Ynoa Watch 2

Well not as good as the first time. 3 walks is not fun, but 4 strikeouts! I sure do like the strikeouts, hopefully this means his stuff is goodish. Heh 2 wild pitches to go with the walks, think its safe to say he didnt have the best of control today. Barton was awesome today, extra base hits are so rare for this team, nice to see three from one guy. Cahill, holy crap Cahill is turnin into a absolute beast. 10 K's! His pitches seem to have great movement, nice to see people finally missing them. Small realization: Cahill might be our all-star. 7-2 W-L and a 2.88 ERA. Obviously he isn't as good as his...what would you call em...conventional/useless stats suggest, but I think it'd be cool if he's our all-star. I mean, no one else on the team is really deserving. Well maybe Suzuki but you kind of have to squint to make his argument. Anyway ya I'd like Cahill in the all-star game, give the kid some confidence, let him brag about something before Brett Anderson comes back and reminds him how mortal he is compared to his godly teammate.

Exciting news I guess?

Sooo what happened today. We got someone for Fox. A pitcher. Ross Wolf. I know nothing about him. O god his stats are bad. I hope he's a huge groundball guy. Like, crazy groundball rate, cause he strikes no one out. Limits walks at least. Eh, at least we got somethin for Fox. Patterson got dfa'd. Sad. I still think he can be useful, not on this team I guess. Hope someone takes a stab at him, the whole no defensive position thing makes it pretty difficult for him though. Ynoa finally debuted. 4 K's 0 BB's, fucking awesome. Also got two groundball outs versus just one air out...how the last two outs were recorded are anyones guess I suppose. Maybe he has a godly pickoff move and nabbed both baserunners he allowed. Hey I can fantasize can't I? No pitchcount recorded. Wish there was a report on how hard he was throwing. Alright I checked the log, one of the outs was a lineout and the other was a caught stealing. I guess lineouts aren't air outs in boxscores. Booo two of his strikeouts were looking. Eh, still counts I guess. I'm more excited about this than I thought I would be, I almost never check rookie league box scores, let alone the game logs. Maybe Ynoa will go all strasburg on everyone and debut this september and strike out 15 just to show up that other phenom. it...could happen...well I do hope he stays healthy at the very least.

Really need to do well

Hah I just realized I'm still a junior. I don't meet the unit limit to be considered a senior. If I pass this intensive I will. My GPA is like, 3.3 and change, I really need a A in this intensive if I'm going to grad school. Me thinks it's finally time to drag myself out of all the damn holes I've dug for myself.

Mandarin Impression

Well, I've found out how to rekindle my interest in Japanese language. Study Mandarin. God Fuckin Damn is this shit weird. Japanese has like, what, one, maybe two, sounds that differ from english? Mandarin is all over the map. And tones! holy shit tones! My TA was ragging on Japanese, saying its so damn hard cause of the verb forms and formality aspects. Fuck that, Japanese is straight, 5 vowels, no variants, systematic consonants, no tone. I can't make a rising tone to save my life...it's only day one...it should get easier right?

Porcello and Cahill again

Anyone else feel like Rick Porcello was horrendously mishandled? I remember I kinda speculated on this last year. It looked like him an Cahill were in the same boat, barely surviving at the big league level. They both only threw their fastballs and ditched their lauded curves for crappy sliders, so yea, neither had any k's. The difference was Porcello could find the strike zone, Cahill could not.

Then there's this season. Cahill was sent to AAA to start He has pretty much scrapped the shitty slider and refound his curveball. He's startin to strike guys out, walk a few less, and his groundballs are going up. Porcello, on the other hand, has nearly turned into Cahill of last year. What makes me so optimistic about Cahill is that he has a record of outstanding success in the low minors. Crazy k%, gb%, not bad bb%. So while it was pretty fucking irresponsible of the A's to let Cahill get murdered all season last year, they at least sent him back to the minors and rethink his approach, get back to what made him a beast.

Porcello, however, never really had any excuse to be in a big league rotation other than glowing scouting reports. He never struck anybody out in the minors. I remember everyone said it was because the tigers weren't letting him throw his curveball. If that is the case, why the fuck was Porcello jumped to the majors without ever getting any experience with his breaking ball against pro hitters? I'm not saying I saw this season coming, Porcello was surprisingly passable last season, but his development path just makes so little sense that it isn't all that surprising that he has collapsed this year. I feel a little bad for him, but mostly I'm just glad it's him that collapsed and not Cahill. I complain a ton about the bad breaks the A's receive, but Cahill is really looking like a lucky one for once.

