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Oakland Athletics

From Wiki Gonzalez

The Oakland Athletics are an American League team.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Beane Era

The A's general manager Billy Beane is the shining knight of the sabermetric crusade, in theory using the right statistics intelligently to build a superb team on a limited budget. He also throws chairs, is uninterested in selling jeans, puts a milo on people, and, according to Joe Morgan, wrote Moneyball.

It has been said (even by Beane himself) that his shit doesn't work in the playoffs, where the Oakland nine were eliminated in the first round from 2000-2003, going 0-9 in possible clinching games during that stretch. In the following seasons of 2004 and 2005, they choked a bit early, blowing AL West Division leads in September to the rival Angels.

Having traded two of the Big Three pitchers that fueled their run to the playoffs, the A's progress in 2006 was closely monitored. The A's got the choking label removed by winning the AL West that year, then sweeping the Minnesota Twins in the divisional series. Some believe they got the label right back by being swept by the Detroit Tigers in the ensuing ALCS.

After an under-.500 season in 2007 hampered by approximately 801 player injuries, Beane made a big splash by dismantling the now-expensive no-longer-superb team, trading its veterans (including the relatively young Dan Haren and Nick Swisher) for prime prospects. He said it was the most excited he had been for the club in years, and owner Lewis Wolff implied that the new plan was to rebuild the team with cheap young talent to be a force once the team's new Fremont ballpark (Cisco Field) opens in 2011-12. Beane continued this rebuilding process in mid-2008 by trading rotation starters Joe Blanton and Rich Harden for even more young prospects.

Once the team makes the move out of the old Oakland Coliseum, Wolff is expected to rename the team "The Oakland Athletics of Fremont" or something similar, following the lead of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

http://www.message_c4tcaolo.com/

[edit] A's and BBTF

The Athletics, despite what most would have you believe, are not really the standard-bearing Baseball Think Factory team. In fact, surprisingly few Primates are A's fans. However, most enjoy lauding the sabermetric moves of the A's, causing rancor among the anti-saberist crowd such as Backlasher and RossCW. Some Primates, like Danny, fall into both categories (A's fan, sabermetrics fan), and are consequently mocked as fanboys by the same crowd. BBTF discussion threads involving the A's are quite likely to be derailed by such back-and-forth shenanigans.

For other A's fans, see Fans of my team.

[edit] Newsstand

[edit] Blogs

Retrieved from "http://digamma.net/btfwiki/Oakland_Athletics"

This page has been accessed 5,043 times. This page was last modified on 4 January 2009, at 02:54. Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2.


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