MLB Appears to be Siding with Oakland to Keep the A's (city hall, neighborhood)
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I love how A's fans always hype cust out. Yea come to the ball park and watch cust take a walk. Even better, let him get on base and set up for the double play, since hes so slow.
His numbers are down because he is off roids.
Face it cust sucks, he strikes out or he walks, he cant even go yard. De jesus, de what? LOL, another decent outfielder with a mediocre bat.
The A's pitching staff is toast if devine does not come back strong. Baily and wuertz are not capable of carrying the team for every game.
The A's got bullpen issues, ziegler cant even pitch to lefties, lol. Carter sucks.
Acting Governor Abel Maldonado authorizes a land swap agreement Tuesday for the project known as Oak to 9th. Vice-Mayor Jean Quan, right, Signature Realty President Michael Ghielmetti and Pamela Kershaw from Port of Oakland look on.
the new A's stadium would be adjacent to this project quan also supported.
"This is going to be one of the most prestigious and beautiful places to live in the city in the next ten to twenty years,” Quan said, as she discussed the planned mix of residential and commercial development projects the plan calls for in the 64 acres along the water between Oak Street and 9th Avenue. Plans include 3,100 new homes, creation or improvement of 32 acres of public parks, an extension of the Bay Trail, and two new marinas with restaurants and retail."
if she can do for this area what jerry brown did for uptown and old oakland it would really help her political aspirations.
she is going to fight for the stadium unlike dellums or brown.
I love how A's fans always hype cust out. Yea come to the ball park and watch cust take a walk. Even better, let him get on base and set up for the double play, since hes so slow.
His numbers are down because he is off roids.
Face it cust sucks, he strikes out or he walks, he cant even go yard. De jesus, de what? LOL, another decent outfielder with a mediocre bat.
The A's pitching staff is toast if devine does not come back strong. Baily and wuertz are not capable of carrying the team for every game.
The A's got bullpen issues, ziegler cant even pitch to lefties, lol. Carter sucks.
I don't quite understand you.
Cust isn't even an A anymore - so why would I feel the need to defend him just because? I'm a baseball fan who's been a baseball mogul addict since I was a kid, lol. If you can pay a guy a pittance and he has one of the best OBPs in the AL West, you take that. Our biggest problems last season certainly had nothing to do with Cust. I'm not bagging on a 31-year old guy making the veteran minimum when he his .272 and had an OBP of .395 and if you actually know baseball, you wouldn't either.
As for the pitching staff, they lead the MLB in ERA for most of the season and finished something like 2nd or 3rd. You never know who's going to emerge from season to season.
Don't spoil the fact that we like you a hell of a lot more than we liked Mr. Fantastic. lol
Cust isn't even an A anymore - so why would I feel the need to defend him just because? I'm a baseball fan who's been a baseball mogul addict since I was a kid, lol. If you can pay a guy a pittance and he has one of the best OBPs in the AL West, you take that. Our biggest problems last season certainly had nothing to do with Cust. I'm not bagging on a 31-year old guy making the veteran minimum when he his .272 and had an OBP of .395 and if you actually know baseball, you wouldn't either.
LoL you keep trying to say I don't know baseball but we both know I do. Its funny all A's fans can do is play the tired old billy beane sabremetrics nonsense. "Oh hes got a great OBP". That's because all he does is walk. And never mind the fact that he has led or is been near the top of strike out leaders in the MLB. And his OBP is actually LOWER when hes up to bat with a runner on. Face it cust is Garbage.
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As for the pitching staff, they lead the MLB in ERA for most of the season and finished something like 2nd or 3rd. You never know who's going to emerge from season to season.
The best thing about the A's pitching staff is they fired their trainer or doctor this year I believe. The problem is the A's have too many injuries and the staff is not taking care of them.
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Don't spoil the fact that we like you a hell of a lot more than we liked Mr. Fantastic. lol
And here I thought the reason you did not dedicate a thread to me with all my quotes was because I only made it to yellow belt in taekwondo
LoL you keep trying to say I don't know baseball but we both know I do. Its funny all A's fans can do is play the tired old billy beane sabremetrics nonsense. "Oh hes got a great OBP". That's because all he does is walk.
