Keep the Candian?

So, today is the Opening Day for most of the league. And since the A’s took their silly little jaunt over to Japan last week, they have the day off for an extra rest of something, even though they’ve already played three exhibition games since returning.

You may have heard that on this silly little jaunt to Japan, the A’s actually performed like a competent baseball team, take away one boneheaded HR given-up by Huston Street and one really stupid base-running error by Emil Brown, I would have been really, really happy, though it likely wouldn’t have lasted. If you flip back through previous posts in this blog, you’ll see that I wrote a fairly lengthy preview of how I believe the team would do this season. I was probably a lil’ hard on them, but I’ll stick with my assertion that the Oakland A’s should be happy if they end up with only 90 losses.

I also speculated that if key players on the team performed with any sort of respectability, they would likely be traded. Which brings me to the point of this post: should the A’s trade Rich Harden or keep him? Dude was an absolute monster in his Japan: six innings, 9 strikeouts, and one run. And if he doesn’t hang that one pitch to Manny, there’d have been no runs. Maybe Japan is like the Bizarro Canada for Harden; Rich can’t buy an out each time he pitches in his native country. As it begins every year, when the guy is healthy, he’s got Top 3 stuff in the entire majors. Of course, “stay healthy” is the key here, as in it never frickin’ happens.

Rich Harden is clearly the player on the A’s roster with the most upside; no player is as potentially good at what he does as Harden. Guys with his time of stuff only come around once every 10 or 15 years, and there’s nobody with his potential in the A’s newly-stocked farm system. All that upside is awfully tempting to teams that will likely be good this year. Sports writers and columnists have been writing since last year that the A’s should bite the bullet and trade him while they still can, before he ends like Kerry Wood (a very injury-prone closer) or Mark Prior (an injury-prone starter on another team).

It’s not like there isn’t precedent for the A’s trading or shedding pitchers with tons of upside and having it work out. Back before the 2005 season, the A’s traded Mark Mulder to the Cardinals for Dan Haren, Kiko Calero, and Daric Barton. Haren was every bit as good as Mulder during 2005 and MUCH better in 2006 & 2007 (not hard to do, because Mulder spent those seasons injured), Calero’s been a solid set-up man/middle reliever, and Barton looks like he’ll be pretty good now that he’s finally in the majors. They also let Cy Young-winning Barry Zito walk to the Giants before the start of the 2007 season, and he proceeded to start the following year, and as I type this, is in the process of being slapped around by the Dodgers (four runs in three innings thus far). In general, besides Johan Santana, pitchers with tons of upside end up breaking your heart.

And in spite of all of this, I still think the A’s should keep Harden. For one, if you try to trade him to someone like Yanks or Red Sox, you want be getting back nearly enough of value in return. Their minor leagues systems are decimated because they keep on trading all their prospects to make their July-pushes, trading to lousy teams who don’t have a plan of fielding a competitive team anytime soon. And as I said earlier, a pitcher like Harden simply won’t be coming around our way any time soon, so the team should try hold onto him if they really want to try to make this team competitive after this season. As much as I like Blanton, workhorse inning-eaters like him come around far more often. They’ve probably got a few of them in the pipeline right now. They got anyone else with a 98 mph fastball and all sorts of other nasty stuff at his disposal as well? Nope. Billy Beane needs to resist the temptation and hold onto him in hopes of him finding a way to stay healthy.

Mighty Underdog's EP review

The Mighty Underdogs
The Prelude EP
Grade: B+/B

This is a fun little EP. The Mighty Underdogs are one of those reconfigurations of members the Quannum crew, with a lil’ something extra. In this case, Gift of Gab (of Blackalicious) and Lateef the Truth Speaker (of Latryx) team up with Headnotic, the producer and bassist of Bay Area stalwart’s Crown City Rockers. The title of the EP, The Prelude is pretty self-explanatory, introducing this crew to the world, before a full-length album to drop at some later date. The resulting music takes the most entertaining elements of both crews, and demonstrates that all three of them have a definite chemistry.

I’m a sucker for tracks like “U.F.C. (United Flow Champions)”: it’s an up-tempo head-nodder while Lateef and Gab spitting battling battle-oriented rhymes, and DJ Shadow providing a flurry of scratches on the chorus. “Gunfight” continues the battle-oriented, throwback vibe, with the trio doing an lyrical and musical ode to the Old West, complete with plenty of bucking down sucker MCs at High Noon. Gift of Gab hams it up on his verse, rapping in a voice that sounds like a combination of Walter Brennan and Johnny Cash. MF DOOM, a personal favorite of mine, has a guest verse, which he must have recorded over a year ago, as he’s been MIA for quite a while. Headnotic’s guitar-oriented beat, complete with sinister rolls and high-pitch squeals, adds to the track’s feel. I almost want to say it sounds like a hip-hop version of “Wanted Dead or Alive,” but sounds really corny.

