2008 Oakland A's Season

[HMFFL]

Tue, May 27 10:05 pm EDT G. Smith vs. A. Burnett
Wed, May 28 10:05 pm EDT R. Harden vs. R. Halladay
Thu, May 29 3:35 pm EDT D. Eveland vs. J. Litsch

Los Angeles Angels
Oakland 1.5

[FNQ]

I didnt think it was possible for Daric to play this bad. He has been awful in May.. hope its just the usual May slump for us.

[HMFFL]

Fri, Jun 6 10:05 pm EDT Blanton vs. Lackey
Sat, Jun 7 9:05 pm EDT G. Smith vs. J. Garland
Sun, Jun 8 4:05 pm EDT R. Harden vs. E. Santana

[HMFFL]

5.5 games behind LA right now.

I know it's early but as of right now we are second behind Tampa for the wild card.

[HMFFL]

Sweep! AZ will probably give us problems next!

Hopefully Atlanta can help us by beating LA again.

[HMFFL]

It's approaching so how do we go about improving? The playoffs can be ours with a couple tweaks and some luck.

[FNQ]

I dunno what we need... our pitching is excellent, so we need a bat, but where?

I'm going to say 3B... its time to part ways with Chavez. I wouldnt mind packaging Harden and Chavez together to some team for a top of the line 3B prospect.

[Ellis8Monta4MVP]

Justin Duchscherer and Rich Harden are, right now, the two best pitchers in the American League. The Duke is 8-4 with a 1.99 ERA and a 0.97 WHIP, while Rich Harden is still undefeated at 5-0 with a 2.15 ERA. Rich completely dominated in the Phillies in eight innings, allowing only three total baserunners with 11 strikeouts. Right now, both of these guys deserve All-Star bids and one of them should be the starting pitcher.

[mroberts213]

Harden is gone now. I don't really see us picking up someone for a playoff push. We could unload Street for a quality 3B product, but I only see that happening if Beane has a plan to trade Chavez this off-season. With his injury problems it might be difficult to trade him. The Dodgers might have an intrest in him, maybe we can get Either back . I honestly feel we will be quiet on the trade deadline. We have Thomas, Crosby and Sweeney on the DL with Chavez. When they return healthy we should be in good shape to contend.

[HMFFL]

A's Talk Jason Bay Trade With Pirates

FoxSports - The A's continue to talk with the Pirates about left fielder Jason Bay, but a trade remains unlikely — the Pirates want more than the A's are willing to give. The A's are trying to build a long-term contender as they prepare for the opening of their new ballpark in 2012.

http://baseball.realgm.com/src_wiretap_ ... h_pirates/

[HMFFL]

3-7 over the last 10 games.

Starting to slip after the trades we made, but it's not like we had a real shot at the wild card, so one of the East teams will eventually win it.

[FNQ]

I agree... it sucks right now, seeing people who have no immediate future here (Brooks Conrad) getting starts when we could be moving our younger players up... I guess for arbitration purposes it makes sense, I just would prefer homegrown talent...

[jem3cerna]

How about Crede for Street and Chavez? Really sad how he has gone downhill. I remember his great Gold Glove/ All Star days. He was great. Crede was always beaten by Chavez for All Star games but he was just beaten because the A's were the team to beat back then even though they are great now with great talent. I mean the have speed and eveything.

[FNQ]

If we trade Chavez or Street (still a slim possibility), I'd just want a 3B prospect...

Rumor is that Pennington could move to 3B if he can't handle SS well enough.. I dont want that. I want a legit, 30HR hitting 3B like we were promised..

Guys who I'd hate to see in A's jerseys next season:

Huston Street
Eric Chavez
Bobby Crosby
Emil Brown
Keith Foulke
Mike Sweeney
(to a lesser extent) Jack Cust

I have reasons behind all of them... Street is way too inconsistent to close at the MLB level right now, but I never liked him.. my Chavez dislike is pretty evident... Crosby's been given too many chances and he's just not a good player. Brown had one hot month and 4 crappy ones, and he shouldnt even be on the roster anymore... Foulke was a decent pickup but just cant stay healthy, like Sweeney...

