This is What the A's Have Money For???

 

John Fisher will never make sense to anyone. His actions seem to run in conflict to the team he willingly bought and has owned for two decades. He is the Jeremy Renner of sports management, because despite the amount of time he has put into this, and the amount of high profile projects he has taken on, never in any of this has he actually looked like he's wanted to be here, doing this. 

Over the last two seasons he completely shattered the goodwill of the remainder of the fanbase the A's still had, pissed off the Oakland massive by moving the team to Las Vegas years after these same people had to deal with the Raiders leaving, balked at so many stadium proposals that now the Vegas ones are in jeopardy, and figured out a cost-effective method to play games in Sacramento, way hotter than in Oakland, in a lower-capacity minor league park. The man clearly does not want to spend money on the Athletics. This seems to be Fisher's least favorite thing in the world. At any point he could sell the team, but he doesn't want to do that.

So it's baffling to me that after the last two years, where his refusal to put money into bettering the team has alienated the fans, the rest of the league, the players and all of baseball, and heading into a season where the object will be to conserve as much money as possible for fear of becoming TOO good in Sacramento...John Fisher has now put money into a top starting pitcher for the next three years. 

Let me just...real quick, run through some players that were really good in Oakland that Fisher did not have the funds to pay to stick around. Uh, let's see here, Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, Josh Donaldson, Sonny Gray, Sean Manaea, Chris Bassitt, Liam Hendriks, Sean Murphy, Josh Reddick, Paul Blackburn, Starling Marte, Mark Canha, Jon Lester, Marcus Semien. All of those guys were deemed unfit for extensions or new contracts. And to recap, who are the A's signing for the next three years?

Luis Severino. Based solely off his consistent 2024 with the Mets. 

Now, to be fair, apparently the A's have been more active in free agency than in past years, mostly because they want to ensure that the residents of Sacramento have some players they recognize at the park this year. It's hard for a team like the A's to be a draw on the back of Brent Rooker and J.P. Sears alone, they need some proven star power. But many free agents, Walker Buehler chiefmost among them, have expressed reluctance towards pitching in a minor league park all season. So, rightfully, the A's haven't seemed to be getting that many nibbles so far. Yet here we are, Luis Severino will be an Athletic for the next 3 years.

The thing about that, though, and...I hate to say this because Sevvy's upswings with New York were terrific, and his 2017 season was wonderful, but...Luis Severino had this period from 2019 til 2023 with the Yankees where he couldn't put together a consistent, healthy season. The majority of his peak years spent, with one decent enough campaign in 2022 married by injury, and a truly atrocious one in 2023. I have seen what Severino is capable of, and the highs are quite high, but I don't know how often he can perform that well anymore. Either you're paying for a Zack Wheeler, who needed to get that out of his system, or a Madison Bumgarner, who doesn't have a ton left to show for himself. And the A's banking on a risk like Sevvy for 3 years does feel like Fisher wanting to play with the big boys without actually knowing how they make their decisions. 

I could be wrong, absolutely. Sevvy could be brilliant for the A's. But this just feels like Fisher trying to make up for lost time and recoup goodwill when it's far too late for either of those things. 

The Way of the Odo

I'm gonna say something shocking. I know it's early, but I need to say this:

The Cy Young voting needs to include at least one person who's a realist. Someone who's more well-versed in logic than in sabermetrics. And I say this because when we're totaling up who was the best pitcher of the year, that realist will come forward and say 'Yes, but aren't we going a bit over our heads here?' We would have LOVED someone like that voting in 2016, just so they could come in and go 'I mean, REALLY? RICK PORCELLO OF ALL PEOPLE? WHEN JUSTIN VERLANDER'S HAD THE YEAR HE'S HAVING??'

I say this is a shocking point because said realist wouldn't have found anything wrong with the results of the 2010 Cy Young voting. Because as a Yankee fan, I do not count as a realist. Most New York sports fans do not think realistically. I should not have to explain this, but if you need an explanation, I direct you to the Knicks fandom.

If a realist will not suffice for Cy Young voters, then I'd suggest they get a soothsayer some voting privileges. Because they can see whether or not this Cy Young award is gonna be the only thing on this guy's shelf other than a jar of peanut butter. And I'd be interested to see what they'd see with the rest of Jake Odorizzi's career.

Odo is having a fantastic start to the year, with 9 wins and a league-leading 1.92 ERA. He's part of an ironclad rotation featuring Jose Berrios, Kyle Gibson and Martin Perez all playing beautifully. And yet I get the feeling that if Odo does finish out the year as well as he started, therefore qualifying a Cy Young case...firstly he'd be taking it away from Verlander again, which isn't fair, and secondly...I worry that this is just the oddsmakers taking advantage of a generally flukey year from an alright pitcher.

Like...Jake Odorizzi is a fine pitcher, don't get me wrong. He's had solid years with Tampa, and his Twins debut year was...passable. But I look at his previous years' stats, and I just see a lot of lines of very okay work. Like, a 10-6 season, a 10-8 season, a 4+ ERA here, a 150 strikeout year there. I'm not seeing anything league-defining until this year, which makes me wonder if Odo will do anything league-defining after this year. It's the same thing that's sort of plagued Rick Porcello ever since his Cy Young win. It's also the same thing that's hurt Jason Vargas ever since his crazy 2017- one good year, in the absence of others, can ruin a pitcher's longevity.

Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe Odorizzi has like 5 straight Cy-Young-caliber years after this, but...at least with someone like Max Scherzer and Corey Kluber, who took some time to start dominating the league...at least they showed early signs of dominance with strikeout numbers and such. I didn't really see too many early signs with Odo's early numbers.

So maybe he's just...having a good season. And there's a difference between having a good season and having a Cy-Young caliber year.

Coming Tonight: A guy who hit a home run during the playoffs last year, and became such a great postseason reliever that he's leading this team's rotation right now.

What the Hell Happened to the Astros??

No, seriously. This is pretty baffling to me, actually.

The Astros were so phenomenal last year, in just about every way. The lineup worked, the pitching staff was dominating, the momentum was there. There weren't too many drastic roster changes for 2016, and most of the guys who were killing it last year are still there. In fact, a few crucial pieces were added rather than subtracted.

So...I really don't understand why they aren't winning games.

They have the same guys hitting, too. Colby Rasmus is off to a pretty nice start, and Tyler White had some pretty electrifying stuff earlier, and Dallas Keuchel is still shutting people down. And yet people like the Mariners and Rangers are taking care of the top of the division.

This isn't like the Twins thing, because the Twins were juuuust running out of momentum at the end of 2015, and their decline sort of makes sense in hindsight. The Astros ended last season still with a ton of momentum, still really powerful, which is why the deflation right now doesn't make sense to me.

Hopefully this is just a momentary thing, and hopefully they'll get hot again in the next few weeks and put to rest all the really worried sportswriters. They're a fun team, and they don't deserve to be back in last after everything that's happened to them.

Coming Tonight-  He hasn't hit as many home runs as Trevor Story, but he's still one of the most impressive home run hitters in Denver.