Tracks like “Love Life” and “Bring Me Back” both bring an infectious party groove to the EP. “Love Life” is a mid-tempo club-oriented jam, the type of thing you could expect to hear thrown on during a “Throwback Friday” at a decent-sized Oakland club. While Lateef and Gab do some comical crooning (not sure whether it’s intentional comedy or not), Ladybug Mecca does her thing during a pair of guest verses. It’s good to see that her post-Digable Planets comeback has continues to be going strong; both of her verses are some of her best since she returned to the mic. “Bring Me Back” is another early-’90s-esque house-rocker: Gab, Lateef, and Raashan Ahmad of Crown City Rockers all flex over a keyboard sample from Central Line’s “Walking Into Sunshine” (best known from LL Cool’s “Jingling Baby remix) and scratches by DJ Platurn. I can do without the fairly cheesy singing on the chorus, but it doesn’t take that much away from the song.

I have no idea when the Mighty Underdogs will release their full-length album, allegedly titled “Dropping Science Fiction.” According to their good ol’ MySpace page, this EP should have dropped last October, setting the stage for an early 2008 for the LP. Considering the five-month delay, I don’t expect the whole album until summer at the earliest; late fall is a better bet. I certainly hope they can get it out soon. This EP does a good job at showing what the group has to offer, which is what any EP should do. The Prelude has successfully intrigued me, and I really would like to see more of the Mighty Underdogs in the future.

The Wire, Season 5, Episode 10: -30-

Grade: B+

And so it ends.

The best TV drama to ever exist is over, and all I’ve got to look forward to is more David Milch dramas. Bah.

I’ll save much of waxing poetic about The Wire to others who have done it better, and earlier, than myself. I won’t whine to say it should have gotten more episodes this season (it should) or should have had more seasons (debatable). David Simon has covered a lot of this ground in a few of the interviews he’s done as of yet (particularly this really good one by TV critic extraordinaire/my former college newspaper editor Alan Sepinwall - http://sepinwall.blogspot.com/2008/03/wire-david-simon-q.html). Suffice to say that the show is gone and it sucks that it’s over. MAJOR SPOILERS follow.

As for the last episode, it was very solid, but not extraordinary. In the past, the show has always hit its dramatic peak in the pen0ultimate episode, and the season finale is about the clean-up. The first four seasons have done the mop-up exceedingly well (particularly Season #3). This one seemed a bit forced and overlong, but still contained some great moments.

I was pleasantly surprised that the series finale wasn’t nearly as grim as I had thought it would be. Not everyone ended well, but I had a smile on my face for much of the final half-hour “wrap it up” portion of the show. Many of the characters get the endings the “deserve,” and sometimes it was quite moving, e.g. Bubbles finally deciding that he’s okay with being a good person and going upstairs. Not everyone gets exactly what they want, but most of the time, they’re okay with that. Of course, incompetence is rewarded, but that’s been a constant thread of the show. The fate of Duquan was heart-breaking, but it was balanced by some rotten jerks getting exactly what they deserved. I wanted to stand up and cheer when Slim Charles capped Cheese in the head. Seeing Marlo alone on a dark street corner, desperate to save his own name, unable to enjoy his ill-gotten freedom, haunted by ghosts of Omar, had a poetic ring to it as well.

The complaint that they spent too much screen-time on show how nothing ever really changes is valid. I’m not sure I needed what amounted to a half an hour of “Dukie is the new Bubbles” and “Michael is the new Omar,” etc. Anyway, I’m not sure I buy Detective Sydnor is the new McNulty. Regardless, everything just feels right.

Even though this was the worst season of the show, it was still better than any other single season of most shows that have graced TV, even the really good ones. If you had to press me, I’d say that Season 3 was the best, followed by 4, 1, 2, and 5. It really does suck that I can’t really think of a single show that I’m looking forward to in the future. Well, the only ones have Simon and Burn’s names attached to them.

Ah well, there’s always The Wire DVD sets.

Official A's Season Preview

Bear witness the power of Jack Cust

In a bit of cross-blog promotion, here is the season preview for the A's that I wrote for the "Me and Pedro Down By Ballpark" blog (meandpedro.blogspot.com). My buddy Ben hit me up a few weeks back to cobble together a two to three paragraph preview of what folks can expect from the upcoming A's season. So naturally a wrote a 700 word screed. Thanks for the opportunity and patience, Ben.

If you get a chance, check out their blog. It's funny and clever, and they know their baseball.

