Look at the starting lineup for the
American League All Star team
and you will see two Rodríguez,
one Martínez one Ramírez and
one Guerrero and on the National
League Pujols, Rentería and
company, plus the second
string. This is “béisbol”and
here: Se Habla Español…
Not only quantity, but an
argument could be made
that of the top 10 players
in Major League Baseball
over half are Latinos.

By Amaury Pi-González
San Francisco [Read more →]

Marty, This is being written before the Giants’ Sunday game with the A’s. When we looked in mid-June at the Giants’ upcoming schedule, with games to be played against the Red Sox, the Dodgers and the A’s, the thought expressed was that if they broke even against these clubs it could be considered a successful trip. They have done much better than that.

Note: Since Ed wrote this analysis of the Giants they have lost two games, one to the A’s and one to the Rockies.
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Sunday’s game between the A’s and Giants was
a showcase for the old baseball adage that your pitchers have to protect the hitters if one of your guys gets plunked. The 1st batter to get hit was
all world super star Barry Bonds. Mulder’s pitch
came in on Bonds’ hand as he turned to swing but couldn’t pull back fast enough. The park got very quiet as the thought that Bonds may have a broken hand went through the gathered throng. Bonds lucked out and was not hurt. Mulder later hit Ray Durham on the thigh as a pitch intended to be in got
away from Mulder and hit Durham on the thigh.
The A’s were leading by a scor of 5-3 when Mulder
came uo to hit and was promptly hit by Tyler Walker who was tossed from the game. He hit Mulder on the backside and the message was sent.
Felipe Alou was angry that his guy was tossed but
the umpires kept the game under contol.Eric Byrnes
then hit a 3 run homer that gave the A’s an 8-3
lead at that time. Byrnes was on fire. he had 2
home runs that drove in 6 runs and had scored a run earlier. When he came to bat against Felix
Rodriguez later, he was nailed. Not uncommon in baseball for a hitter to either take a pitch close to the chin or be hit for hitting a home run . However,
this was intentional and Rodriguez and Alou were chased. The dugouts did not empty but the point was made. Protect the hitters. Jerry F [Read more →]

Isn’t it ironic that in Boston,
Massachussetts(New England)
a real bastion of Liberalism,
racism still much more
prevalent than in most
other places in the country ?

By Amaury Pi-González
San Francisco [Read more →]

It has long been considered a good baseball omen to be leading your league or division on July 4th. This season things are different. Other than the Yankees in the East, every division is still up for grabs.

The late Hall of Famer, Leonard Koppett, my all time favorite baseball writer, maintained and it holds true today, that since the addition of the wild card no matter what record you have in July or August, if you are playing .500 ball on September 1st, you have a shot at the playoffs.

In addition, if you are in a tight race for the division crown, whoever plays the best over the last 35 games wins it all. Pitching down the stretch has always been the key.

Both the A’s and Giants took 5 of 7 from their SoCal rivals over the past ten days. Are the Dodgers and Angels dead? Absolutely not. With 85 games to go, teams should be pointing for September and not gloating about five game winning streaks in June or July.

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New York Yankee pitcher
Jose Contreras has a $32 million
contract with the team, a $5
million dollar home in Tampa
and all the cars he wants. But
last week he got the most
important thing of all,
his family.

By Amaury Pi-Gonzalez
Seattle [Read more →]

He can sell refrigerators in the Arctic. He can peddle igloos at the equator. Billy Beane has done it again.

The A’s needed a closer to quell the unrest among the pitching staff. The team needed a top flight reliever to stop their free fall through the standings.

Bingo! The A’s ship two prospects who had no foreseeable future with the organization to Kansas City for the plum of the trade market, Carlos Beltran.

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Marty: In the face of those of us who have spent much time already during this baseball season decrying the tendency to predict the ultimate outcome of the 162 game season, here goes another rash prediction. It is being done without being even slightly embarrassed by earlier sentiments which described the Giants as a “bad ball club”. That’s one of the delights in being a fan. In the early going the team fit the description. That judgment gradually changed over the past weeks. It culminates in today’s opinion. All it takes is courage and the willingness to be seen, at the end, as a misguided enthusiast and somewhat foolish, to boot.

The sixteen game schedule, commencing with the Toronto series and concluding on July fourth with the A’s series was described here as a test, the result of which might call for further evaluation of the club’s prospects. Having won nine of the first ten games, which included taking two of three from the Red Sox and sweeping the Dodgers in four games, we are emboldened to demonstrate a lack of concern over the outcome of the remaining nine games, six against the A’s and three against LA.

Click Below for more of Ed’s analysis. [Read more →]

In baseball today, when you put a pitching staff together, you must build from the bullpen forward. No matter who starts, the bullpen decides who wins the game 95 % of the time.

The most successful teams are the teams with four or five reliable arms in the pen. Take a look at the Cards, the Dodgers, the Red Sox, or even the Devil Rays as examples of teams with balanced bullpens that close tight games.

This brings us to the A’s and Giants.

Ken Macha has a problem. Right now, only Chad Bradford is giving the manager a clean inning. Macha’s body language tells the story when he needs to bring a new pitcher into the game. Looks like he’d rather have a tooth pulled, then raise his arm signaling for a reliever.

The lack of a quality closer and a hard throwing set up man is costing the A’s critical games in the standings. How about Ugueth Urbina? Would the Tigers pick up some of his salary to move him?

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Dennis Eckersley will go into
Coopertown next month and
he is only 50 ! I mean Julio
Franco is presently playing
getting regular paychecks from
the Atlanta Braves and is
receiving his Major League
pension and Rickey Henderson
is coming back (he is at Newark,NJ)

By Amaury Pi-González [Read more →]