Whether the events are related or entirely coincidental, two things happened today that we just haven't seen. First, Bob Geren responded to a 3rd inning grounder that Ryan Sweeney didn't run out by pulling Sweeney from the game between innings. The message? Play hard or I'll find someone who will. Geren's statement was very public, highly visible, and arguably a long time coming for a team that has long looked lacking in energy and hustle.
The A's were trailing 1-0 at the time. By the top of the 7th, it was 2-0 when the A's came alive -- and then some. With one out Bobby Crosby, only in because Jason Giambi suffered a contusion when hit on the elbow with a pitch, singled and then Rajai Davis, only in because, well, Sweeney wasn't, launched a game-tying 2-run HR. Then Mark Ellis singled and Adam Kennedy hit the inning's second 2-run HR, giving the A's a 4-2 lead. Cabrera and Hairston followed with singles that gave the A's 6 hits in a row. And then Oakland put up a 3-spot in the 8th. In other words, they looked like a baseball team.
I've put up a poll for fans to weigh in on the practice of yanking a player from the game, in a way that becomes public, as a response to the player not playing hard, failing to hustle, as evidently happened with Sweeney.
Meanwhile, with any help Dallas Braden could have pitched 6 innings of shutout ball but settled for 6 innings of 2-run ball. In the 1st inning on a Ben Zobrist bunt, Braden's throw hit Zobrist when he was running inside the line and the ball caromed away, allowing Zobrist to go to second and eventually score. Zobrist should have been called out. In the 6th, a fly ball eluded the A's OFers for a leadoff double that would produce Tampa Bay's second run.
Ken Korach made a comment on the broadcast that if Braden had gotten more run support, and didn't have a 6-7 record (now 7-7) to support his sterling 3.13 ERA, he'd be heading to St. Louis this week for the All-Star Game. Run support doesn't say anything about a pitcher!!! If there were better choices, fine, but Braden's W/L record should be no factor whatsoever in the decision. That stuff just irks the heck out of me.
As does players being allowed to give anything but 100% of what they have to offer. My feeling? Geren didn't embarrass Sweeney, Sweeney embarrassed himself and got called on it. Your thoughts?
4-2 A's going to the 8th, after a 25 minute top of the 7th that featured 4 Rays pitchers, 2 Rays catchers, 2 A's HRs, six straight hits and 4 runs. Yeah, saw all that coming.
Thanks to Major League Baseball's continued commitment to making sure fans don't see games, or view footage on YouTube, or pretty accidentally watch baseball without paying for it, the A's goal today is not to "be watchable" but rather to be "listenable"...to...
Stupid prepositions.
Dallas Braden is back from bereavement leave (not caused by watching the A's try to hit), and Braden represents a major positive in an otherwise frustrating season -- only on the A's could Braden's 3.13 ERA be accompanied by a 6-7 record.
For Tampa Bay today, after Jeff Niemann joined Ricky Romero, Brett Cecil, Lizzy Borden, Abe Vigoda, and my Aunt Bertha as "people who could shutout the A's," the Rays turn to righty Matt Garza, whom the A's and Braden beat on April 25th.
We're not even going for wins right now -- we're going for "watchable," win or lose. And while these players, with this level of ability at this stage of their career (i.e., "too young" and "too old"), might not be able to win so many games they absolutely could do some things differently. My wish list:
1. Hitters: Play with a "take what they give you" mentality. Every time there's a shift, hit or bunt against it. No matter who you are, if you're at 1B and they don't pay attention to you, steal second. Dedicate yourself to punishing the opposing team for every opportunity they hand you. It's good baseball -- and it's worth watching.
2. Runners: "Go for it" on taking extra bases. Why? Because this A's team is last in the major leagues in total bases, last in the AL in doubles (one ahead of the Padres for last in all of baseball), last in the AL in HRs. Waiting around for extra-base hits is not a good strategy with this team at this time, so on every fly ball that takes the OFer far to his left or right, tag up from first. It's actually very difficult for an OFer on the run to stop, turn, and make an accurate throw -- and harder yet for the A's to score runners from 1B no matter how many outs there are in the inning. Go for it -- lead the league in tagging up from 1B. You'll lead the league in something and it's worth watching.
