Seasonal Transitions

It's been a busy summer and I have not been blogging a lot. I can't believe summer is already over and we are transitioning to fall. This time of the year means the sports calendar is pretty busy- not that the sports calendar is ever barren for us serious sports fans anytime of the year! We got our collective national obsession called the NFL in full throttle right now, college football is ramping up, and the MLB playoffs is flowing fine. We love the playoffs in any sport, but major league baseball probably has the highest bump in terms of edge-of-the-seat drama from the regular season to the playoffs. And especially this year, every other playoff game seems to be going extra innings. The drama started rather painfully for me with the Oakland A's blowing a 7-3 lead late in their wildcard contest against the Kansas City Royals and losing the game and the season in extras. That game was a microcosm of the last two months of the A's season and not a happy one at that. Their sudden and ugly reversal in fortunes can be directly traced on the calendar to the Lester for Cespedes trade - a trade I supported whole heartedly. Whether or not that's what caused the disastrous slide, we will never know. But I am ready to at least accept that the trade did not work. It was still a good gamble, but sometimes gambles don't work. Thats why its's called a gamble.

As controversial and equally loved and criticized as Billy Beane is, this season and that trade is the biggest blot on his resume to date. GMs, coaches, and other leaders will never publicly accept failure or that they made a wrong call, but I am surprised Billy is still defending the trade and is saying he will do it all over again. That's where I separate from Billy. I liked his effort and I supported his trade, but I will NOT do it all over again given that we now know what happened since the trade. If I am allowed to rewind time, I would rather try and see what happens with Cespedes. It can't be worse than what we saw since July. Billy says he saw both the Angles and the A's problems coming and thats why he did the trade. He maintains the A's would have missed the playoffs without Lester and the trade. I don't buy that only because the A's were not just a little different since July, they were flat out horrible. Sure, Billy and everybody else saw the Angles surging, but you can't tell me he predicted the A's would be this bad all of a sudden and you can't convince me that they would have been worse with Cespedes. But we will never know and the season is now over. Regardless of what Billy says, his resume is a little uglier because of this trade - fair or not. The harder truth to swallow for the A's fans is that this was their best chance to win it all and next year figures to be a lot more challenging. 

The Kansas City Royals, who put the A's out of their misery, continued their post-season brilliance on the road at Anaheim as if they do this playoff thing every year. Thats pretty impressive for a team that has missed the big dance for 25 straight years! I am totally on-board with them putting the Angles to rest in the ALDS. At least the A's fans don't have to deal with the Angels celebrating. The team across the bay from Oakland, San Francisco Giants, have won both their road playoff games as well much like the Royals and are back home to host and possibly eliminate the Washington Nationals. The Giants had a couple of horrible months much like the A's, but they picked a slightly better time for that bad stretch. They righted the ship towards the end of the season and are now rolling in the playoffs. They won a 18-inning game yesterday that they were trailing 1-0 in the 9-Th. You just can't put the Giants away that easily in this Brian Sabean era. A Giants-Dodgers NLCS will be epic, though the St. Louis Cardinals might have something to say about that. In any case, looks like we might have two wildcard teams in the championship series. The playoff games have been greatly entertaining and hopefully, the trend continues rest of this playoffs.

Billy Doubles Down

Oakland A's GM Billy Beane has already proved to us that he is all in this season, but he still found a way to double down at the trade deadline this week. Just like he did with the Jeff Samardzija trade when the A's were not really rumored to be in the running until Samardzija actually landed in Oakland, Billy scored another star pitcher in Jon Lester. This was a blockbuster, a rental, and not as popular a trade as the Samardzija trade was with the A's fans. I like both the trades and give Billy full marks as always. A's have been good in the past and Billy has gotten a lot of accolades, but they have always been a cute story and a surprising underdog. Never have they been the front-runner and a favorite to win it all and thats exactly what they are now, thanks to Billy's aggressive pursuit of star pitching. This is a  different reality for the A's and I love it as an A's fan. It's not that A's have not had star pitching in the past - who can forget Tim Hudson-Mark Mulder-Barry Zito, but they have not had trues aces since the big-3 were broken up. Even the 2006 ALCS team that lost to Detroit and a young Justin Verlander had Zito and Haren and good pitching like any other A's team, but Hudson and Mulder had already left town. Billy has finally decided he needs star pitching to win it all. Playoffs may be a crapshoot, but your odds go way up if you have Lester and Samardzija.

