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Jeff Fletcher | September 23, 2009
This time he won the Catfish Hunter Award, which is voted by the players. It goes to one player for being inspirational, good in the community, etc. I’m sure his Good Guy Award from the media will be treasured much more than any silly old award voted by his peers, named after a Hall of Famer and given in part because of how he’s helped a friend who almost died.
Jeff Fletcher | September 22, 2009
The writers presented catcher Kurt Suzuki with the Bill Rigney Good Guy Award before tonight’s game. It goes to one player from each Bay Area team for his cooperation with the print media. (Randy Winn won for the Giants this year.)
Suzuki joins a list that includes Huston Street (2008), Mark Ellis (2007), Frank Thomas (2006), Bobby Crosby (2005), Mark Kotsay (2004), Tim Hudson (2003), Scott Hatteberg (2002) … and that’s as far back as I can remember. I know Jason Giambi and Eric Chavez won in ‘01 and ‘00, but not sure which was which.
Quick Good Guy story. The first year we gave ‘em out was 1997, and the winners were Rod Beck and Matt Stairs, a couple of pudgy white guys. I joked that the award was actually for the player who most resembled a sports writer. (No disrespect intended to Beck, who was always a favorite. Still missed.)
Jeff Fletcher | September 22, 2009
I’ve got a story over at FanHouse today on the future of the A’s, in light of their hot finish to this season. The money quote, so to speak, comes from Billy Beane, when he says the A’s are going to take a conservative approach to getting the A’s to the next step. In other words, they won’t be making any big deals over the winter.
“We’d look to add some guys, but we’re going to be very disciplined,” Beane said. “We’re trying to build something. We’re not going to go crazy in the offseason.”
So you can forget about sticking Jason Bay in the middle of the A’s lineup next year. Any reasonable A’s fan probably already realized that the cash-strapped team wasn’t likely to become big spenders (even though they have practically no one making any serious money next year). It seems that Beane likes the direction of the young guys on the roster now, and he’s going to let them keep playing, while waiting for the next wave (Chris Carter, Brett Wallace, Adrian Cardenas).
Based on my discussions with Beane, here’s how I think the 2010 stack up.
Jeff Fletcher | September 16, 2009
Jason Giambi is in town with the Rockies, and the other day we talked about his new role as a pinch-hitter. Anyway, of interest to A’s fans is what he told me about why his season with Oakland went so badly.
He said he had prepared himself to DH, not to play first base.
“With all those guys getting hurt I wasn’t prepared to play first base every day,” Giambi said. “I think I just got run down. I was really ready to DH.”
Giambi didn’t admit that this was an issue while he was wearing an A’s uniform. Whenever I asked him about it, which I did at least twice, he said that he felt fine, his legs were strong, yadda yadda. So now that he’s out of there, the truth comes out. It really isn’t much of a surprise. Playing first base is not as easy as you’d think. I remember having a discussion with some Giants people, including J.T. Snow, about Barry Bonds moving to first, and the consensus was that he’d never last there because you actually have to move around a lot more than you do in the outfield. You may run farther in the outfield, but not nearly as often as you are bouncing off the bag at first, setting up for cutoffs and relays, etc.
Jeff Fletcher | September 15, 2009
Just announced. The whole thing is here, but some of the highlights.
Oh, the A’s are also cutting prices.
Jeff Fletcher | July 20, 2009
The A’s placed Jason Giambi on the DL today with a strained quad. Considering the injury, his age (38) and his batting average (.193), it is reasonable to wonder if we’re ever going to see Jason Giambi on the field again.
That’s a bit of an exaggeration. He’s not going to retire before he’s activated from the DL (I don’t think), but I also don’t think we’re ever going to see him be productive for an extended period.
In any case, I think the A’s need to put him at DH 90 percent of the time when he comes back, if they want to get anything out of him at the plate.
Jeff Fletcher | July 19, 2009
Went to the A’s game today to get some stuff for an Angels feature. I got all I needed before the game, so I decided I’d leave as soon as each team got a hit.
I was still there in the seventh inning.
By the time Brett Anderson lost his perfect game, it was a 0-0 game in the seventh. I figured I’d stayed this long, might as well stay till the end to see how it turns out. And since I’d been there the whole game, figured I might as well write a story about it. So I wrote this piece on Brett Anderson’s improvement.
I think it’s very interesting how each of these young pitchers (Anderson, Trevor Cahill and Vin Mazzaro) have taken turns looking like the best of the trio. When the season is over, I’m going to do a survey of as many baseball people as I can find to get their opinions on which one is the best.
In the meantime, here’s a poll, and you can let me know what you think.
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