No, I don't know that you do. The reason I don't think you know much about baseball is because we've been down this road before.
Aren't you the one who infamously said that Trevor Cahill was a "minor league scrub"?
Of course, he was an AL All Star last year (then you said that it doesn't matter because every team gets 1 All Star), so then he goes out and finishes 4th in AL Cy Young votes. Yeah, guess he's not a scrub afterall. Being 13-5 with an ERA of 2.54 and a WHIP of 0.99 doesn't suck. In fact, if the A's could have hit the ball, he would have been a 15-17 game winner easily and he didn't even pitch the entire season.
Other things you've said: "Gio Gonzalez sucks", didn't know who Clayton Mortensen was, you said "Bret Anderson is done" and now this.
I'll give you that you might like baseball, but forgive me if I don't think you're that knowledgable about it (which is fine, by the way, but why are we debating sabermetrics?)
The reason .OBP matters is because batting average doesn't tell a good story for how productive a player is - it doesn't consider walks. A player who hits for a .300 average and never walks makes a lot more outs than a player who hits .260 and walks 10% of the time. The player with the higher batting average will have slightly more production on his hits than the other player will have on his walks, but the player with more walks will have infinitely more production on his walks than the other hitter will have on his outs.
That has nothing to do with me being an A's fan - I grew up in Cleveland. If the Indians and A's were in the ALCS and you asked who I wanted to win, I probably say Cleveland. Besides, how many times do I have to say that Jack Cust isn't even a member of the A's anymore? What does being an A's fan have to do with saying Jack Cust wasn't garbage last year?
It isn't either because I like Billy Beane or that I've read Moneyball three times - I think he's good with what he has to work with, but I don't think he's the brightest bulb in the box. It's Billy Beane's fault why the best young hitter in the NL, Carlos Gonzalez, is wearing a Rockies uniform instead of an A's uniform right now.
You just don't bag a guy that hit .272, had an .OBP of .395 and you only paid the guy the veteran minimum salary of $400,000 last year. What's the point? At 400,000k per year, he outperformed guys making millions, and even some that made tens of millions. Baseball is all about finding guys who are able to perform and not sucking down valuable resources.
Further, about coming off steroids - who really knows? But most baseball writers would probably agree that the end of the "steroid era" was after the 2006 season when MLB implemented the harshest penalties and names began releasing to the public. Cust's two best years came after that in 2007 and 2008 so it's tough to name him without simply randomly choosing who or who not to identify. And it's not like he's getting worse - he just hit for the best average of his career in 2010!
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Originally Posted by NorCal Dude
And here I thought the reason you did not dedicate a thread to me with all my quotes was because I only made it to yellow belt in taekwondo
No, I don't know that you do. The reason I don't think you know much about baseball is because we've been down this road before.
Aren't you the one who infamously said that Trevor Cahill was a "minor league scrub"?
In all fairness during that season, cahill started out aaa. He could not even beat gio for the five spot. And his stats are over inflated, he pitched against some really sucky teams. Its kind of like how bradens win-loss ratio is jacked up because he never gets run support.
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Of course, he was an AL All Star last year (then you said that it doesn't matter because every team gets 1 All Star), so then he goes out and finishes 4th in AL Cy Young votes. Yeah, guess he's not a scrub afterall. Being 13-5 with an ERA of 2.54 and a WHIP of 0.99 doesn't suck. In fact, if the A's could have hit the ball, he would have been a 15-17 game winner easily and he didn't even pitch the entire season.
He had a good year. We will see how he does next year now that everyone knows his tricks. I remember when everyone though smith was going to be the pick off guru. And when cahill faces teams like the yankees he gets destroyed. Like I said, we'll see, how he fares this year when he plays some better teams.