Takin Stock

So I passed my two classes last quarter. Sadly, that was not expected. B in Japanese, which pisses me off. My grades were way better than a B average, teacher just hated me cause I never went to class, probably lost a whole grade because she chose to weigh attendance/participation so heavily. Phonetics I managed a C+ somehow. Don't know how. Really. I barely went to class. I didn't attend a single discussion section, and they were supposedly critical to success in the class. My grades on tests/homework were...well...horrendous. Not complaining though, with this out of the way I can focus my attention on Mandarin. If I can somehow pass this summer intensive (hopefully a good grade, going into this really positive and focused), I'll be right in line to graduate next year, may even have enough flexibility to add a minor. Mandarin seems a beast though. There's 20(!) books for the course. I have no fucking clue why, I bought four today, I'll get the rest as the course goes on. Saw the first assignment posted too. 36 pages. Hopefully that's a weeks worth...if that is one day I'm dead.

Connor Jackson!

I really like this move. Like, more than I thought I would by a minor move like this. I've always liked Connor Jackson as a player. Has some power, walks a fair bit, doesn't strike out much, plays average-ish defense in a corner. He's a useful player, and a candidate for a fluke awesome year if only because he's in his prime and puts the ball in play a ton. Will he push us into the playoffs this year? Probably not, that fate pretty much rests on the shoulders of our savior, Brett Anderson, and I don't think thats going to happen this year. But we get to see what Jackson is made of this year, and hopefully he's a healthy part of our domination plan for next year. If Taylor continues to suck, Jackson probably will not be a bad player. If Taylor turns out to be awesome again, we flip Jackson in the offseason/next year or keep him around as a fantastic, albeit expensive, bench guy. We got a potentially very useful corner bat on a team that has almost no offense. And we gave up a decent minor league relief arm for it. I mean I couldn't have drawn this up any better, bought way low on a guy who is likely to rebound, gave up a piece that we have about 3 billion other equivalent/better options than. I love it, fantastic start to the hotstove season.

Strasburg

WTF. I managed to watch his 4th inning where he got into trouble. Had some issues with his command that inning, still though, his stuff is insane. I'm not sure insane really captures how fucking talented this guy is. The fastball is just...well...god its not fair. Upper 90's with movement! Fucking sharp movement! Not to mention triple digits when he feels like it. And then the curve, everyone was saying it was a plus pitch but holy shit it looked better than that to me. Remember when Kerry Wood was fucking awesome and threw that curve that looked like a fuckin 80 mph frisby? That's what Strasburg's curve reminds me of, just unworldy/unnatural movement. And if that weren't enough his changeup. Fucking high 80's-low 90's with, wait for it, disgusting movement. I am just blown away by the guy. Health permitting, he will be the best pitcher in mlb, and I'm not sure it will be particularly close. And not just down the line, shit he may not win the cy young this year but I wouldn't be surprised if he proves to be amongst the best from june on in the NL.

Choice

I don't know much about Michael Choice. I didn't really follow the draft all that closely this year. From what I could tell though was that the way things happened, we had about 3 billion options at 10. And we took Choice. He seems like the kind of guy the A's would love. Lots of power, quite a bit of upside, college bat, and walks a TON. I'm pretty satisfied with the pick, really. The way the big league team goes up and hacks away, nice to see a guy enter the system who has a rep of walking often.

The one guy that really kind of intrigued me in this draft was Yasmani Grandal. Well, obviously harper and taillon intrigued me too, but I never thought we would get a shot at them. Grandal actually did fall to us, but we passed, presumably because of signability. I wouldn't be too surprised if the A's had Choice higher on they board though. Well, obviously they did, what I mean is I wouldn't be surprised if, just on talent alone, the A's had Choice higher than Grandal, just because of his awesome power potential and crazy patience. Reds ended up with Grandal. They got the guy I was really hoping would fall to the A's last year too in Leake. Mike Leake, btw, is fucking awesome. I thought people were under selling him as the safe but near mlb ready college pick. Turns out it wasn't under selling, he really was that mlb ready/safe of a pick. And more importantly, not only is he mlb ready, hes like an above average pitcher.

Anyway, excited to see how the rest of the draft turns out. Hopefully Choice will not be a tough sign so we can see some stassi/krol-esque signings in the coming rounds. Because seriously, our farm system is performing so miserably, those two are about the only two I'm optimistic about now. Krol has been awesome, and Stassi, despite the K's, is flashing some crazy power for a teenager in A ball. Hope we can get Choice signed quick, I'd really like to see what he can do. Gosh I love the draft, acquiring new talent is always way too much fun.