Making three bold predictions for the Oakland Athletics for the 2012 season, and the introduction of the probability of nothing stupid happening.
The A’s make a Moneyball move with Manny Ramirez, the Yankees round out their bench with Raul Ibanez and Eric Chavez, and the Red Sox finally get what was coming to them for Theo Epstein in Cubs reliever Chris Carpenter
If Oakland could develop its own hitters, it wouldn’t need to invest in players like Yoenis Cespedes.
How can we reconcile Oakland’s Yoenis Cespedes signing with the team’s latest rebuilding efforts and its surplus of Stepford outfielders?
Does the recently-extended Billy Beane’s reputation deserved to be tarnished after five seasons without playoff baseball in Oakland?
Which men of misery prevented their teams from escaping the murky waters of suckitude?
The PCL is famous for its pinball scores but there are other, better reasons to pay attention to it this year.
The Angels beat the Yankees, the Twins beat the A’s. Are teams that depend on
the single and the stolen base better in the post-season than teams that play
for the three run-home run?
We missed all four division series predictions here at Baseball Prospectus. I predicted
that the A’s would beat the Twins in “Three. Four max.” The email immediately started to flow in.
During the regular season, I can see where MLB might fail to get the national deal they’d like. But what’s happening this post-season is a disaster.
This is my favorite playoff series, if only because it’s going to finally put the lie to Bud Selig’s constant lament that no team in the lower half of payroll has ever advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs. The Twins and the A’s were respectively 27th and 28th in ESPN’s Opening Day payroll tally. I’m surprised that the right Honorable Commissioner didn’t intervene and ‘fix’ the matchups in what he might see as the best interests of baseball. One of these teams will win three games and advance, only to be immediately heralded as an aberration, no matter what happens when they face the Yankees.
Last week in this space, I talked about how baseball teams should knock it off with the Obey-o-Tron and build their fan base with the kind of cheer clubs you see in soccer. Here’s the cool part: it’s already happening. I got e-mail from readers all week long.
Oakland Athletics