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Other things you've said: "Gio Gonzalez sucks
He does. He is like Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. You really have no idea which gio is going to show up, and which ever one shows up can literally morf into the other one over the course of his start.
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didn't know who Clayton Mortensen was
Uh I know who clayton mortensen is. He is a river cat. Thats why I said "clayton who". Because he is a no body.
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"Bret Anderson is done" and now this
LoL he was done. He was injured and the show was over. We'll see if he comes back next year. Remember before last season started, it was Bret Anderson who was supposed to be the best pitcher, not cahill. So you literally have a flip of the guy who did not even make the cut last spring being the best and the guy who was a top rated young pitcher finishing off the year nursing his arm.
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I'll give you that you might like baseball, but forgive me if I don't think you're that knowledgable about it
Look, attempting to act like you are having rational discourse while using veiled insults may work with other people you disagree with, but it does not with me. When you attempt to assert some sort of superiority with out anything to back it up, you just look like a nepotist. If thats how you want to present yourself thats cool, but it really has no weight with me.
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The reason .OBP matters is because batting average doesn't tell a good story for how productive a player is - it doesn't consider walks
Where did I say it doesn't. But OBP also makes players like Jack Cust who suck, seem productive, when they really add no value to team productivity.
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A player who hits for a .300 average and never walks makes a lot more outs than a player who hits .260 and walks 10% of the time.
Does not matter, if the player who is hitting .300 is batting a lot of people in, than most people will take him over a walk and strike out specialist like jack cust. How many RBI's did jack have this year again? Which is why only the A's want him. No self respecting owner would fill in a DH with jack, hed be rotting away in tripple A some where.
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The player with the higher batting average will have slightly more production on his hits than the other player will have on his walks
Agreed.
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but the player with more walks will have infinitely more production on his walks than the other hitter will have on his outs.
That depends entirely on who is behind the player that walks. Unfortunatly for the A's no one on the team could even get on as much is cust, which is why they have the lowest amount of runs year in and year out.
Having a walk specialist only works when you have a productive line up around them. And putting a walk specialist in the position that is supposed to be reserved for your most powerful hitter is just plain bad strategy.
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That has nothing to do with me being an A's fan - I grew up in Cleveland
And this has nothing to do with me being a giants fan, well yes it does, but I grew up in Chicago and I liked cleveland. Good town.
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If the Indians and A's were in the ALCS and you asked who I wanted to win, I probably say Cleveland.
see, we can agree on something.
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Besides, how many times do I have to say that Jack Cust isn't even a member of the A's anymore?
LoL I know he is not, which is why I said Matsui was a nice come up from Jack Cust.
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What does being an A's fan have to do with saying Jack Cust wasn't garbage last year?
LoL because you all say the same thing when defending Jack Cust, with in 30 seconds of having a cust debate, they all talk about his OBP lol
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It isn't either because I like Billy Beane or that I've read Moneyball three times - I think he's good with what he has to work with, but I don't think he's the brightest bulb in the box. It's Billy Beane's fault why the best young hitter in the NL, Carlos Gonzalez, is wearing a Rockies uniform instead of an A's uniform right now.
Thats because Billy Beane stands more to profit by letting the A's rot. He's lew wolffs errand boy, and he thinks he is brad pitt now. The dude is a loony toon who has lost his touch. Good book tho. The only problem is everyone plays moneyball now. He could have reaped a lot more if he had written the book after his career.
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You just don't bag a guy that hit .272, had an .OBP of .395 and you only paid the guy the veteran minimum salary of $400,000 last year. What's the point? At 400,000k per year, he outperformed guys making millions, and even some that made tens of millions. Baseball is all about finding guys who are able to perform and not sucking down valuable resources.
Hey I never said they over paid the guy, I just said he sucks thats all. Its not like the A's are the cubs, doing the opposite of money ball. You'll never hear me make that accusation.
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Further, about coming off steroids - who really knows?
His names on the list, theres not much else to really know.
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But most baseball writers would probably agree that the end of the "steroid era" was after the 2006 season when MLB implemented the harshest penalties and names began releasing to the public.
