A disappointing season heads into its final months... can the A's find some magic to salvage a .500 season, or will we limp towards the end of the year with growing uncertainty around our job security?
Congratulations! You have created Florida Marlins. Winning world series and then back to being under .500 team. Usually, when my teams lose a lot of 1 run/extra innings games I blame lack of power hitting. You've had two 30 hr hitters and then crickets. I feel like even someone like Endo would have helped this season. Anyway I hope that you get a slightly bigger budget to get the team back on track.
A bigger budget would be very helpful. But after we got cut by $2 million last offseason after winning the World Series and making over $25 million for Fisher, I'm not going to hold my breath on a big budget increase after a 71 win season and making only $2 million this year! But he has been known to be unpredictable, and I hope I am wrong!
It was the best of times, it was immediately the worst of times,,, keep up the good fight! Seems like injuries and regular old year to year variance hit hard this year for a plausibly decent roster.
Agreed, definitely a lot of that going on... I think we were projected to go 80-82 each of the past two seasons at the end of spring training... and outperformed by 14 games last year, and then underperformed by nine games this season!
Yeah, is is definitely a unique occurrence! I would be shocked if there has ever been a World Series champion that had a .450 or worse winning percentage the year before and the year after the title. Where is ESPN Stats and Information when I need them! EDIT: Looks like the Rangers had the worst winning percentage ever for a team than won the World Series the next season with their .420 in 2022, and they have a .446 winning percentage as of today in 2024, so they could be headed to A's-type infamy... but with a much larger payroll! And the 1997 Miami Marlins had a .494 winning percentage in 1996 followed by the brutal .333 winning percentage in 1998. But I don't know that anyone has even been as bad both before and after as my A's!
it seems strange that Ortega only has several stolen bases and it doesn't seem to be part of his game although I think his base running is 65 and his speed is 70 (I could be wrong) i'm a little concerned that his hitting is not going to fully develop, but I think even at this moment with no more development he would be an above avg defensive outfielder in the majors and potentially slightly above average hitter. Also, I like the trade you made in the last episode. Sending the Cy Young winner out for two younger controllable players. Nice work there.
Ortega is definitely improving, but the improvements do seem to be slowing... hopefully we can get him on a successful program this offseason in the Lab to accelerate his development!
@@hammerpgh I think he should get there based on his skills. I don't spend much time on player strategies in the minors, so maybe he has had a few managers who don't run much or something like that. He will have the green light in the majors!
I guess I never really paid attention that players can and do change personalities. But it's cool. In Chandler case it's very realistic that some players rising too stardom gets impossible. Too many historically can be found.
I also like that it is somewhat dynamic. But I don't love that I ended up with the fluky Cy Young Award winner who all of a sudden started thinking he was Bob Gibson or Greg Maddux!
Oh man!! When you’re down you’re down.. All those injuries 😮. Lara at least lasted most of the season which I didn’t expect. That’s what you get Mr Fisher when you lower the budget on a championship winning team! Can’t wait to see what he does for next year 😳 Not sure what else you could have done this season.. I really wasn’t expecting that drop-off from last season but I guess the losses of Ladolo and Braddish from the pitching roster in the close season plus Delauter from the batting right at the start of the season were a lot to overcome. I would be interested to see how the former two did last season 🤔 Onwards and upwards my man.. You can turn this back around 🫡
