Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Breaking news!! A's score 14 runs in one game!

Prior to this evening, my beloved Oakland A's have scored 146 runs. Tonight the bats exploded for 14 runs, or obviously just less than 10% of their entire run output to date. The 14-0 shellacking of the rival Angels singled handedly bumps the A's to 4th in Run Differential, +20, in the AL.

The Athletics, Rangers and Angels are now all in a 3 way tie for first in the West, with records of 22-20. Obviously this is a biased post, given my fanatic fandom, but the A's have to be the favorites going forward.

Now I realize that the Rangers have sputtered due to injuries to Cruz and most notably Hamilton. The Angels have felt the effects of Morales being out for the season, and the even worse effects of trading for Vernon Wells. The A's haven't been immune to injuries, as their Closer*, Andrew Bailey has yet to throw a single pitch. The worst news came today, when Dallas Braden will be out for the season after surgery.

*Closers are the single most over-rated position on a baseball team. I firmly believe any decent reliever will be a good closer. Is it harder to enter a clean inning with the bases empty, or be thrust mid inning with runner(s) on base? Actually, I shouldn't rip Closers. Bullpens in general are an issue to me, but thats another post entirely

After ruling out further unforeseen events, and assuming DL schedules are within +/- of 5 games, we can begin to compare the Rangers and the A's.

Rangers wOBA and wRC+: .338 and 111
A's wOBA and wRC+: .295 and 87

Oof. No sugar coating or spin control there. That is just ass-ugly for the A's. Fortunately, Baseball is more than hitting. Pitching will paint a different picture for us.

Rangers FIP, xFIP, tERA: 4.54, 4.16, 5.21
A's FIP, xFIP, tERA: 3.19, 3.49, 3.38

Yikes. That is just as glaring. Given that the A's have yet to showcase their best in baseball defense with a bevy of errors to start this year, and I can safely say that the Oakland staff will not significantly outperform their ERA/xFIP number, ie not like Cahill and last year year.

Based on these numbers and my blind faith, I feel safe saying that my A's will win the AL West.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Like Mase, Jordan, and Favre, I'm making a comeback

Stay tuned for all my thoughts that I can't fit on Twitter...and theres a lot of them