3. Pitchers: Claim the fricking inside half of the plate. Here's another important stat in which the A's are dead last in the AL: They have hit all of 13 batters this season. 13. We've watched Brett Anderson and Trevor Cahill get beaten when hitters looked inside, and we've seen hitters leaning out over the plate to cover both sides, but what we haven't seen is the A's pitchers backing hitters off the plate. Dig in against Bob Gibson or Randy Johnson? I don't think so. Dig in against Mazzaro and Gio? Why the heck not? Claim the inside part of the plate, for God's sake. It's ok to be a little territorial sometimes, and it's worth watching.
Citysol Festival at Solar One features sets from Dead Prez, DJ Green Lantern, Fiasco, Hi Red Center, So So Glos, Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers, Outasight, Love Like Deloreans and Schwervon!. Set times below.
The Beach at Governors Islandopens up with a music from Dark Star Orchestra & Keller Williams and Pete Francis & Barefoot Truth.
Skeletons, Our Brother the Native, Religious Girls and Extra Lifeplay Ash's Place in Brooklyn (234 Wythe Ave @ N 4th St).
NY Eye & Ear Fest II goes into its third day with a record fair and concert at 92YTribeca. The "Women of NYCinema" program, also at 92YT features work from Sarah Lipstate, Liz Wendelbo and Rachel Blackwell (with Dirty Churches).
Japandroids played Cameo last night. They play a sold-out show at Pianos tonight with Slim Twig.
Jason Lytle of Grandaddyends his two-night NYC run at the Bowery Ballroom. Last night it was Union Hall.
Radio Happy Hour at (Le) Poisson Rouge, which kicked off last month with Norah Jones, happens again with Michael Showalter hosting.
"Superman and Batman took on New York's Finest last night in an epic Crossroads of the World battle that left the Caped Crusader in cuffs. Stunned Times Square tourists and office workers watched agog as cops struggled to subdue Clark Kent's alter ego without kryptonite." [NY Post]
Ted Leo and Of Montreal appear in a promo for the upcoming season of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, below...
Alex From Tokyo @ People Don't Dance No More - July 8, 2009 (David Bruno)
Hopefully you've had a good week in dance so far. Wednesday night I enjoyed some house & disco loveliness from Robot Blair, David Bruno, and Alex from Tokyo at People Don't Dance No More at the Annex. This weekend there's much more house, disco, and otherwise headed our way, starting with Saturday (7/11):
Friends and lovers, if you're out and about in the New York City real estate market this weekend, let us know what you're seeing out there: crowd sizes, market conditions, great or gruesome finds, and, of course, any hot sizzlin' steals that you would be absolutely foolish to let anyone else in on. Your thoughts in the comments, if you please.
More prime open house weather this weekend courtesy Curbed Marketplace, your friendly source of guaranteed sun and fine listings products. More where this came from in our Open HouseCalendars.
I'm slowly getting the impression that the field I knew of as "computer science" when I was an undergrad (remember when the undergraduate catalog listed a "scientific computing track"? CS majors don't do that shit anymore) is slowly schisming into a bunch of only-tangentially-related fields.
This frustrates me as I feel I should be able to work in all of them (okay, so I accept that I can't understand programming languages theory without an entirely different sort of math degree from the one I have) but its quite clear that only some skills from any given field will cross over into other ones.
I made a comment about wanting to catch up on "web programming" (actually a serious discipline now) in an earlier post, but even fields like "graphics and robotics" that should be quite close in many ways present this problem. For instance, 5 years of writing control algorithms and simulators for robot swarms has left me oddly unemployable in computer graphics. (I'm probably going to relearn this from the ground up sometime in the next 5 years, and its probably going to change a couple times as "graphics" starts to mean "shared virtual environments over something resembling modern web protocols" and phrases like "augmented reality" move from "things you name your research lab" to "things your mobile phone startup has to do")
I guess this is partly exacerbated by the fact that I did grad school in something most people don't really consider computer science. "Robotics" is only in the CS departments at a few schools (oddly the ones considered the best in robotics) and the conferences I go to are mostly populated by mechanical, electrical and chemical engineers, with the odd mathematician.
Also, dude, vision. That stuff keeps turning over faster than anyone but a vision PhD can keep track of. They seem to be able to do wonderful things with it though.
Oh yeah, and systems? My first 5 years in industry, the little bit of OS I'd managed to absorb was incredibly useful for writing graphics applications that ran on a single desktop. Now I'm kicking myself for not taking networks instead. It seems networks and databases are now the useful parts of systems, and knowing those would be well worth the trade for "only having a 15-213 level understanding of OS" Shit, there's totally going to be networks inside our computers, and our filesystems are going to look like databases.
