The Oakland A's swept their final series of the season against the big, bad Texas rangers yesterday and ended up at the top of the AL West standings - the only day the entire season they were at the top and not a bad day to be in that position. With a 55 million dollar payroll and a bunch of kids, they did the unimaginable against teams with twice or thrice their payroll. I don't think anybody except Billy Beane and I expected this! That's a shameless plug for myself, but I did expect this team to do better than what most people predicted. That was just based on my trust in Billy Beane's approach last off-season and had nothing do with my knowledge about these players. After all, apparently even Billy Beane didn't recognize some of these players when he crossed paths with them for the first time inside Oakland Coliseum. Of course, I would not have been surprised if they went 62-100 and finished last either because that's what the experts told us. It's a great story that the team came together and achieved this with a bunch of rookie starting pitchers. I can't remember any team succeeding at this level with so many rookie starting pitchers and pitching was and is their strength.
Billy Beane deserves all the credit for this team, even more than the original moneyball teams. He traded away kids to acquire even younger kids and accumulated so many quality arms. The pitching depth of the A's is quite impressive and I am sure most baseball fans around the country can't even name 2 or 3 of A's starters - even today, not just when the season started. All of their veteran pitchers are either hurt or suspended, but they still have enough depth to keep winning. Beane deserves a lot of credit because he seems to have acquired the right kind of arms. Pitching prospects are dime a dozen, but successful prospects who turn out to be good are rarer than you think. Beane seems to have found the prefect group and seem to be paying even less than a dime for his dozen. The baseball establishment is not on board with all things Billy because of the moneyball hype, but he earned this one the hard way. And his quote at the end of the season ain't bad either. “We set out to create a team whose future was better than its past,” Beane said. “In the process, we made a team for the present.” And this team looks good for the future too. America better get used to names like Yoenis Cespedes, Josh Reddick, Daniel Straily, AJ Griffin, Jarrod Parker and Tommy Milone. They are here to stay.
This team had no business even being one of the 2 wild cards according to most experts, but they ended up winning the division at the end, that too after trailing the Rangers by 13 games at one point in the season. Their gift for all this - a tough series starting on the road against the Detroit Tigers and Justin Verlander. They actually have a better record than Detroit, but they still have to start the series on the road because of the unique 2-3 format this year to squeeze some time for the extra wildcard games by cutting the travel day out of the old 2-2-1 format. This new format will be dangerous for all these higher seeds opening on the road, but especially for the A's since they have to face Verlander and Max Scherzer. But they will come back home and I am sure will make a series out of it. Speaking of the one-game wildcard series, the idea made no sense to me at first, but now I realize I missed the point. Of course nobody from MLB did a good job of explaining the logic behind it either at the start of the season. Now that I saw it work through the entire season, I get it and actually love it. It totally restores the prestige and value of winning the division, which the first wild card took away back in the day. In fact, that was Bob Costas' argument against the first wildcard for years. With the addition of the second wildcard, of course teams want to win the division just to avoid that dangerous one game elimination game. Texas and Oakland swapped places on the last day and are in completely different worlds right now. The wildcard world is not fun for the teams involved.
A's are now getting ready for the playoffs to deal with Verlander and Miguel Cabrera. Congrats to Miggy on the triple crown. It's a special achievement that clinches the AL MVP for him. Sorry Mike Trout.
Billy Beane deserves all the credit for this team, even more than the original moneyball teams. He traded away kids to acquire even younger kids and accumulated so many quality arms. The pitching depth of the A's is quite impressive and I am sure most baseball fans around the country can't even name 2 or 3 of A's starters - even today, not just when the season started. All of their veteran pitchers are either hurt or suspended, but they still have enough depth to keep winning. Beane deserves a lot of credit because he seems to have acquired the right kind of arms. Pitching prospects are dime a dozen, but successful prospects who turn out to be good are rarer than you think. Beane seems to have found the prefect group and seem to be paying even less than a dime for his dozen. The baseball establishment is not on board with all things Billy because of the moneyball hype, but he earned this one the hard way. And his quote at the end of the season ain't bad either. “We set out to create a team whose future was better than its past,” Beane said. “In the process, we made a team for the present.” And this team looks good for the future too. America better get used to names like Yoenis Cespedes, Josh Reddick, Daniel Straily, AJ Griffin, Jarrod Parker and Tommy Milone. They are here to stay.
This team had no business even being one of the 2 wild cards according to most experts, but they ended up winning the division at the end, that too after trailing the Rangers by 13 games at one point in the season. Their gift for all this - a tough series starting on the road against the Detroit Tigers and Justin Verlander. They actually have a better record than Detroit, but they still have to start the series on the road because of the unique 2-3 format this year to squeeze some time for the extra wildcard games by cutting the travel day out of the old 2-2-1 format. This new format will be dangerous for all these higher seeds opening on the road, but especially for the A's since they have to face Verlander and Max Scherzer. But they will come back home and I am sure will make a series out of it. Speaking of the one-game wildcard series, the idea made no sense to me at first, but now I realize I missed the point. Of course nobody from MLB did a good job of explaining the logic behind it either at the start of the season. Now that I saw it work through the entire season, I get it and actually love it. It totally restores the prestige and value of winning the division, which the first wild card took away back in the day. In fact, that was Bob Costas' argument against the first wildcard for years. With the addition of the second wildcard, of course teams want to win the division just to avoid that dangerous one game elimination game. Texas and Oakland swapped places on the last day and are in completely different worlds right now. The wildcard world is not fun for the teams involved.
A's are now getting ready for the playoffs to deal with Verlander and Miguel Cabrera. Congrats to Miggy on the triple crown. It's a special achievement that clinches the AL MVP for him. Sorry Mike Trout.
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