It is time to wrap up the whole 2009 season, and the GOG along with it. This fANpost way freaking long. Scroll down to find answers and scores for GOG #00, an overview of the whole 2009 GOG, the final season standings, and awards.

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Because not having a DLD is barbaric...

Actually, the title references Penelope Spheeris' 1981 documentary about the Los Angeles punk scene. This was on my mind because of the death of Brendan Mullen earlier this week. Mullen founded The Masque, a club and rehearsal space in Hollywood that was the center of the first wave of LA punk bands. This is a link dump, so I will pass along a selection of the finest bands to come from the Masque scene.

• The Germs -- Lexicon Devil (live footage)
• The Alley Cats -- Nothing Means Nothing Anymore (live footage)
• The Bags -- Babylonian Gorgon (sorry, it's just audio, but the fact that this is like the best song ever should partially make up for it)
• The Middle Class -- Home Is Where (again, no video)
• The Weirdos -- We Got the Neutron Bomb (live footage)

But it's good to have some baseball links as well...

• The Hardball Times takes a look at some top prospects who played in the Southern and Texas leagues this last year. I'll let you guess who they are describing with this quote: "his power was every bit as devastating as advertised".
• Also from Hardball Times, a thorough look at the Venezuelan Patrol Craft. A friend of mine, who is a Rockies fan, is pretty unhappy with Oakland right now, on account of Huston Street's meltdown, but he really can't say anything bad about another part of the Holliday deal.

Dump away!

The season is coming to an end and, after yet another sweep at the hands of the Mariners, it just can't come soon enough.

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The time has come to buckle down! As of right now, the A's have 81 games in the loss column, meaning they need to win out to reach .500 for the season. Unfortunately, the green and gold is up against the Mariners, who have dominated Oakland to the tune of a .313 winning percentage. But those were the "Matt Holliday is a .200 hitter" A's of April, the "we just realized that maybe we should send Dana Eveland to AAA" A's of May, and the "getting rid of some dead weight" A's of August. Now the Mariners are up against the "Rajai Davis is Superman, and Eric Patterson is probably Batman or something" A's of late September, so do they even have a chance?

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It's the 50th GOG of the season! Thinking back to late April, where did we all think that we would be at this point? If I take a look here, I see that roughly 90% of us thought that these last series against the Angels would be a meaningful part of the division race.

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Sorry, but life has been throwing me curveballs lately, so this is going to be a short GOG. Hopefully this series will turn out like the last two, right?

Links

• Probable pitchers
• Rangers stats
• Grades are up for GOGs #47 and #48

GOG #49 :: Ranger Revenge? (21 points possible)

Four game series vs Texas Rangers -- September 21-24

UPDATE -- answers added below in bold

1. Series outcome [3 points] 2-2 split
2. Though Brad Ziegler doesn't have the same magic as he did last season, when he set the record for consecutive scoreless innings to start a major league career, he has actually been a better pitcher. The groundballs are still there, and the ridiculously low HR rate to go with it, plus he is striking out more hitters while walking fewer. The fact that his ERA is up to 3.15 in 2009 can be explained by his BABIP, which went from .246 in 2008 to .355 in 2009. And that is really a comment on Oakland's infield defense (and a dash of luck), not anything wrong with Ziggy. Predict his IP/K/BB for these four games [2 points each] 2.1 IP, 2 K, 3 BB
3. Ian Kinsler is proving himself to be a star player, with his second consecutive season at 4 WAR. Comparing this year to the last one, there are some significant differences, however. His BABIP is way way down, falling from .339 in 2008 to .246 this year. Ordinarily we might chalk that all up to bad luck (and I'm sure there is some luck component in there), but part of it seems to be a real change. While Kinsler's HR per fly ball ratio is up a bit this year, the main reason that he is about to break the 30 HR mark is because he is hitting a lot more fly balls than he did in the past. His fly ball rate is up from his previous norm of 43-45% to almost 55%, and the batted ball category that has declined is line drives. A big reduction in the number of line drives he is hitting surely accounts for part of the drop in BABIP, and his batting line has suffered as a result. It will be interesting to see if this is a one year fluctuation, or if it really represents the new Ian Kinsler. Anyway, the question is to predict his hits, home runs, and line drives for the series [2 points each] 1 H, 0 HR, 1 line drive (for a game ending double play)
4. How many plate appearance for Travis Buck in the series? Does he record a hit? [3 points for the first question, +-1 for the second question] 6 plate appearances and he did get a hit
5. Which Gonzalez posts a better game score, Edgar or Gio? [+1 if right, -1 if wrong] Gio's start was moved back a day, so he didn't pitch and this question doesn't count. But even Gio could have probably done better than Edgar Gonzalez's game score of 21.
6. As a team, the Rangers have almost identical numbers hitting against righties (.770 OPS) and lefties (.771 OPS). In this series, do they score more runs against the A's righties or lefties (counting starters and relievers)? [+1 if right, -1 if wrong] Waaaay more runs scored off of right handed pitchers, which isn't surprising because the righties threw waaaay more innings.

Game 1 starts at 7:05 pm. Don't swing and miss!

Results

Just catching up on some grading...

Overall scoring statistics

• mean = 4.41667 points
• standard deviation = 3.17543 points
• mode = 5 points

via cfcp.uchicago.edu

Your Scores

The big winner is Rated-R Superstar! The big loser? That would be me.

I must have seen the future because the title of the last GOG was "Ruin The Rangers", and the Athletics definitely just did that to any hopes that Texas has of making the playoffs. Of course, in my actual GOG entry I had Texas winning the series 2-1, so maybe claims of psychic ability should be taken with a grain of salt.

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Heading into today's game, the Athletics record against the Texas Rangers sits an even 6-6. This three game set, plus a four game series next week in Oakland, will make the difference between having to acknowledge that the Rangers were just a flat out better team than Oakland this year, or being able to cling to a winning head-to-head record. On top of that, Texas is still hanging on to the wild card race, four games behind Boston. Let the spoiling begin!

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While this series might not look like much at first glance -- the Twins trail Detroit by 5.5 games with 22 left to play -- there is one very significant milestone here. After Sunday's series finale, the A's will never have to play another game in the Metrodome!

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