Cust I'm sure will draw some WTFs... I dont care. His kind of value is only good with a heavy OBP % team.. we aren't that. Looking at our true positional core (Suzuki, Daric, Pennington, C. Gonzalez, Sweeney), we have a bunch of players who don't have much patience at the plate. It could develop, but I'd rather be getting guys with higher OBP and more SBs now... especially at the stage we are at. Our young players dont have the pop yet... so much like the old mid-late 90s teams, we'll have teams that hit lots of double initially, and then develop into HR hitters (Giambi and Tejada are my 2 favorite examples).

Seeing Carlos Gonzalez start off the season with a lot of 2Bs was great... next year he could hit 40..

[HMFFL]

"It's quiet in the Coliseum now, not as silent as the period in the '70s when people nicknamed it the Mausoleum, but haunting nonetheless. The A's just finished a rare, sweet win over the Rangers before a Saturday crowd of loyalists, who have watched their team sprint from nine games over .500 to 12 under in just nine weeks. But two points of optimism keep creeping from the wreckage of the 2008 season. One, the A's haven't sunk to the level of their 1979 counterparts, who drew only 673 fans to one game, or today's Florida Marlins, whose attendance hit an estimated 600 for a game last week. Second, in a bleak period for Bay Area pro franchises, the A's appear most likely to return to ..."

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[HMFFL]

"Frank Thomas said Friday that he will not require surgery on his injured right quadriceps; there is no tear in the area where the muscle connects with the knee, just scar tissue breakdown and tendinitis. Thomas is determined to play one more year, and the fact that the quad problem is not as severe as thought should help him as he pursues a roster spot for next season. He is getting shockwave treatment to speed his recovery. Thomas, 40, is tied with Willie McCovey and Ted Williams for 18th place on the all-time home run list, with 521. "I've made my money, now it's about fun," Thomas said. "I still have some things I want to accomplish. My goal is to come back here, and we'll see how it ..."

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[HMFFL]

Has it been a long year or what!?!

[FNQ]

Sure has... I drive by the Coliseum daily, and I've seen the same A's hat on the side of the highway for nearly a month... symbolism at its finest.

There's a lot to build on though, and we've cleared two spots in the rotation that were vets (Harden/Blanton). If we could find a taker for Chavez, we'd be looking good, financially.

Overall, the season still disappointed me. No prominent long-term hitting option presented itself (are we committed to Cust? What about the Big Hurt?), although Carlos Gonzalez and Ryan Sweeney showed flashes. Barton was a monumental disappointment, and Crosby has proven he's average at best. Hopefully those big trades we made this offseason and midseason will give us some prospects..

[HMFFL]

Over the course of his 11 years as the A's general manager, Billy Beane has relied on trades to strengthen his club.

But by trading established veterans such as Dan Haren, Nick Swisher, Mark Kotsay, Rich Harden and Joe Blanton over the past calendar year, Beane freed up enough money to create for himself the option of exploring the free-agent market.

"This is one of the few years since I've been here that we've been able to look at both [trades and free agency]," Beane said on Wednesday from the General Managers Meetings in Orange County, Calif. "We've created some flexibility."

That doesn't mean Beane plans to go hog wild at the free-agent trough. The marquee players in the 2008 class -- starting pitcher CC Sabathia, outfielder Manny Ramirez and first baseman Mark Teixeira, for example -- are looking to get far too rich for Oakland's blood.

Yet, with more cash at his disposal thanks to the dumping of the aforementioned former Athletics' salaries, Beane has another tool to use in rebuilding his team into a perennial contender.

Just how much of that available cash he'll pay out, though, is an issue on which Beane is reluctant to expound this early in the offseason.

"The free agents are just now filing, so you can't accomplish or project much right now," he said. "The money we spend, what our payroll is going to look like, that's yet to be determined. ... We have flexibility now, and that's great, but we're not just going to spend money to spend it."

If Beane spends, he'll almost certainly spend it in an effort to fortify an offensive attack that was among the American League's most anemic in 2008. The A's have what one National League scout called "a gang of high-ceiling young guys, both in the Majors and Minors," but Beane said he's not going into the offseason worrying too much about what position the players he might add happen to play.


"Obviously [Mark Ellis] is our second baseman, and [Eric Chavez], assuming he's healthy, is our third baseman," Beane said. "Beyond that, I don't think we're going to be position-specific."

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