The Boston Red Sox offered their one-time superstar homegrown hero Kevin Youkilis to many different teams this June.The market was evidently so poor that they sent Youkilis off to the Chicago White Sox for utility man Brent Lillibridge and minor league pitcher Zach Stewart. Boston is also paying a big chunk of his contract.The trade looked bad for Boston then. It looks worse since Lillibridge was designated for assignment and Youkilis killed his former team this past week.But it is odd that the suitors for Youkilis, whose numbers rebounded since changing his socks from Red to White, did not seem ...
The Oakland A's became a winning team in the past few weeks in exciting and powerful ways, crushing their way to a road series sweep over the Minnesota Twins and splitting a pair of games with the Texas Rangers, the latter in walk-off fashion.What's it going to take for the A's to maintain an above .500 record in the next few months? They have to do these three things: Keep the power numbers upThere is no need to sit and debate what got Oakland the sweep over the Twins. Nine home runs in three games just stampeded Minnesota. It's hard to ...
The Oakland Athletics have long been known to obsess over statistics. From glorifying on-base percentage to Brad Pitt's Oscar nomination, crunching numbers is king in Oakland.Well no matter what numbers one might use, when Brandon Hicks came up to bat yesterday afternoon in the bottom of the ninth, he could not be looked upon as much of a threat.Hicks entered the game in the seventh inning as a pinch-runner for Chris Carter and scored in the game-tying rally. In the ninth he came to bat against the two-time defending American League champion Rangers.Into that at-bat, Hicks had played 11 games ...
The Oakland Athletics have had the worst production at shortstop in the American League this season, but acquiring Yunel Escobar from the Toronto Blue Jays would drastically change that. Cliff Pennington has been the starting shortstop in Oakland for the majority of the season and has been atrocious. In 80 games, Pennington is hitting .201/.263/.287 with three home runs, 16 RBI and 30 runs, and he has a WAR of 0.3. Brandon Hicks has accounted for the other 11 games at shortstop this season and has been even worse, hitting .147 with just five hits. The A’s are only a ...
It’s a given that Billy Beane will be remembered by A’s fans as the greatest general manager in the franchise’s history, and one of the most renowned all-time in the history of the sport. However, with Oakland not having made a postseason appearance in more than half a decade, those same fans might wonder If Beane still possesses the same front office Midas touch that helped seamlessly build a cash-stricken small-market franchise like the Athletics into a perennial playoff contender in the early 2000s. And while six straight losing season is more than a reason for A’s fans to be ...
The Oakland Athletics currently find themselves in an extremely interesting position. Currently only half a game back in the wild card race, the big question for the A's is whether or not they should be buyers or sellers come the trade deadline.Clearly they headed into 2012 in full blown transition mode, rebuilding for the future, but now in the midst of a playoff race, can they really sell off all their assets and give up on the season? So again, the question is, do they buy or sell come July 31st?The answer is both. The A's should trade anyone expendable, ...
"In matters of race, in matters of decency, baseball should lead the way." —A. Bartlett Giamatti
The late Commissioner was a smart man, and I would have written that even if he hadn't gone to and later served as president of Yale.Look, we all know that Major League Baseball (MLB) was just a mirror institution for the social segregation going on in this country during the 1920s, '30s and '40s. That obviously changed when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. But did you know that persons of color are still being treated as second-class citizens by MLB?Here's ...
The Oakland Athletics are only 1.5 games back from a wild-card spot, but a few of their "superstars" are going to have to amp up their play if the A's are going to make playoffs. To the diehard fans, this isn't a shock. To the rest of the nation, the A's are a Cinderella story—a team no one expected to be within sniffing distance of a wild-card spot. Not this year, not with this team. But the team has outproduced expectations. Young talent such as Ryan Cook and Josh Reddick immediately blossomed into All-Star players. Castaways such as Brandon Inge ...
The trade deadline is approaching and this is the time of year that the Oakland A's have been the most interesting they have ever been in recent years because fans were watching and waiting to see their young, up-and-coming stars get traded for prospects.This season has a different vibe though. With the A's over .500 and playing their best baseball since 2006, general manager Billy Beane should once again be busy this time of year, but not for the reasons he has been busy at the deadline in recent years.Usually by the All-Star break, the A's are no longer in ...
Backed by four home runs and Yoenis Cespedes' first career four-hit game in MLB, the Oakland A's completed their first three-game sweep over Minnesota in over 12 years with a 9-4 victory.The game was busted open in the second inning, when Jonny Gomes, Cespedes and Chris Carter all went deep to make the score 6-1. Seth Smith added his 10th home run of the year in the three-run sixth inning to close the scoring for Oakland.Jarrod Parker was the third A's starter to go six innings and win without having his best stuff. Parker allowed four runs on nine hits ...