Pure fantasy. As mannywood has shown, steroids are still very much being abused, all though I do think it is more taboo.
And with that, I look forward to seeing Oakland get taken over by SF fans this coming season. The SF banner will be flying proud in Oaklands right field like always, because A's fans can't do anything but sit there and take it. I can't wait to seem them get destroyed.
In all fairness during that season, cahill started out aaa.
Most prospects start the year in AAA - it doesn't mean they're scrubs. The kid was 22 and the A's had a bulk of SP talent. 18 wins in 30 starts wasn't just a good year, it was Cy Young quality. If there's anything you don't like about him, just tell yourself, "He's 22."
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Originally Posted by NorCal Dude
He is like Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. You really have no idea which gio is going to show up
He's 24. In his first full season pitching this year, he was 15-7 with a 3.23 ERA. He's not Cahill but it's important to remember that this kid was your 4th/5th starter! Kid has unreal talent. This is what I mean when I say you've said a lot of things that just aren't real sensical.
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Originally Posted by NorCal Dude
Uh I know who clayton mortensen is. He is a river cat. Thats why I said "clayton who". Because he is a no body.
I think I'm honing in on your issue - you make player distinctions based on past success without concerning yourself with upside. In NBA terms, this is the equivalent of saying you'd rather have Carlos Arroyo over John Wall. Mortensen was the key component of the Matt Holiday to St. Louis trade. He may or he may never turn out, but when we discussed young pitching talent, you couldn't lend credence to the A's for having one of the best young pitching staffs - really, since your Giants. Mortensen is a component of that - a 1st round pick with a ton of upside.
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Originally Posted by NorCal Dude
LoL he was done. He was injured and the show was over. We'll see if he comes back next year. Remember before last season started, it was Bret Anderson who was supposed to be the best pitcher, not cahill. So you literally have a flip of the guy who did not even make the cut last spring being the best and the guy who was a top rated young pitcher finishing off the year nursing his arm.
No, you insinuated that his career was over. And that's baseball - who knew Jonathan Sanchez would have a better ERA than both Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum? (By the way, I'm not biased and I can admit it... the only team with better young starting pitching than the A's is your Giants. The Bay Area is heads and shoulders above any other region when you talk pitching.)
Here's how good Bret Anderson is. Despite Cahill making 30 starts as a 22-year old and winning 18 of them (sorry, that's insane), Bret Anderson would walk into next season as the opening day starter. He was the only starter who had a better ERA than Cahill at 2.80 and looks like he has the potential to be absolutely dominant.
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Originally Posted by NorCal Dude
OBP also makes players like Jack Cust who suck, seem productive, when they really add no value to team productivity.
I'll pretend you didn't say that. Walking doesn't seem productive, it is productive. lol
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Originally Posted by NorCal Dude
How many RBI's did jack have this year again? Which is why only the A's want him. No self respecting owner would fill in a DH with jack, hed be rotting away in tripple A some where.
The Mariners obviously wanted him to be their DH. They just gave him a 2-year, $5.15mil deal.
Cust hit 52 RBIs in 349 AB's (1 RBI every 6.7 ABs).
Matsui hit 84 RBIs in 482 AB's (1 RBI every 5.7 ABs).
They're rather comparable especially because Oakland and Anaheim scored roughly the same amount of runs per game in 2010 (Oakland - 663, Anaheim - 681). I would venture to guess that both players would have picked up a few more RBI's if it weren't for the injuries that both team's had in their lineups. Sweeney and Barton, the #2 and #3 hitters, were both out for quite a few games that Cust did play in.
As a fun exercise, let's compare Jack Cust's salary-production with Hideki Matsui's over this coming year. In order to outperform Cust, it would be relative to resources since the key to small-mid market baseball is based entirely around getting the most out what you have. Sorry, we're not your beloved Giants, we can't afford a $120 million dollar payroll, NorCal. =P
If we were talking only of each player's 2010 stats:
Cust made $400k in 2010 while hitting .272/.395/13HR, 52 RBI in 112 games. He hit a home run every 26.8x he came to the plate. And as I earlier noted, their RBI numbers are very similar.
