With the reputation of The Coliseum being an offensive grave yard, the A's are OPS'ing 690 at home, and 630 on the road. Opponents are OPS'ing 644 at the Coliseum, which may be due to our awesome pitching. Only if we could hit like that on the road, we'd be killing it!

Below are some of the players with major home/road delta. I understand that for individual players the # of AB is probably too small, but I wonder as a team why we would be hitting so much better at home, which is supposed to be a tough place to hit.

4 guys are hitting much better at home:

• Conor Jackson, Home 38 AB, 0.843 OPS, Road 69 AB, 0.594 OPS, delta -0.249
• Ryan Sweeney, Home 38 AB 0.942 OPS, Road 37 AB 0.711 OPS, delta -0.231
• Coco Crisp, Home 77 AB, 0.826 OPS, Road 103 AB, 0.614 OPS, delta -0.212
• Mark Ellis, Home 84 AB, 0.641 OPS, Road 95 AB, 0.460 OPS, delta -0.181
• Landon Powell, Home 19 AB, 0.830 OPS, Road 22 AB, 0.390 OPS, delta -0.440

2 guys are hitting much better on the road

• Andy LaRoche, Home 41 AB 0.511 OPS, Road 49 AB 0.680 OPS, delta 0.169
• Cliff Pennington, Home 84 AB 0.540 OPS, Road 83 AB 0.767 OPS, delta 0.227

Half of the team on DL, WTF!?

Losing more games after signing 4 FA, WTF!?

Moving all their games to digital cable 89 on Comcast that requires a $80 package, WTF!?

I'm only watching games delayed on MLB.TV now, and not watching that many games since I usually know the score before I can watch on MLB.TV. I've been a fan since 1989, but the A's are making it really difficult for me this year. Frustrated and don't know what to do.

As much as I hate the Red Sox nation as the next green and gold fan, it just occured to me that Red Sox is actually good for baseball. Put it simply, they make money for baseball. Whether it being long time massholes at home, or bandwagoners on the road, or red sox haters coming to see them lose, they do draw a crowd. Plus red sox fans are known drunks, and drunks are easily parted with their money via over-priced consessions and merchandises. If there were no red soxes (or the Yankeess), baseball may become more competitive for true fans, but will also make less money, and less TV coverage, and may become like hokey or soccer.

I feel dirty now, like Gordon Gekko.

It's amazing Suzuki has been able to play so many games and remain productive. but he's not a big guy, I wonder how much of this will wear on him.

I'm concerned that our catch depth drops off too much once Suzuki goes down. Looking at the two games that Bowen caught, Outman gave up 10 hits on Tue, and the Wed stinker. I wonder if we can really trust Bowen as a backup to handle our pitching staff over a full season.

ESPN Baseball tonight just showed the A's game hightlight, Brown's walk off. The main comment here is how sparse the crowd is for Oaklan day game, they joked something like "only 19 people were there". That just makes me sad. It's probably one of the ESPN bias again, probably because of a Thur day game against Seattle, but it seems to me like a vicious cycle, if the media thinks that there are no baseball fans in Oakland, why would they ever want to spend any time covering the A's? No wonder we have to play second fiddle to the Gnat in terms of TV coverage. I know I'll probably tick some people off here, but as a long time A's fan who has to move to the south bay, I can't wait for the A's to come down to Fremont.

So we have a team full of AAAA players, they are good for a short stint, once the league figure out who they are, and adjust to them, our guy fizzles out.

Is there a better way to get production out of our AAAA players? how about making truely AAAA players? Start a MLB <-> AAA rotation program. Shuttle players back and forth once every 1-2 months to keep them off the opponets's scouts' radar. Make them all leagally change their names to "Joe Average", grow some monster facial hair, so the opponents can't tell which is up each time. We are looking for out of the box thinking here.

BTW, how about that Joe I-have-as-many-losses-as-Zito Blanton? One thing I learned, you better have the liqure cabinet stocked if he's pitching. Either win or loss, you are gonna want to have a drink, before, during (especailly innings 4-6 in many cases), and after the game.

I have to admit the kid is good, better than his avg and OBP so far indicates. He's exciting to watch. I do notice, as I'm sure many here have already, that the kid does nothing but hit doubles or make outs (OK, 1 sacrifice). What else will he do next at the plate? Will he get a walk be fore he hits a HR? With his speed, he may hit a 3B before he hits a single. So I can count total of 5 (maybe 6) things that he hasn't done:

BB (IBB)

1B

3B

HR

HBP

What will be the next "1st" for the kid?

Just looked up A's offense stats for May, and one really strange thing is that everyone is either hitting above 300 (Crosby at 301) or below 230 (Hannahan at 227). Sweeneys, Thomas, Cust, Crosby are hitting, as much as Hannahan, Brown, Ellis, Suzuki, and Barton are not hitting, OK Barton is in a slump of his own compared to the rest. But even counting the part timers, there is just no one hitting average on the team in May. Maybe this is another manifestation of the hot/cold tendencies of A's offense.

This quote on SF Gate:

"Harden is starting at Stockton to avoid a trip to Oklahoma with the River Cats."

If Harden can't even risk going on a roadtrip at this time, I don't see how they can say he's healthy. That's not 100% confidence, is it? And with Harden, unless we are 284% sure that he's completely healthy, chances are he'll get injured, or already is and is just hiding it.

Maybe we should just keep Harden on a home game only schedule to see if the travel-induced injuries are B.S, and if he's is just as fragile as we all think he is.

Last Fri, 13-2 spanking of KC, not on TV!

Today 11-2 spanking of Twins, not on TV!

Out of the remaining 139 games, 28 will not be on TV. Compared to the Giants, who will only miss 4 games on TV. Every time there is a duplicate on CSN, it's the Giants and not the A's. I like the Giants OK now that they are the fighting underdog, but why so little love for the A's? Where/who do we complain to? What are A's marketing people doing about this?

Which 2nd year player on A's roster will have a sophomore slump, given there are so many of them.

I remember in Swish and DJ's sophomore year, I heard some comment abou thow Swish is more likely to regress because he has holes in his swing, and how DJ is a more complete hitter, look how that turned out.

I think having so many young guns in the starting line up, some of them are bound to fall back a little. I think Bart and Buck are likely candidate, Barton had 1 month in the bigs last year, and Buck was in and out with injuries. I wouldn't be surprised now that they are starters, opposing pitchers will start game planning for them more. I don't worry about Suzuki or Hannahan as much because they are not the top-middle of the lineup hitters that pitchers will focus on. I hope Buck and Baton can make adjustment quickly. Cust is also less likely, the way he broke into the league last year, most pitchers probably already had him on their radar last season, and Cust has stayed productive the whole time.

On the other hand, instead of new players emerging on opposing pitcher's radar, we also have players who are written off like Crosby, if he has indeed improved his swing to be able to after outside sliders better, maybe he can catch some pitchers by surprise.