Gio

Am I the only person who is really scared of Gio's season? He hasn't taken any steps forward. He's walking a tad less, but also striking out a proportionate less amount. And that said, he still leads the AL in walks! His walk/K raito is worse than last year. The only reason FIP likes him is his hr/fb% is at 7%...which yea, is impossible, this is GIO for fucks sake, its gonna regress to 10%+ and his ERA/FIP with it. His year has been, well not horrendous, but its been bad, a step backwards. What made Gio awesome was his ability to miss bats. Yea, he missed the strikezone too, but that missing of everything was a net positive. This year he isn't missing bats, well, like he used to at least, his overrall contact rate is way up. Like, across the board, in the zone, out the zone, hitters are simply gettin the bat to the ball quite a bit more often. I haven't watched any games. None, I haven't been home, I don know what the hell is up, but it worries me. For a guy who's always been a big strikeout guy, including at the major league level, this lack of K's is starting to cause quite a bit of concern.

SABEAN WTF

When I saw that Bengie had been traded for Chris Ray, my first thought was, "makes sense, crap for crap." Wait no that's a lie, my first thought was, "wtf? bengie got traded? unexpected. apparently even sabean has his limits." but then i saw that the ptbnl is fuckin mike main. WTF! did Sabean just swindle someone?! i think he did! i mean, not only did he manage to dump bengie to get posey time behind the plate, he got a shitty relief arm AND a stud prospect! I've always been kind of afraid of main, seein as how he seemed to be a guy with pretty good stuff and was highly touted in a rangers system that had a crap load of pitching talent. im impressed, to say the least, best move ive ever seen sabean make, i think.

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.