* Knud & I talked to a guy for 10 minutes, pitching seasteading, he signed up for our mailing list ("I get bored in the afternoon and like to read political theory"), and I thought "Hmm...John Stagliano. That name sounds familiar. Well, we're in Vegas, at a libertarian convention, and he's wearing a hip open shirt showing his chest. Yeah, he's probably who I think he is." A few minutes later in the conversation, his profession came up, and we talked a bit about his current court cases, and all the fun you could have on a floating platform.
* Talked to Krestin, a Dane living in Estonia (and quite a sharp guy), quite a bit about seasteading, Austrian econ, diet, and many other things. He had previously invited me to come talk in Estonia sometime, and on the way to dinner tonight he suggested that if I did come, we set up a meeting w/ the prime minister and talk about the possibilities for a treaty to put a seastead settlement in the Estonian EEZ (which fits well with Lasse & Steffen's suggestion of the Baltic as a place to start seasteading). Apparently for a connected guy in a country of 1.2 million, it is not too hard to get in touch with the prime minister. It's an exciting thought, because I think it would be significantly easier to raise capital for an expensive seastead if we had a deal with a country. (Plus, as jhogan says "It would make a great blog post").
I made a pretty delicious white nectarine ice cream today. It is just the thing for the Summer. I bought a bunch of loganberries at the farmer's market today. I will have to make jam with them. There were tons of delicious things there today. Senor Onion insisted upon holding my basket until it was too heavy for him.
The tone of tonight's game was set from the first batter. Upton popped up with what should have been the first out, but four A's fielders were unable to catch the ball in foul territory. I could be generous and excuse them for the dome, but I won't. Catch the ball! Of course, the very next pitch was smoked for a double.
So the Rays have a runner on second and no one out. Then something great happens for the A's. They get the runner dead picked off at second; Mazzaro making the perfect throw, and Cabrera just doesn't catch the ball. The ball sailed into center field; the run was driven in on the next pitch, and the A's were down 1-0. They would never recover. Mazzaro would give up two additional earned runs in his five innings (to go with 7 hits), but he never had a chance. Here's why:
First inning: Kennedy grounds out to pitcher. Cabrera singles. Hairston pops to first. Holliday walks. Cust lines out to first. Second Inning: Suzuki strikes out swinging. Giambi strikes out swinging. Sweeney flies out to left. Third inning: Ellis lines out to right. Kennedy strikes out looking. Cabrera grounds out to second. Four inning:Hairston singles. Holliday strikes out swinging. Cust walks. Suzuki grounds into FC. Giambi grounds out to second. FIfth inning: Sweeney grounds out to first. Ellis pops out to second. Kennedy pops out to third. Sixth inning: Cabrera singles. Hairston strikes out swinging. Holliday lines out to right. Cust singles. Suzuki grounds into FC. Seventh inning: Giambi strikes out swinging. Sweeney singles. Ellis grounds into double play. Eighth inning:Kennedy grounds out to first. Cabrera flies out to left. Hairston pops out to third. Ninth inning: Holliday pops up to third. Custs grounds out to second. Suzuki singles. Giambi walks. Sweeney reaches on FC. Ellis grounds out to end game.
Our offense is terrible. Literally unwatchable.
It's almost not worth commenting on the bullpen work, but I'll give it a shot anyway. It's the sixth inning, and the A's are down by 3 runs. With the bullpen rested, Geren elected to pitch Casilla and his 6.52 ERA in what was actually a close game at the time. Casilla uncorked a two-out wild pitch to give the Rays their fourth run, and allowed a homerun in the next inning for their fifth. Gio Gonzalez (who won't be starting this weekend) gave up the sixth run in relief of Casilla, and Jeff Gray pitched a scoreless eighth.
The difference between 3-0 and 6-0 is this: in the ninth inning, the A's loaded the bases. A double ties the game. A homerun (however unlikely) gives the A's the lead. The key to having a chance in a game--any game--is to not dig yourself a hole that you can't climb out of with one swing of the bat.
It's not that the A's didn't get breaks either. There were a handful of calls that I thought the A's got lucky on; including a pretty clear missed call in the ninth.
I'm tired of defending this team. I'm tired of feeling like I care more than the team does. I'm tired of no offense. I'm tired of rookie pitchers wasting starts every time out. I'm tired of losing baseball games.
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