Matsui will make a base salary of $4.25 million next year (this past year he was $6.5m with Anaheim). In 2010, he hit .274/.361/21 HR, 84 RBI in 145 games. He hit a HR every 23 AB's. Considering games played, these are actually pretty similar production, with the exception that Matsui has one of the best eyes in baseball, and while he doesn't walk as much as Cust, he takes pitchers late into counts. Believe me, I'm happy to have him. I was at the game in Anaheim when Matsui hit the game-winning single to RF in the bottom of the 9th.
But you said it was an upgrade over Cust. Are those stats indicative of a player who made 16.25 times the salary as the other? In my mind, absolutely not. If you had Jack Cust last year, you were ultimately pretty happy with yourself. Just admit it - you had no idea before you made that comment that Jack Cust was one of Oakland's most consistent hitters and reached based at a higher percentage than anyone else on the team. It's not his fault that Barton and Sweeney was injured for much of their portions of the season or that Oakland didn't have the talent 1-9 to make his .OBP as valuable as it would have been in a place like New York or Boston. Most of the things you're complaining about doesn't have anything to do with the guy.
Another thing about .OBP - how does it differ from a guy like Ichiro Suzuki who makes his career by slapping singles all over the field? Pragmatically speaking, it's the exact same result - the player is on 1B. Matsui isn't a power hitter - it's like I said earlier - we're probably aiming for roughly very similar production, we're just paying a bit more money to get it.
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Originally Posted by NorCal Dude
And with that, I look forward to seeing Oakland get taken over by SF fans this coming season. The SF banner will be flying proud in Oaklands right field like always, because A's fans can't do anything but sit there and take it. I can't wait to seem them get destroyed.
I think you're angry at Oakland. Celebrate your World Series, enjoy it - I still have yet to get one and I've been a die-hard Indians fan since I was a fetus lol 1997 was a bad year... and so was 1999 or 2000 - can't remember, but the year we missed the playoffs by 1 game was the year, in my opinion, we had our best team. We pitched something like 33 pitchers because of injury that year but we were getting healthy at the right time and just missed the playoffs by 1 game. Ahhh, so many bad memories.
Anyway, enjoy that championship.
And we're way off topic. I'm sure we'll revisit this in the heat of the regular season.
A's just signed Hideki Matsui today, with over 100 reporters present - 80% of whom were Japanese. Team looks to be getting quite a bit more press going forward, thus a hotter commodity. Should make for a more spirited fight between SJ and Oakland (and Bill Neukom, for that matter).
Well they need to make some moves so they have some talent and media attention for when the Moneyball movie comes out...
Most prospects start the year in AAA - it doesn't mean they're scrubs
their scrubs until they proove they are not
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He's 24. In his first full season pitching this year, he was 15-7 with a 3.23 ERA. He's not Cahill but it's important to remember that this kid was your 4th/5th starter! Kid has unreal talent. This is what I mean when I say you've said a lot of things that just aren't real sensical.
Gio just is not consistant. The first time I ever saw him pitch at a rivercats-grizzlies game I saw the same problem there that I see now. If he cant consistantly throw strikes how can you hype this guy up? I'll give him credit tho, this year braden got through to him and he has been able to muscle through his bad innings,last year he used to melt down like a baby, like your other pitcher vin mazzarro.
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No, you insinuated that his career was over. And that's baseball
So if thats baseball, why are you getting butt hurt with me?
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who knew Jonathan Sanchez would have a better ERA than both Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum? (By the way, I'm not biased and I can admit it... the only team with better young starting pitching than the A's is your Giants. The Bay Area is heads and shoulders above any other region when you talk pitching.)
Timmy needs to lay off the grass. Peroid.
