This is my first FanPost on here, and it's on something I've always been passionate about: recruiting.  It's an exciting time of year filled with promise, hopes, and dreams.  I just wanted to share my thoughts on our recruiting class and get your feedback as well.  Who will play right away?  Which players are the late bloomers of the class?  Which players do you see switching positions?  And which players among this class will make the biggest impact at Oregon and possibly in the NFL?

I finally got to see film on everybody, and I came away very impressed.  I have to say we did REALLY well at the positions of absolute need: WR, LB, and OL.  However, there are impact players everywhere in this class.

The WR group: enough said.  Kelley looks like a faster version of Drew Davis, Blackmon has some serious wheels and quicks in the open field, and Sumler is freakin' fast and can highpoint the ball surprisingly well for his size.  I was less impressed with Vaughn, but he has good hands and enough speed to separate deep.  I have no idea how Lyerla will fare at WR; I doubt he sticks there given the talent in this class and his ability as an LB or LB/DE.  He'd be a great redzone threat though.

Although not as highly rated, the LB group looks stellar.  I am really surprised that Rodney Hardrick wasn't more hyped with his speed, size, and instincts.  He looks like he will be competing for playing time this year, along with Anthony Wallace.  Both of them look ready and have the size to play right now.  The others need to bulk up, but all are good prospects and big hitters.

As far as the offensive line is concerned, we are in great hands.  Andre Y is a, athletic, dominant run blocker with a serious nasty streak.  He needs to bulk up but will be a great one; he gives up a lot of weight but is one of the strongest lineman pound for pound I've seen in this class.  Fisher is an incredible athlete.  It's hard not to see him as a left tackle with his size and athleticism.  Johnstone was impressive; he needs to bulk up as well but he moves so well in space.  Euscher is huge but raw.  He doesn't look as strong as his size indicates; he will need to do some work there.  Another O-line prospect with pretty good feet though.  Finally, Prater showed good quickness as well and has the potential to be an excellent guard.  There seems to be a theme here: athleticism and interchangeability.  I think all of these guys could play anywhere on the line for most teams.

Black Mamba should be on the field next year.  He's too explosive not to be involved in some form, but I thought that about Seastrunk last year.  I guess it depends on whether he picks up the playbook.  Tra will likely redshirt, but he's a great change of pace back and surprisingly agile for a RB of his size.

French is going to make a splash somewhere.  I think he redshirts and eventually finds his way to defense, because he has incredible closing speed and would be an impact player there eventually.  Imagining French and Lyerla on that side of the ball rushing the QB and chasing down RBs from the back end makes any Duck fan happy.

The D-line looked okay; Ebert is a heck of a player and will play right away.  He has speed and size in spades.  However, Kamp and Lake need a lot of bulking up; of the two, I liked Lake the best on tape.  He has quick feet and looks like he could be a late blooming beast in a few years.  Kamp was a bit slower and had trouble getting pushed back off the ball, but is a smart player with good instincts.  Good tackler as well.

Mariota looks fantastic.  I already went into detail on him in another thread, but he's got a strong arm, great accuracy, excellent pocket awareness, and serious speed.  He played in a spread option system and looked very comfortable doing so.

Finally, Ifo is kind of the forgotten man in this class and actually might have the most pro potential of anyone.  He's the total package at DB; he's a huge hitter, has the ball skills to play CB, and is both fast and powerful.  John Neal has to be ecstatic to get a player of his caliber in terms of overall athleticism, especially after losing a few to the offensive side of the ball.  It's a shame we will only have Cliff for another year, because this guy in a couple of years could be a first round NFL pick as well.  I don't know how experienced he is at CB, but if he picks up the system quickly, I think he's another guy that could see the field next year, even in a deep group.

Hey Guys and Gals-

I stumbled across this article on Yahoo Sports about 2008 Season Predictions.  Get this, 2 of the 3 sportswriters on the site picked the A's to win LESS THAN 70 GAMES.  Are they serious?  Or am I blind in my fandom?

Y! experts peer into a crystal baseball

Wow.

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After the trade deadline had passed, I wound up over here, to see if any of our players had been traded.  I knew that Dan Johnson, Joe Kennedy, Shannon Stewart, Mark Kotsay, and even Mike Piazza would receive little print on ESPN or another news source.  Why?  Because I'm going to state the obvious here: Most of our players just do not have value.

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Yikes, this is not good for our bullpen:

Duke out with season ending hip surgery

I for one kind of saw this coming.  But who didn't?  His performance indicated to me and to others that something was seriously wrong.  He's been a great bullpen arm for us, but the question is for this season, who is going to fill his spot?  Casilla?  Embree when Street comes back?  Platoon role?

