<p>I especially love seeing teams that could have been amazing except they gave away all their players who would have performed greatly with the right coaching, Indians are a great example.</p>
<p>^ Oakland seems to do that every other year. And then they’re amazing and then they suck and then they’re amazing but they never put together a team that could beat the beasts of the east in October though</p>
<p>^They are swiftly getting by with borderline major leaguers/AAA players this year.</p>
<p>^ That’s why I love Oakland but I have no idea how they manage to do that though. I’ve read moneyball but Billy Beane seems to be using a set of guidelines since that book was published (and rightly so I suppose because OBP because so popularized after it was published that it was not an exploitable bit of the market that produced effective players)</p>
<p>^Kurt Suzuki is one of my favorite players because I enjoyed watching him play @ Cal State Fullerton, and also if Rajai Davis could actually get on base more often, the A’s would be downright amazing at the top. 23 Steals with a .256 batting average…
World Cup News: My 4-0 guess of GER v. AUS was correct…:D</p>
<p>^ They have a underrated (save Dallas Braden who would be underrated if it weren’t for his perfect game) pitching staff as well. Ben Sheets is a bust though</p>
<p>Mhm, Ben Sheets is close to 5 ERA, while Duchscherer, Cahill and Anderson are under 3. Ziegler and Bailey are amazing at the Setup and Closer role. You also can’t forget Gio Gonzalez either, he’s pretty nice.</p>
<p>^ My point exactly. Also Sheets costs more than most of those guys put together.</p>
<p>Haha yeah, he’s getting 10 mil for just this year, while the other 4 guys are getting Minor League salary.</p>
<p>^ Duchscher has been in the majors for a while but he was a middle reliever for quite a while so even though he make Majors money it’s probably not much more than the league minimum.</p>
<p>All of those guys are getting paid just over 400k to perform much better than Sheets. Sheets still leads the team in strikeouts, because sometimes his command is on, but one or two batters later he makes a huge mistake and they lose. Run Support is pretty small on that team too anyway.</p>
<p>^ True the A’s don’t have any complete hitters (they had Holliday for a while but he struggled there).</p>
<p>Note: I don’t like Cust</p>
<p>Cust is absolutely useless. He’s expected to be their guy to jack bombs, no pun intended, but he just strikes out a lot, wasn’t it like 2 weeks ago when he got his first homerun finally?</p>
<p>^ Exactly he’s like Adam Dunn except Adam Dunn actually hit home runs consistantly even is his average was in the crapper and he struck out a lot. Cust just living off of that insane burst of power that he had in his first few weeks in the bigs.</p>
<p>EDIT: I looked it up and Cust is hitting .283 but only 4HRs?! Oh but in 77 ABs that makes more sense.</p>
<p>Yeah but Adam Dunn is hitting .289 so he’s actually a decent factor. 
*<strong><em>, I’d be *</em></strong>ed if I was on Arizona though. Justin Upton and Mark Reynolds have 87 and 82 strikeouts respectfully at the top of the MLB and their average are .242 and .223.</p>
<p>The D’back with the highest average is Stephen Drew at .279 that’s pitiful… Haha Arizona’s most complete hitter may well be Micah Owings!</p>
<p>Micah Owings was absolutely amazing in College though. I can see how he’s such a good hitter, he made Tulane look great. Ubaldo is having an amazing year in Colorado…:></p>
<p>^ Ubaldo (a funny name btw) is the best pitcher in baseball right now. And he’s doing it in Colorado! I know it’s not the Coors stadium of old but that Rocky Mountain air is still very thin…</p>
<p>I hope he bests Bob Gibson’s 1.12 ERA, but he probably won’t, he’s at 1.16. I’m surprised nobody has barged into this conversation, and started something new.</p>
<p>^ No one will beat 1.12 it’s not as far out as 60 Wins but I highly doubt it will ever be bested.</p>