So why are the A's fans not unanimously excited about this trade? The reason is mostly emotional. Fans are a lot more opinionated and disappointed when big league stars are traded away as opposed to prospects even if that prospect is a stud like Addison Russell. In addition to that, all A's fans, including yours truly, love Yoenis Cespedes and thats who Billy gave up to get Lester. Cespedes is one of our own. He was the first, head-scratching, pleasantly surprising, power move by the new Billy we are seeing these days. Billy signed Cespedes for quite some money by A's standards and even outbid some big market teams for the little known Cuban transplant. Aside from being a rare, free market success story for the A's, Cespedes was good and has been the A's only highlight-reel talent. Whether it's winning the home run derby or doing well in the playoffs or throwing out unsuspecting Angels hitters at the home plate, Cespedes always had a flair for the dramatic and we loved and trusted him. But at the end of the day, he is a .256 hitter and a suspect outfielder, albeit with a hose for an arm. Also, the A's have lately been a light hitting team with good young pitching. But this year, they are leading the league on offense. So Billy is saying we should be able to lose Cespedes and still be offensively as good or even better than the last two years. And their pitching is going to be way better. Last but not the least, both Cespedes and Lester are going to be expensive free agents at the end of the season that Billy can't afford to sign anyways and if you look at them as mere rentals for the rest of this season, you have to like Lester over Cespedes. I wish Cespedes good luck and I will definitely miss him.

If A's fans put their emotional attachment to Cespedes aside and look at this rationally, they will agree with Billy. Sure, his hitting will be missed - especially considering he was the only consistent hitter the last two playoffs, but there is enough flexibility in this lineup to compensate for that and a pitching lineup of Lester, Samardzija, Gray, and Kazmir is priceless. As scary as it is to have the Angles and their 155 million-dollar payroll breathing down their necks for the division, the real thorn in the A's side has been the Detroit Tigers and their 162 million-dollar payroll. Billy has been doing a tremendous job of handling them both with a 83 million-dollar payroll, but he needs to beat the stellar pitching and MVP hitting of the Detroit Tigers in the playoffs and thats what his pitching pursuits this year is all about. Unfortunately, the biggest downer of the trade deadline for the A's came a few hours after they acquired Lester when Dave Dombrowski and the Tigers responded and stole David Price from Tampa Bay. It's a all-out arms race and that made the trade deadline fascinating and exciting. I do think both Lester and Price are a little over-rated and not quite in the class of Kershaw or King Felix, but then again, who is! These were still good trades and great arms to add to those two teams. I can't wait for a playoff matchup between Lester-Gray-Kazmir-Samardzija versus Scherzer-Price-Verlander-Sanchez.  I might still have to agree with the talking heads on TV and give a slight edge to the Tigers with their last three Cy Young winners and playoff experience, not to speak of Miggy Cabrera and that lineup. 

But first things first for the the Oakland Athletics. They are going to have to fight the Angels and their lineup all season long for the division, though the Angels pitching is a little suspect. These two teams have the two best records in all of baseball and how much more exciting can the rest of the season get for the A's. I wish them the best of luck! Nobody said winning the World Series is going to be a walk in the park. On a different note, the NFL pre-season will be off and running this weekend with the hall of game, but I wanted to give a special shout out to the MLB hall of famers inducted last weekend. It was a historically stellar class and congrats to all of the inductees. It included 300-game winners Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, slugger Frank Thomas and managers Joe Torre, Bobby Cox and Oakland's own Tony La Russa. Baseball historians are saying this was probably the third best HOF class ever.  We should definitely take a moment to appreciate these dudes we all saw perform in the recent past. Professor Maddux was the first baseball star I liked and my three-sport triumvirate when I started watching American professional sports back in the day were Dan Marino, Kevin Johnson, and Greg Maddux. KJ was the only one of those three that I had a team association with. The other two were from teams I didn't care about. Coincidentally, all three are considered under-performers as far as winning championships go. That probably says something about me and my values as well. But thats neither here nor there. The talent of those three was undeniable and congrats again to Professor Maddux on a hall of fame career.

