Plus I think most people would rather see us save that money and try to re-sign Shields. As many others have noted, Santana has a history of being inconsistent from year to year. Plus Shields is a fastball/changeup guy, might have more miles left on his arm... plus his bulldog mentality is a great example for the younger pitchers. He doesn't panic and fall apart under pressure situations.

Plus it'd be nice if he could be there if (knock on wood, lots of wood) guys like Zimmer and Ventura can make their way up in the next 2-3 years.

If the owner wasn't a piece of trash who would use it to cut costs elsewhere, I might...

Fair enough. I don't know enough about what he would command & what we can afford. I just know that we have no problem overpaying crapsacks like Hoch, Frenchy, etc. and it might not be the worst thing in the world to overpay a good player, especially considering how "close" we're supposed to be.

Interesting storyline in the AL West. The Rangers, who now have a front office with a winning attitude and money to back it up, are 5 games out of first behind the Athletics who seem to still be playing some form of moneyball.

Here's the thing with Lough-yeah, he's probably just a guy. Except that...I remember right after they changed hitting coaches, he hit a homer to right and everyone, including him was surprised.

He credited Brett with finding something wrong with his swing and said they "corrected it". Since then, he's been a .300 hitter and fairly productive. I felt like early on he didn't have the bat speed,but it seems he does now.

Perhaps it sticks. At any rate, it's not costing us much to see. I think we need to sort out RF but it's no longer the gaping black hole it was when Frenchy played there every game.

to me, 2b is the real question mark. You really need an everyday player in that spot.

No problem. Baseball is so much different than the NFL which has parity in player signing because of salary cap rules. You pay good players you want to keep in the NFL but MLB is so much harder to judge appropriate signings based on franchise structure, minor league talent and ability of top tier teams to take greater chances on player signings than the lower tier teams. It is what makes baseball a complete guessing game for these small market teams and very interesting when lower level teams ARE in the race come August.

The A's may be walking on thin ice though if Colon gets suspended. Of course they'll probably find a way to work around it. That'd be a huge blow though.

But the real story, as we've seen several times over the previous decade... is the A's and Rays are leading their big budget divisions with payrolls that are 10+ and 20+ million dollars less than the Royals. This kind of thing has happened several times in recent years.

And everyone wants to bitch about Glass being cheap. Which, he probably is to some extent. However the real story with this franchise is the incompetence that runs through it. If the Royals are actually spending more than a couple of division leaders, there is NO excuse for not being contenders.

And it pisses me off.

And the Rays play in a crappy ballpark and have an apathetic fanbase.

It doesn't help the fact that they are spending it on poor quality players like Getz, Francouer, Mendoza, etc to name a few off my head. Beatancourt was another one that was terrible.

Yep. The level of fail coming out of Kauffman is absolutely mind boggling.

Absolutely. Incompetence plain and simple. Shitty talent evaluation. Stubbornness to stick by those players even after they have proven to be failures. It is like an entire franchise of Pioli/Cassel syndrome. Completely unfathomable.

In all fairness, those big money teams have bad injury luck right now. Nobody thinks the Yankees would only be 55-50 if they had Texeira-Granderson-ARod all year long. Red Sox without Buckholz, Bailey, Hanrahan, which is dead money. And Texas lost 18-game winner Matt Harrison, Colby Lewis (14-game winner two years ago, 3.30 ERA last year), Feliz who saved 35 per. Berkman hurt now etc.


Tampa Oakland and yes, KC have been extremely injury-free this year. That explains what's happening in the standings.

Tampa is always a potential contender, regardless of the BoSox and Yanks injury problems. Oakland is not in the mix every year but, often enough to provide fans with a reason to support them.

Sorry but, the big money clubs injury problems does not detract from the competence emanating from a couple of the smaller franchises.

Myers with 2 more home runs today and 4 RBIs. It's a struggle trying not to pay attention, but when the guy is blowing up like this I can't help it.

Imagine if Moore had decided to trade Moose instead of Myers for Shields...