Gautam Mukunda wrote: > Well, I'm starting to generate at least some response, so I'm happy. And > also encouraged. Muhahahahahahahaha! > > Oh yes, one more note - I'm pretty much doing these off the top of my head - > almost no research, in other words (so there, Dan! :-) which means I'm > probably going to get a few player names and such wrong. Sorry about that. >
There's no way I can compete with your impressive knowledge of the game, but I think (hope?) you underestimate the Oakland pitching staff. Hudson, Mulder and Zito were three of the best pitchers in the league last year and I see no reason to expect a decline. Our ballpark isn't as much of a pitchers park as it was before Mt. Davis, but it still has voluminous foul territory. If the A's get off to a better start than they did last year and the M's come down to earth a little, we'll beat them hands down. I hope! 8^) Doug Me: Thanks for the kind words - I hope you're right about the A's, actually. As may be clear, I'm not neutral towards them - the A's are a team run the way I would run a team if I ever got the opportunity. Or, more accurately, the way I wish I would run a team if I ever got the opportunity, since Billy Beane is surely much better at it than I would be. My fear with the Oakland pitching staff is that young pitchers tend to regress/get injured with some degree of frequency, and the A's farm system is a tiny bit dry in the high minors in terms of pitching - unsurprisingly, since it recently graduated three of the best young pitchers in all of baseball. The risk in that, plus the decline inherent in losing Jason Giambi, plus their reliance on the ever-injured, and getting old, David Justice, plus the _significant_ decline in their outfield defense that stems from replacing Johnny Damon with Terrence Long in CF and moving Long out of RF, worries me. All of that said - _two_ years from now there's little doubt in my mind that they will be the best team in baseball, absent any random injuries. I'm just not sure that they can do that this year. Even so, it is, I think, a toss-up. So close that anything - a random injury, a trade, someone changing the beer in the kegs that Oakland keeps at First Base :-), anything could swing it one way or the other. The one thing that bugs me about the A's, I would say, is that they're kind of boring to watch. It is basically, as Rob Neyer once said to me, "a bunch of slow white guys who won't swing the bat." And Rob, like me, thinks Billy Beane is a genius. It's just not the most interesting type of baseball. Ideally I'd like to see someone think about how to teach the plate discipline that Oakland drafts for to the sort of "athletes" who get drafted by the Devil Rays and the Marlins, for example. That would be interesting, as I think that the stolen base is still a bit under-exploited precisely because Oakland's type of ball rewards de-emphasizing it. But that does leave a small opening for a _really_ well managed team that I'd like to see someone try and exploit. It would be very difficult, but it might be rewarding. Ichiro could be a very valuable first step along that road. Gautam
