2022

In a season to forget for Oakland Athletics fan, this might be the best one yet. With still a couple of games left to play, I am sad to see it end. While I am an A’s fan first, I absolutely love the game of baseball. This season has reignited the fun that was missing the past two years. As we returned to stadiums in the beginning of a post COVID world, baseball reminded us what we missed.

While the season started out on a sour note and delayed due to the lockout, it didn’t take long for things to heat up. The expanded playoffs set the stage for a great season. While I personally am not a fan, it has made the last two weeks exciting. With the A’s out early, it allowed me to just enjoy the game. I got to watch teams fight for spots and witness the Seattle Mariners end their 21 season postseason drought. That spot was made available by the expanded playoff format. So while I don’t like it, I loved every minute of watching M’s fans celebrate. It’s things like that that make baseball great.

Then there’s the other stories. Aaron Judge and Albert Pujols. The quote from Moneyball of how can you not be romantic about baseball is highlighted in those two stories. We got to witness incredible baseball history every single day. Texting various friends for each at bat, hoping to see a home run. To see history. It has been an incredible journey and I am so happy I got to be a witness to it all.

Speaking of incredible journeys, this blog started in 2011 with an incredible journey to see every ballpark. It taught me about myself and made me the person I am today. September 1st, I hit my goal of not only seeing all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums, but to see the Oakland A’s play at all 30 stadiums. 12 years of flights, hotels, and ballparks. I have so many wonderful memories on the journey. I’m now patiently waiting for Tampa Bay to get their new stadium now and more teams to enter the league. Until then, I will still go to road games and enjoy the game that I love so much. Fingers crossed that the A’s get to play in Korea in 2024.

You Know What Happens When You Assume….

It’s that time of the year again.  The time when everybody makes their predictions on how teams will do and who’s going to the playoffs.  The trouble with that is, there is a large difference between the team on paper and the one that actually plays on the field.

Last year, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim were expected to knock out the Texas Rangers for the AL West crown and maybe even win the World Series after signing Albert Pujols.  The Angels had a great offensive team, so everybody assumed they would win.  The thing nobody paid attention to was the fact they had no really pitching and you can’t win games without good pitching.  You can score all the runs you want, but if your pitchers are going out there giving up just as many runs, it’s hard to win games.  As it turns out, the Angels did not beat the Rangers for the AL West, in fact they came in third in the division with just Seattle behind them.  This year, it’s the same thing.  Everybody is saying the Angels are going to win the AL West, but again, they haven’t addressed the pitching issue. They lost Dan Haren and Zack Greinke.  Josh Hamilton is a good ball player, but I’m not sure that was the best option for the Angels.  Hamilton was a beast at home the last few years, but it’s Texas where if you get the ball up the jet stream will pull it out; it’s like Coors Field almost.  Plus the way he played the last month of the season, especially the last series in Oakland (I’m talking about in the last game when he completely missed the ball and seemed to not care one bit), I would be concerned.

The Detroit Tigers.  They were expected to be the best team in baseball last season along with the Angels.  The Angels, who finished third in the AL West, had a better record than the Tigers did.  Sure they made it to the World Series, but they lost.  In a four game sweep.  The Oakland Athletics made too many mistakes, and the Tigers used those to advance to the ALCS.  They shouldn’t have beaten the A’s.  In the ALCS, the New York Yankees lost Derek Jeter and after that, it seemed like they didn’t want to be there.  That was hard to watch because you could tell by watching they had given up.  Sure, they have good pitching, OK, they have great pitching and a lot of good offensive guys.  They’re a team that should win, at least on paper.

The New York Yankees.  Do I really need to say much of anything?  They’re the Yankees, of course they’re going to win games, and make the playoffs.  They are good on paper and for the most part, good on the field too.

If you couldn’t tell, I’m not a big fan of making predictions on how a season will play out.  Football is one thing- it’s only 16 games, but baseball has 162 chances for anything to happen.  The only time I like assumptions is when they’re proven wrong.  Case in point, the A’s and O’s this past season.  Everybody assumed they would finish dead last in their respected divisions and they both made it to the playoffs.

Scoreboard Watching

It’s that time of year again.  September, the final month of the regular season, which means two things:  great baseball and scoreboard watching.

I scoreboard watch all season, I admit it, but come September, it kicks into overdrive.  I check the standings at least three times a night.  There is always a game going on, but being on the west coast (cough the better coast cough), most of the games played back east are over or almost over by the time games start out here.  I find myself checking more often when my team is actually involved in the playoff push, like this year (!!!!), so I’m a crazy person yelling at my boyfriend because my phone doesn’t update at his house.  I look like I’m a druggie going through withdrawals….it’s a problem.

We are only in the second week of September and there has been some huge series already.  Between the Tigers and White Sox, Yankees and Orioles (they seem to play each other every weekend), and now the Angels and A’s.  Tonight starts two huge four game series, with the Tigers at the White Sox and the A’s at the Angels.  The Tigers, another under performing team like the Dodgers, are trying to catch the White Sox for the division.  The AL Central has been a total toss-up this season for a couple of reasons.  What the heck happened to the Minnesota Twins?  They are always right there in the fight for the division and this year, they’re in the fight for last place, but they have a bunch of super talented players.  I’m baffled.  Also, everybody, and I do mean everybody, picked the Tigers to just runaway with the division this year.  They loaded up on a bunch of really talented players, not to mention the great players they already had, and here we are in September with them trying to win the division because they don’t even have a good enough record for either of the wild card positions.  The White Sox always seem to have a good team, but never quite gets the respect they deserve.  It always seemed the crazy, outspoken Ozzie took all the focus off of the team, so it’s good to see them shine with him gone.  Plus, the pick up of Kevin Youkilis from the Boston Red Sox mid-season was a genius move on their part.  I hope they can keep this up, because it’s been a lot of fun seeing what they can do.