In Billy we trust!

The Oakland Athletics have the best record in the Major leagues. They have won the AL West two years in a row and are looking even better this year. In 2012, they won the division with a nail-biting series at the end to put the heavily favored Texas Rangers away after the Rangers had gotten all the way to the World Series the previous two years. Nobody, even in the Bay Area, knew any of the players on the A's roster at that time. It was perceived as an amazing run locally and a fluke nationally. Last year, the A's won the division a little more comfortably, but they were still an anonymous team nationally and the local fans had barely gotten used to these guys. The national media was a little confused as to what to make of this team. There were no superstars, but the pitching was deep and terrific and the team just kept winning and surprising everybody. They proved 2012 was no fluke and that they are legit. Of course, both seasons, they lost to the more celebrated, higher-payroll, star-studded Detroit Tigers team in the ALDS in a five game series though they won the division over the more celebrated, higher-payroll, star-studded Angels and the Rangers. They came into 2014 with decent expectations - even nationally, and have been better than expected.

The 2014 A's have broken through. And Billy Beane went all in last week when he traded for Jeff Samardzija, one of the most sought after pitchers on the trade block. He did mortgage the future a little bit by trading his can't miss shortstop prospect Addison Russell, but he signaled finally that he wants to win the World Series and he is right in the middle of the window to do it. It may not have been a coincidence that the trade came right after a sweep at Detroit, but it was a coup nonetheless. A's were not rumored to be in the running for Samardzija, but they scored him early and comfortably. Billy decided to fortify a starting rotation that has already looked stellar so far. You could tell he was a little concerned about some of these arms - some young and some retread, slowing down later in the season. So he infused some new star arms into to mix. The pitching is so strong that the guy he demoted to the minors to create roster space was Tommy Milone, who had just pitched 6 scoreless innings! Billy is clearly getting ready for late October and he may not be done wheeling and dealing. He knows that Detroit will be around and their stars - both power hitters and pitchers, have to be neutralized. He now has the pitching to compete in any series against anyone and I love it.

The A's have often added to their teams mid-season when they were in contention. But usually, it's a rental for the remainder of the season and mostly hitters or bullpen help. Billy has rarely added a star starting pitcher via a trade and this has been a pleasant surprise to the A's fans. Samardzija started for the A's right away and gave them a gem of a start to go with a win. So life is all good in Oakland right now. Between their best record in the league, consistent winning over the last three years, Cespedes' highlight reel throws to the plate, and now the Samardzija trade, they are not anonymous anymore. The league knows them well and they have six dudes in the all-star game. They will be the fancy pick to win it all, though the Angels are breathing down their neck for the division. Billy has always maintained, I might add rightfully so, that the MLB playoffs are a crapshoot. Given his low payroll, all he can do is get them there and the rest is just luck and a pitcher or two getting hot or cold at the right moment. But this year, he has decided to do something about the crapshoot. He wants to go in with a bevy of hot pitchers and increase his odds of one of theoe guys getting hot and shutting some fools down in October. Thats exactly what he is going for.

Moneyball is so year 2000, but this team the last three years has been Billy's masterpiece and more impressive than even those moneyball teams. The A's have the fourth lowest payroll in the league and have been out-performing the big money spenders as always. The moneyball concepts have been co-opted by every other team and is nothing unique anymore. So Billy has found other ways to exploit market inefficiencies - he had to. He is loaded with pitching as always and some great signings and trades are behind it.  But platooning is the specialty of this version of the A's - the new moneyball if you will. The A's matchup their hitters against pitchers and rotate them in and out. The lack of stars gives them more flexibility to do this. Not only does it help the team to platoon these guys, it also puts them in the best position to succeed. Just to illustrate the point, they sometimes start three catchers. Aside from pitcher Scott Kazmir, outfielder Yoenis Cespedes, and now Samardzija, the other A's all-stars are third baseman Josh Donaldson, catcher Derek Norris, first baseman/outfielder Brandon Moss, and closer Sean Doolittle. Thats an impressive list of no-name stars who get the job done. It's just a matter of time before this platooning approach becomes the new fad and A's front office dudes like David Forst and Farhan Zaidi get GM jobs elsewhere, but Billy is trying to win one before all that happens. All he needs is just one World Series ring to cement his legacy as one of the best GMs ever and I hope he gets it done this year.

