brainwagon

I’ve given the weekend’s baseball a day or two to sink in, and now I think I’ll take the opportunity to wrap up.

The Detroit Tigers utterly destroyed the A’s, but to be honest, the home team was clearly outgunned in every arena. The Tigers pitched better. The Tigers hit better. The Tigers were coached better. I’d say that I can now emphathize with the Twins, who were swept in the ALDS by the A’s, except for one thing: the A’s actually lost to a better team, and I’m pretty sure that the Twins lost to a worse team.

Now that the A’s have been eliminated, what positives do I take away from the year?

• Frank Thomas is a blast to watch. He bounced back from a pair of frustrating and injury plagued years with the White Sox, and demonstrated that he could still hit the ball. In an A’s lineup which has had inconsistent hitting, he was always at least a threat to go deep, and I’m sure he is the cause for a lot of other hits as pitchers worked around him.
• Nick Swisher showed some power. He had 35 homeruns with 95 RBIs, pretty darned good for someone who is usually batting fifth or deeper in the lineup.
• Marco Scutaro showed that he could be a pretty reasonable shortstop. His eight infield assists and two RBI doubles in Game 2 of the ALDS against the twins were absolutely solid.
• Jay Payton was the first player in history to play each of the outfield positions 40 times in a season. His bat also benefitted from being in the lineup on a consistent basis, giving his second best season for battting average and slugging, his only better being his rookie season in Colorado.
• Zito improved from the previous three years. In 2003-2005, he had records of 14-12, 11-11, 1nd 14-13, with ERAs of 3.3 4.48 and 3.86 respectively. Zito dropped his ERA to 3.83, but a 16-10 record.

Now, some negatives:

• Zito has pitched his last game for Oakland.
• Chavez had one of his worst offensive years ever, despite his continuing dominance at third base. This year, he might have been the sixth best hitter on the As. That’s kind of hard to take for your franchise player.
• Swisher and Chavez hit right around .200 with men in scoring position. Timely hitting seemed to be a serious problem for the As.
• Harden and Crosby both spent a lot of time on the injured list. Harden has some of the nastiest stuff around, but only managed 9 starts this year. Crosby only saw 84 games in 2005, and only 96 in 2006. When you compare that to Zito and Tejada, both of whom have incredible durability and have basically never missed a start, you aren’t entirely confident looking toward the future.
• Street looked more like you expect a rookie to look than he did last year. I can’t tell whether he’s lost something, or whether people have just begun to figure him out, but he hasn’t been getting those 1-2-3 innings that you’d like to see from your closer.

Bradley, Kielty, Calero, Sarloos, Ducscherer, Scutaro, Perez, and Melhuse are all eligible for arbitration. I suspect that they will give a new contract to Thomas for two years. But you never know.

In the end, the A’s managed to win the ALDS, a feat which earlier (and frankly much more talented teams) managed to not pull off. I spent a lot of time out in
the sun, watching a game I love. Cheering the victories. Agonizing over the defeats. Talking about it with friends.

Can’t wait until spring training.

[tags]Baseball,Oakland Athletics[/tags]

Addendum: SFGate is reporting that Ken Macha has been fired as coach of the Athletics, with two years remaining on his contract. I have mixed feelings about this: I can’t help but think that perhaps many of the items cited in the article are taken out of context, but it is also clear to me that many players have issues with Macha and that in the Tigers series, we were flat out-coached by Jim Leland. Getting rid of coaches is all the rage, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.