Here's the link to the blog on their page:
http://meandpedro.blogspot.com/2008/03/know-thy-enemy-oakland-athletics.html

And here is a slightly updated version of the blog, for this site. Enjoy:


Yeah, this is a last place team.

Oakland Athletics' GM Billy Beane is world renowned for being the smartest GM in baseball. Back when Theo Epstein was parking Kevin Towers' car in San Diego, Beane was putting together a strategy for putting together winning teams on the cheap. You might have read a book about it. First, draft players out of college (not high school) that most scouts haven't heard of, and that do things like walk a lot or not throw a fastball very fast. Second, stock your roster with cast-offs from other teams that fill essential "roles." You get one or two good years out of the cast-offs and eventually replace them with your homegrown talent. And suddenly, a few years removed from looking absolutely pathetic, you're back in the playoffs. Well, generally the first round of the playoffs, but you get the point.

So this worked out pretty well for the A's between 1999 and 2006, but Beane again has gotten antsy. After merely toying with the idea of dealing from the bottom over the last few seasons, Beane decided to embrace it whole-heartedly this off-season, and commenced with the scorching of the Earth.

Beane took a wrecking ball to the roster under the guise of "going young," standard code for any GM who wants to say, "We weren't going to make the playoffs this year anyway." I mean, it's not like he could say, "We're shedding salary," because none of these guys get paid much anyway. All of this fine and dandy, except that Dan Haren and Nick Swisher, the best pitcher and hitter on the team, were already young. Mark Kotsay was the only player over 30 that the A's shipped out. Haren, Swisher, and Kotsay were traded for players who probably won't be ready until 2009 or 2010. So, for the 2008 season, the A's will be looking up at the Texas Rangers in the standings. The humanity.

The A's roster is a scary and disturbing place. The pitching rotation, under the absolute best circumstances, consists of Joe Blanton, Rich Harden (still injured), Chad Gaudin (also injured), Justin Duchscherer, and either Lenny DiNardo or Dallas Braden. Doesn't really hearken back to the 2001 or 2002 season rotations, does it? Also, if Blanton and Harden pitch with any sort of competence (and the latter stays healthy), they'll be gone by July.

The top off-season acquisitions were Mike Sweeney, Keith Foulke, and Emil Brown, all of who are decidedly not young. Sweeney hasn't played more than 125 games since 2002, but was really ahead of the Rockies' curve when it comes to loving Jesus. So he's got that going for him. He'll be better than John Jaha in 2000, but not as good Mike Piazza last year. If it wasn't for that minor thing of being part of a World Championship team, Foulke probably wishes he never left Oakland in the first place. He'll be sharing time as the set-up man with Alan Embree, who's also old and slightly useless. Brown has never hit more than 20 HRs or had more than 90 RBIs in a season, yet he'll be the starting center fielder.

As for players actually on the roster last year, Bobby Crosby is already hurt, so there will be lots of Donnie Murphy. Jersey kid Jack Cust will be spending a full year at DH, and probably be less than impressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he hit 26 HRs last year in only 124 games. He also managed to strike out 164 times in only 124 games. Oh, and he can't field and is in all likelihood mildly retarded. Eric Chavez is still around, but still hurt, and still basically a $10 million a year glove, which he's been ever since Miguel Tejada left town. And to put a big red cherry on top, the Moneyball poster-child, Jeremy Brown (no relation to Emil), decided to retire after only racking up five games in his major league career; the A's replaced him with Matt LeCroy. Yerp.

There are a few bright spots on the roster. Left-fielder Travis Buck looks legit. He only played half a season due to injuries, but the second-year player put up respectable numbers and is good with the glove. Carlos Gonzalez, the likely starting right-fielder, has been hitting well in Spring Training so far, allbeit against guys who'll be bagging groceries in a few months. There's a chance catcher Kurt Suzuki might turn into a respectable player. Mark Ellis is still the best fielding second basemen that gets absolutely zero respect. Huston Street, if he can remain healthy, has as good stuff as most of the closers in the league. And we have finally arrived at the point where Daric Barton gets to show if he's any good. The A's got the highly touted prospect back in 2006 in a trade that brought them Milton Bradley. They've been bringing him up slowly in the minors since. The question is whether he's a 25 to 30 HR kind of guy, or a 15 to 20.

I guess we A's fans should feel somewhat lucky, as this is the first time in about a decade that you can't feel any optimism about their chances. Some teams have scrapped and rebuilt their rosters two or three times in that timespan. But unless you're a diehard fan of the Oakland Athletics, or you really want to see what Ground Zero looks like for Beane, there's nothing to see here. In 2008, the A's win 72 games and like it.