Busy Weekend

This is a fun time of the year when baseball playoffs intersects with America's real past-time - football. Playoffs are the only time when we really pay close attention to baseball these days and there were quite a few interesting baseball games the last few days starting with the new wild-card games on Friday. The weekend was packed with baseball playoffs competing with college and pro football. I navigated away from the NFL to catch the A's play and lose a tough one Sunday afternoon, a game decided by wild pitches and a costly error. Both the A's and the San Francisco Giants have pulled one back today to stay alive at 2-1. The giants are in a tough spot with 2 more to go on the road. The A's are at home, but might have to face Justin Verlander in game 5 - that's no fun. But the A's had a great win today with Brett Anderson coming back from a 20-day injury layoff to pitch great right under the playoff glare and Coco Crisp robbing Price Fielder with a great catch to make up for his 2-run error on Sunday. The other 2 series are both tied at 1-1 going back to their respective home fields for 3 games. Those home teams - Nationals and the Yankees, are feeling good about themselves.

Can you believe that the NFL season is almost 1/3 of the way done already! The niners re-established themselves as the favorites again after back-to-back weeks of dismantling AFC East teams. Neither the jets nor the bills are respectable teams, but the way the niners embarrassed them speaks volume about the capabilities of the niners and Jim Harbaugh. I am a big Harbaugh fan, but he is truly a psychotic football nut. He is probably impossible to deal with in person and looks like an arrogant and haughty control freak. But he is a football genius. The niners have this athletic quarterback Colin Kaepernick who is even rumored to be the future of the franchise beyond Alex Smith. They drafted him in the second round in 2011 and he has a big arm too. So Harbaugh unleashed his legs on the Jets to out-Tebow them. While ESPN has been waiting for Tebow-time with the Jets for the past several months, Harbaugh shows them how it's done. He posts a shut-out on the Jets and Tebows them for good effect. Of course, that made some of the niner faithful - those who are always looking to get rid of Alex Smith, ask for Kaeprnick to take over. So Harbaugh unleashes Alex Smith against the Bills at home. He completed 18 out of 24 for 303 yards and 3 TDs - very un-Alex Smith like numbers. Looks like Harbaugh has made this year his personal experiment and he is not even using all his weapons yet. I am sure he is saving Randy Moss for the later half of the season and the playoffs.

Niners do have one loss, but it's on the road against the Vikings, a Vikings team that looks increasingly legitimate with every passing week. They have Adrian Peterson back running effectively and Percy Harvin doing everything. Christian Ponder is playing good too. The play of young quarterbacks has been a great story of this season. RGIII, who got hurt this week, may have the most impressive numbers, but several young guns are lighting it up. Playing quarterback has never been easier in the NFL, and these talented guys are taking full advantage. Andrew Luck defeated Aaron Rodgers and the Packers and is looking like the real deal. Ryan Tannehill also looks like the guy Miami has been searching for ever since Dan Marino retired. Tannehill is finally known for more than just his beautiful wife. Even 0-5 Cleveland's Brandon Weeden looks good and the Browns fans might finally have some hope. Second year guys Dalton, Ponder, Locker, and even Gabbert are all looking solid. The only 2 guys that I don't trust are Cam Newton and Russell Wilson. But Russell Wilson is winning now, though I feel Seattle may be slightly better off with Matt Flynn. That day might be coming, but for now, all is well in the rookie land. With 10 out of the 32 teams in the league featuring either a rookie or a second year QB, the league is looking like a Chuck E. Cheese.

Moneyball II

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.