Speaking of teams under performing, we have the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.  I must admit, I am very much enjoying their season so far.  I HATE the Angels.  They have a ton of money and load up on talent.  Case in point, Albert Pujols.  I thought they were idiots for the deal they gave him, and I had a bunch of people give me shit staying I was just a hater because I was an A’s fan.  I give him credit, he did manage to turn his season around, but by no means is he anywhere near what he was expected to do.  Now, last week the A’s hosted the Angels for a three game set in Oakland.  Going into the series, the A’s had won 9 straight and have been playing extremely well, but so had the Angels.  Sadly, the Angels swept the A’s and to make matters worse, we all saw what happened to Brandon McCarthy on Wednesday.  Luckily, McCarthy is recovering well in the hospital and his keeping everybody updated/entertained via twitter.  Tonight, the Angels are hosting the A’s for a four game series that is going to be HUGE.  Right now, the teams are separated by 2.5 games and by the end of the series, the teams will either be further apart or switch positions in the standings.  At this point in the season, to drop from second to third is killer.  Also, with the Rangers having the day off, that allows the winner of tonight’s game to gain some ground on them as well.  As the A’s announcers keep saying “Go for the division, settle for the wild card”.

The next couple of weeks are going to be the death of me, but I can’t wait.  Sit back, try to relax and watch the madness unfold.

Double Play

There are few things in baseball that I love more than the double play (a triple play is one of those few things).  There’s so much excitement involved, and so much frustration too.  When the pitcher gets into trouble, you can always count on the possibility of the double play to get your team back into the dugout, but if it’s not executed right, things can go from bad to worse in mere seconds.  Chicks may dig the long ball, but I dig the double play.

Last night, the A’s turned my favorite double play of all time.  While the usual 4-5-3/6-5-3 combos are always exciting, I love when there’s a 8-5-3 double play.  Outfielders normally don’t get to be involved in the plays in the infield, such as double plays and run downs, so when they do get involved, it’s usually pretty great.  Coco Crisp made a perfectly timed leap to catch Ryan Doumit’s fly ball.  Justin Morneau, who thought Crisp would play it off the wall, had rounded second on his way to third when Crisp caught the ball, and the relay throw from Adam Rosales to Chris Carter at first made Morneau the second out in the inning for an incredible double play.  Check out the link for the video below.

I remember in Game 7 of the NLCS St. Louis Cardinals vs. New York Mets.  Endy Chavez made “the catch” and holy crap.  I still can’t believe he caught that almost 6 years later.  Scott Rolen hit a rocket to left field for what seemed to be a 2-run shot.  However, in that moment, history was made.  Chavez looked like he had jumped on a trampoline as he went up.  He was about chest high over the top of the wall to make the most jaw dropping catch.  Albert Pujols, who had been at first base, was out by a landslide as he was almost to third thinking it was a home run.  That will forever be one of the greatest outfield assisted double plays turned that I’ve seen.

Nothing better than saying that triple plays are awesome, and having one happen in the game hours later!

Coco Crisp Starts Double Play

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

I was about to start writing about Weaver’s start on Friday that I found interesting, but while going to check a stat, I was distracted by an article.

The topic of the video/article was discussing why Zack Greinke has struggled since coming over to the Angels.  I can easily take a stab at that without even looking at what they have to say.  First off, Zack Greinke was never that good of a pitcher back when he came up with the Kansas City Royals.  He had no consistency in that he’d be good one season, then horrible the next.  He was OK last year, so naturally he would be no so great this year, just by his own pitching patterns of old.  Since he came up in 2004, his wins per season have been: 8, 5, 1, 7, 13, 16, 10, 16, and 10 so far this season.  The graph of his numbers looks like a roller coaster, not the stats of an “Ace” starting pitcher.  Another main reason- he switched leagues.  We all know that American League pitching is completely different from that of the National League.  Pitchers (and players) going from the AL to the NL tend to do a lot better than those going from the NL to the AL.  Hitters have a lot of issues adjusting as well- look at Albert Pujols’s numbers this year in the AL compared to his numbers in the NL.  Matt Holiday is another example of an NL player having problems adjusting to the AL (I still can’t believe we gave up Carlos Gonzalez and Huston Street for him).

Back to the my main thought on Friday night’s game between the Angels and the Rays.  The starting pitchers for that game were Jered Weaver and James Shield who are a combined 26-10 this season, with Weaver at 15-3.  Weaver going into the game only had 2 losses on the season.  Two; in the middle of August.  That’s crazy impressive.  Everybody expected that this was going to be a major pitchers duel, with the final score being like 1-0.  However, Weaver would get his third loss, and it was a nasty loss.  Weaver lasted only three innings, allowing eight hits and nine earned runs en route to the Angels losing 12-3.  This is just further proof that you never know what’s going to happen in baseball and even Aces can fail.