A's Preview

Can I first just say how annoying it is to play the Oakland baseball team simply for terminology purposes? Am I supposed to call them the Athletics? Cause that sounds stupid. But saying the A's creates all kinds of problems. Like if I want to say how good their starting pitchers are, how am I supposed to do that? I never really understood any grammar/punctuation rules for words that end in "s," and this one is simply a disaster.

The A's starting pitchers are really good.
This one bothers me because I'm changing absolutely nothing about the original word (or whatever you wanna call it). Isn't this cheating? I just type "A's" as I normally would?

The A's' starting pitchers are really good.
This one is so weird because if I look at it too much it looks like I'm just putting single quotes (whatever the crap they are) around an s that is next to an A. Did you understand the description I just gave of what I'm seeing? Because I barely did. This team is making me question my ability to write altogether.

The A's's starting pitchers are really good.
OK now I'm just typing "Ass" but separating it with apostrophes. And I know there's no way that is right.

And then you get to actually pronounce that idiotic possessive noun and you sound like my dad trying to say the name of a local supermarket. Landis's's's's's's's's. Clemens's's's's's's's (RIP). Maybe this problem just runs in the family. Thanks a lot for the extremely awkward and rare speech impediment, father.

I think what I'm trying to say here, though, is that Oakland has really good starting pitching. It seems like they always manage to have really good starting pitching, dating back to when their rotation included Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito (when ALL of them were actually good, not just one). Cory Lidle was also on a team with those guys, keeping an ERA below 4 while everyone was juicing hardcore. They also had Ted Lilly around for a little, and he has been a solid starter throughout his career. Rich Harden, Joe Blanton, and Dan Haren are a few more names that have come through Oakland and been a part of big deadline deals over the years.

And now, their rotation (without injury) would include Trevor Cahill, Brett Anderson, Dallas Braden, and Gio Gonzalez. You probably have heard of maybe one of those guys because Braden threw a perfect game on Mother's Day last season (only to be shown up a few weeks later by Halladay). What you may not know, though, is that Braden is probably the worst of those 4. He and Brett Anderson are injured, though, so they don't really matter. And if we were playing these guys in August, none of them would matter because they'd most likely all be traded to contending teams. If there's one thing the A's love, it's trading away any sign of a good player. As fun as trades are, I would imagine that's a pretty tough team to be a fan of.

An annoying part of this series: Having to see Hideki Matsui again. I hate that guy.

Game 1: Guillermo Moscoso (2-3, 3.30 ERA) vs. Vance Worley (2-1, 3.41 ERA)
There is very very little experience in this game. Moscoso has made 5 starts in his career, all this season. Worley has 7 career starts and only 2 prior to this season. Neither pitcher has pitched more than 6 1/3 innings in a game this season, so this game may be more of a bullpen-type game. Let's just hope the bullpen we see includes Stutes, Bastardo, and Madson rather than Baez, Baez, or Baez. This game could either be a home run derby or a pitchers' duel. Knowing how our offense works, and knowing essentially no one on the A's (ugh) offense, I think I'll go with the latter. I'll be attending this game, so look for me catching foul balls somewhere along the first base line, 35 rows up.
Prediction: Phillies 3 Athletics 1
Keep an eye out for: all of those runs coming in the first 2 innings and things getting pretty snoozy after that

Game 2: Trevor Cahill (7-5, 3.24 ERA) vs. Cole Hamels (9-3, 2.51 ERA)
Last season, in his 2nd season in the majors, Cahill went 18-8 with a 2.97 ERA. On a playoff team, that's a Cy Young season. On the A's, I guess it's not much. He doesn't strike a lot of guys out, he'll walk his fair share of people, he gives up a decent amount of home runs, and he didn't get to 200 innings last season. Cahill is nothing special, except he just doesn't let the other team score. I guess that's why we never really hear about him.
As for Cole Hamels, I feel like we haven't heard enough about him this year either. Right now, he should probably be the NL starter for the All-Star Game. He is 3rd in ERA and 1st in wins. He has 13 quality starts in 15 starts, good for the 2nd best percentage. He has the second best strikeout-to-walk ratio and is 10th in strikeouts per 9 innings. His WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched) is the best in the league at 0.93. That basically means he averages less than one baserunner per inning, the only pitcher in the NL who can say that. His biggest issue in the past? Fly balls. He's now 6th in groundball-flyball ratio. You think Roy Halladay is better? Well, it's close. So close, in fact, that their records and ERAs are currently the same. The difference? It's an expectation with Halladay. Hamels was our number 4 starter coming into the season. We expect him to be good, but we don't expect him to be Halladay. Or Lee. Or Oswalt. But he's just as good or better than all of them.
Prediction: Phillies 4 Athletics 2
Keep an eye out for: offense. I don't anticipate much of it in this series (as a matter of fact, I don't even mention any offensive players in these game breakdowns), and the 6 runs I'm predicting here may very well be the most we see in a game. We may only see 6 runs the whole weekend.

Game 3: Josh Outman (3-1, 2.86 ERA) vs. Roy Halladay (9-3, 2.51 ERA)
If the name Josh Outman looks familiar to you at all, it may be because he was a part of the trade for Joe Blanton. We gave him, Adrian Cardenas, and Matt Spencer to the A's for Joe the Pitcher back in 2008. Looking at his numbers, that may seem unfortunate at this point because of how bad Blanton was this year in his starts, but let's not forget what he did for us in '08. He went 4-0 with the Phils as well as 2-0 in the playoffs. And, oh by the way, he got a win and hit a home run in Game 4 of the World Series (if you didn't remember, we won that World Series). Those other guys involved in the trade have done nothing in the majors, and Outman has done nothing spectacular thus far. His numbers have been solid this season in limited starts, but he is 2-0 in his last 2 starts with a 0.69 ERA. I don't like that he is coming in pitching well, but he's young and that can change. Plus he's facing Halladay. This should end up being a good game, and I have to stick with my Halladay prediction until it's right.
Prediction: Phillies 3 Athletics 0
Keep an eye out for: Halladay throwing his first complete game shutout of the season. This will happen at some point