What about the rest of our bullpen?  I hope Calero comes back just so we can at least have some depth.  Thankfully Casilla has been effective and will hopefully fill in.  Still, it's a huge loss, and we can't afford any more injuries.  (that was Captain Obvious speaking, over and out.)

Jack Cust has won over the hearts of Oakland fans and captured the attention of a nation with his penchant for the clutch and the dramatic.  His homeruns have sullied the records of opposing clubs and helped Oakland to a dramatic rise in offensive production.  He also out-homered the Jason Kendall of the last 3 years in one game.  What a stud.

I thought of a few good nicknames in my spare time here in Arizona and I think it's high time that Mr. Cust had an official calling card.  What should it be?  Please vote and write-in your favorites below.

I was talking with a friend of mine today and we engaged in a debate about statistical analysis.  Being an A's fan, it's difficult not to get caught up in the intense debate between statheads (Bill James and so forth) and the Joe Morgans of the world.  My two cents:

The emphasis on statistical analysis has gone way beyond what I can take.  Baseball is an athletic contest; let's not make it into a computer game.  You can easily inflate average players based on statistical analysis.  Take Kevin Youkilis for the Red Sox as a prime example of a high OBP player that would be considered valuable as an offensive player.  Pretty good hitter with a patient eye, we all know this from watching games.  However, we also know from observation that he's slow.  He's a below average fielder, both at 1B and at 3B.  Would you take him over Eric Chavez?  You'd have to be nuts to say yes, despite Youkilis' 40 point OBP career advantage.  There are so many ways to evaluate a good baseball players, some that even metrics can't agree on (defensive range and arm, fielding prowess, speed on the basepaths, etc.).  It also doesn't take someone with a Ph.D in Statistics to tell you that Adrian Beltre isn't really that good of a hitter, despite his one great year playing for the Dodgers.  His swing is raw and he still regularly tries to pull pitches on the outer half, rolling over the top and creating routine groundouts.  Statistics would say that the season was an outlier, but that isn't hard to figure out if you didn't watch baseball on a regular basis.

Now, I understand that part of the hype is due to the old school crowd making baseless statements like: "Moneyball advocates not stealing bases."  Statistically, I've heard stealing is beneficial when you're successful anywhere around 75-80% of the time.  Logically, this makes sense.  You steal a base when you think you're going to be successful most of the time.  But, this is what you've been trying to do anyway, you wouldn't do it if you weren't good at it. All statisticians are saying is that if you're good at stealing bases, go ahead. If you're not, don't bother. David Ortiz is a not a good basestealer; you wouldn't have him steal regularly.  Not very hard to reason through something like that.  And all putting a stopwatch on Pudge's throw to second is doing is reinforcing the fact that he's really good at getting the ball there quickly and that you probably don't have much of a chance of making it to second unless you're Rickey Henderson.  So, I'm trying to find the middle ground here.  I can't stand ignorance from either extreme.

Statistics to me are just common sense put in numerical format.  What really bothers me about some is that they pretend to predict the future based on statistics.  People try to extrapolate what will happen based on past stats.  That is not the point of statistics; statistics are useful to formulate probabilities for certain events to give confidence to hypotheses and predictions.  Using them as an end-all solution is not only crazy, it's incorrect.  I can't sit here and tell you that Eric Chavez will hit 30 HRs next year.  I can say confidently that he could, because he averages that many HRs, but he could hit 45 after fixing a swing fault, or he could be dealing with a degenerative shoulder and only hit 20.  Baseball is random and human; no analysis will change that fact.

I just hope we don't all lose the point of watching baseball.  It is a beautiful game.  I cannot describe all of the memories I've had playing it and watching it with numbers.  Why should I change my thought process?

I don't know if anyone else has posted this yet, but I found this via google:

http://www.cleveland.com/weblogs/miltonbradley/

I for one am looking forward to Bradley getting here, he seems like a real team player given what he's written in this diary.  I also love the fire that he'll bring to the club, and I commend Billy Beane for bringing a player of his caliber to Oakland for such a low cost.  The only question mark is his ability to stay healthy, other than that, this is a guy that's played hurt, plays with passion, and is very, very talented.  I can't wait for Opening Day 2006.

In watching the A's games over MLB.TV since I am currently in the lovely town of Durham, NC for school, I have come to the conclusion that there are some really, really, horrifically bad announcing crews that we have to sit through as loyal fans.  So I'm posing the poll question, which announcing crew would you least like to watch or even show up for your son's little league game for some good old fashioned play-by-play and color commentary?