brainwagon

Bitchin’. The A’s pick up White Sox veteran Frank Thomas for a one year deal. He gets a guaranteed $500,000, plus up to $2.6 million in bonuses if he says healthy through the season. The White Sox cast the veteran adrift in 2005 because of his injuries. That’s really the big question: will we get […]

The Oakland Athletics announced that they acquired outfielder Milton Bradley and infielder Antonio Perez for top prospect Andre Ethier. It can’t really fault Beane for making this trade: Milton Bradley has talent, both as a line drive hitter with some pop that lets him get extra base hits, and he’s a pretty fine fielder, but […]

Well, it’s still several months till preseason baseball starts up, but there is still some baseball news going around. The Athletics scored free-agent Esteban Loaiza in a 3 year, $21 million dollar deal. This has sharply increased speculation that GM Billy Beane means to deal Barry Zito in an attempt to get an offensive right-handed […]

I must admit, I’m a fairly unschooled student of baseball history, which is part of the reason why I’m trying to read up on the subject and play around with various baseball databases. Today, on a lark, I decided to try to figure out how tall the average baseball player was (just a tad over […]

Athletics closer Huston Street has won the 2005 American League Rookie of the Year. Street finished 2005 with a mark of 5-1 and 23 saves in 27 opportunities, with an astonishing 1.72 ERA. I think that it is safe to say that Street saved the Oakland Athletics from a very possible sub .500 mark on […]

I was scanning the right sidebar of my blog to see what ballplayers were born today, and uncovered what I (at first) thought must be a bug. Two players, both named “Mark Corey”, born on November 3rd. But wait, born in two different years. It turns out that the 1955 version of Mark Corey was […]

I’ve been meaning to do a unique (well, fairly unique) hack for a while. I’ve had the database of major league baseball players from The Baseball Archive loaded in mysql for a while, and I’ve thought of creating a little sidebar gadget that shows all the major leaguers who were born on today’s date. Well, […]

Well, after spending five or so hours watching the game on Tuesday, I really didn’t feel like investing the same amount of time watching what proved to be the final game in the Series last night, but the Sox managed to pull it off: the sweep was completed against the Astros in their home stadium. […]

I’ve started a new quickie poll. You only have a day or so to voice your opinion: will it be the White Sox or Astros who win the World Series?

Well, the table has been set, and it’s going to be the White Sox vs. the Astros in the World Series beginning Saturday. Brad Lidge should send Oswalt flowers: if Oswalt blew the game, we’d be looking at a nerve wracking game seven, and it could have been bad. Instead, the Astros win their first […]

Legendary Bay Area sports broadcaster Bill King passed away today, and I must admit, it bums me out. A great talent, I know him mostly as the radio voice of the Oakland Athletics, but he previously did play by play for the Oakland Raiders and the Golden State Warriors. He has one of the great […]

You begin by leading 4-2 in the top of the ninth, and then bring in your reliever to get two quick outs: – B. Lidge relieved D. Wheeler – J. Rodriguez hit for H. Luna – J. Rodriguez struck out swinging – J. Mabry struck out swinging Then, you let some speedy kid bang out […]

Whew. It’s September, and the A’s were two games back of division leading Anaheim going into last night’s game. Carmen had some homework to do, and the weather seemed beautiful, so I decided to go to the game and see the A’s versus the Twins. The weather was beautful. I had seats right behind home […]

Well, after a couple of weeks where they seemed to be firmly in reverse, the A’s have won five games in a row and are now back atop the AL West, courtesy in part to the Angel’s complete collapse against the Devil Rays. After trying for the sweep today against Baltimore, the A’s will go […]

For the second day in a row, the A’s pull out a come from behind victory over their rivals in the AL West, the Somewhere Angels from Some Other Place. The A’s trailed 0-4 going into the bottom of the 7th, but scored four times to tie the game. Then, in the bottom of the […]