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Here's how good Bret Anderson is. Despite Cahill making 30 starts as a 22-year old and winning 18 of them (sorry, that's insane), Bret Anderson would walk into next season as the opening day starter. He was the only starter who had a better ERA than Cahill at 2.80 and looks like he has the potential to be absolutely dominant.
Well see if the A's staff can keep him healthy, as of right now their track record is pretty poor. I'd hate to see him become another duscherer or harden.Playing with the A's is a rough gig.
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I think I'm honing in on your issue - you make player distinctions based on past success without concerning yourself with upside.
Well I don't have a magic crystal ball, I can see into the future. As you noted earlier its baseball, anything can happen, so why live in fantasy, lets focus on reality.
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I'll pretend you didn't say that. Walking doesn't seem productive, it is productive. lol
No. Walking is productive when you get across homeplate, jack cust is too fat and slow to do this.
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The Mariners obviously wanted him to be their DH. They just gave him a 2-year, $5.15mil deal.
Like I said, no self respecting owner would get Kust. The mariners are probably one of the few teams thats more of a joke than the A's. This is the same guy who payed old man griffey to take naps in the club house when he was up to bat.
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Cust hit 52 RBIs in 349 AB's (1 RBI every 6.7 ABs).
Matsui hit 84 RBIs in 482 AB's (1 RBI every 5.7 ABs).
They're rather comparable especially because Oakland and Anaheim scored roughly the same amount of runs per game in 2010 (Oakland - 663, Anaheim - 681). I would venture to guess that both players would have picked up a few more RBI's if it weren't for the injuries that both team's had in their lineups. Sweeney and Barton, the #2 and #3 hitters, were both out for quite a few games that Cust did play in.
LoL these stats are not comparable. Jack cust needs one more whole inning to score the same amount of runs as matsui, it may not seem like alot. Add say 120-140 games a year with several at bats a game, and it makes HUGE difference. Which is my guess as to why Matsui was signed to begin with.
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As a fun exercise, let's compare Jack Cust's salary-production with Hideki Matsui's over this coming year. In order to outperform Cust, it would be relative to resources since the key to small-mid market baseball is based entirely around getting the most out what you have. Sorry, we're not your beloved Giants, we can't afford a $120 million dollar payroll, NorCal. =P
Again, you'll never hear me say cust was over payed. I just think he sucks.
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If you had Jack Cust last year, you were ultimately pretty happy with yourself.
Maybe A's fans were, but Bust is the type of player that can suck the gas out of an otherwise reputable team. If he was on the giants, the team would not have even edged out san diego. He would have struck out too many times.
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Just admit it - you had no idea before you made that comment that Jack Cust was one of Oakland's most consistent hitters and reached based at a higher percentage than anyone else on the team.
LoL I have known for quite some time that jack has the highest obp out of anyone on the A's. Because thats all A's cans can really speak of when the talk about his value.
He is not the most consistent hitter nor was he ever. Hitting means making contact with the ball and getting some form of a hit. Cust does not do that, he walks or strikes out. There are good amount of players on the A's who hit the ball more than him and further than him. He's not the best hitter on the A's by any metric.
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Another thing about .OBP - how does it differ from a guy like Ichiro Suzuki who makes his career by slapping singles all over the field?
Because singles can advance runners home. Only way cust is doint that is with bases loaded. And even thaen, stats show he strikes out more and walks less with people on base. Thats huge. And Ichiro can hustle. Jack cust cant. Having Ichiro on base is almost as good as having Rajai on base.
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I think you're angry at Oakland
LoL I have had my tires slashed and a window broken goes to A's-giants games. I hate the A's and a lot of their fans, but I don't have anything against Oakland, same as I don't have anything against rural China.
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Anyway, enjoy that championship.
And we're way off topic. I'm sure we'll revisit this in the heat of the regular season.
I will enjoy it, I still am. Just remember there is still time for you to get some Orange and Black, and root for a real baseball team with a real baseball stadium. No one is forcing you to follow those second rate bums. Besides, the A's are never going to win a penant with Bob Geren managing the team. You know Bob the best man at Billy Beanes wedding. Rofl.
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