball’s winter meetings, we’ll split the roster up into exactly nine installments of this segment: catcher, first base, second base, third base, shortstop, outfield, designated hitter, starting pitching and bullpen. There may need to be some updates here and there if the front office gets busy early on; but ideally we’ll be able to use this as a starting point and reflect on whether or not the A’s are making positive ...
Celebrity fans in Major League Baseball.There's a few, but listing ten for a specific team is a daunting task, especially for the Oakland A's.When watching a game on television you will see the occasional celebrity smiling or waving. Usually you will see professional athletes who are attending a game to support a team that shares the same city or state as the team they currently play for.When the playoffs start it's a different story altogether. The celebrities come out of the woodwork, but this doesn't necessarily mean they are diehard fans of one of the teams. It probably means that ...
Since I have two degrees in statistics, I was looking forward to seeing the movie "Moneyball" this weekend. I was disappointed. "Moneyball" is a movie about Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, a small-market team trying to compete against teams with total payrolls more than twice his budget.Beane hired a recent economics graduate from Yale, Peter Brand, to help him use analytical methods to select the players the team might acquire. Much to the dismay of the Athletics' scouting staff, Beane chose to listen more to Brand than to the experienced scouts. There were several funny scenes: The chubby minor league catcher stumbled over ...
The 2010 season was a long-winded 162-game tease for the Oakland Athletics. Led by their enviable young and talented pitching staff that ranked first in the American League in ERA, quality starts and shutouts, the A’s reached the .500 mark for the first time in four seasons, establishing a foundation to build upon toward the future. And with a sprightly, pesky offense that ranked third in stolen bases, the A’s certainly felt there was something to look forward to, as long as they added some—any—power to the middle of the lineup. So, using the World Series-winning blueprint of their Bay ...
Teams can acquire players in one of three ways; by drafting them out of high school or college, by trading for them or by signing them, after they reach free agency.Oakland's General Manager Billy Beane has to make up his team—on a budget. The draft is open to him, as to any other general manager, and he gets a few extra draft picks as compensation when richer teams take his star players in free agency.Trading is trickier. In Beane's case, it usually means trading a veteran player for an equivalent low-paid rookie, plus some prospects. Beane is a good trader, ...
With some exceptions, a successful Oakland A's team has been more of a pitching team that a hitting team. With the absence of a Rickey Henderson or a Jason Giambi from the lineup, that is likely to be the case in 2012 if the club is to have a successful season.In 2011, the As ranked about 10th in the majors in most pitching categories and 20th to 25th in most batting categories. The pitchers will have to step up their game a bit, first to get to the top eight to make themselves playoff worthy, and second, to another level ...
One year it was Matt Holliday. This year it was Hideki Matsui. Both were star sluggers on a previous team.More to the point, they were supposed to give the Oakland A's the pop that was missing from the offense since the days of Rickey Henderson and Jason Giambi. Oakland tried to replace those missing pieces quite literally in the form of home runs and runs to remedy a pitching staff that was parsimonious about giving them up.Holliday had compiled a large part of his "record" in the mile-high stadium (and thin air) of Denver's Coors Field, a notably hitter-friendly park. ...
Art Howe let on to Siriux XM's Mad Dog Radio that he was not pleased with his portrayal in Moneyball (via Yahoo! Sports). I would like to second the notion that Howe wasn't given a fair shake, at least in the movie. In the interest of fair disclosure, this is being written by a former Pittsburgher about another former Pittsburgher.Most Hollywood films like to have a villain. Unfortunately, the movie casts Oakland's former manager, Art Howe, in that role to make general manager Billy Beane look good. This overlooks the role that Howe had in successfully executing Beane's moves.For instance, ...