This is Oakland A's baseball

[Hendu Style]

September 30th, 1998

Let the playoffs begin. We begin our march at another World Championship tomorrow against the Twins in Game 1 of the ALDS. The roster we have assembled is World Series material. But there's a big difference between being a championship caliber team, and actually winning a championship.

I'll never forget the season we won 122 games and still didn't win a ring. It just goes to show you, the postseason is a whole new ballgame.

All of that being said, I still like our chances. We have a fantastic ace in Bartolo Colon. Al Leiter gives us a great lefty presence in the #2 spot in the rotation. Dustin Hermanson is a solid #3 starter. After that, we're pretty spotty, but as long as our top 3 pitchers hold their own, we'll be just fine.

Our lineup is as strong as ever. Johnny Damon and Brian Giles set us up very nicely at the top of the order. Mike Piazza and Ken Griffey Junior give us a phenomenal 1-2 punch in the heart of the order. And Jason Giambi has come on like gangbasters late in the season. He hit .320 with 6 homers in August, and .337 with 8 homers in September. The hope is he keeps it going in October.

Here we go!

[Hendu Style]

October 5th, 1998

Twins Eliminate A's; Damon Tears ACL

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (AP) -- The news went from bad to worse on Monday for the Oakland A's. Moments after the Minnesota Twins put the finishing touches on a 3-1 win to clinch the ALDS 3 games to 1, the A's found out that Johnny Damon would be lost for 9 months with a torn ACL.

"It's just unbelievable how this whole week went down," said a sullen Ken Griffey Junior, who batted .071 with no homeruns and no RBI in the 4-game series. "Johnny's injury really rattled us all, and we just never recovered."

The game was a must-win for Oakland to force a Game 5, and the game was tied at 1-1 until the bottom of the 7th, when Matt Lawton drove in Jose Valentin on an RBI single off of A's starter Kenny Rogers. Minnesota tacked on an insurance run in the eighth on a run-scoring single by Travis Fryman.

"We were flat the entire series," said A's manager Tony LaRussa. "Our offense never got going. It's very disappointing."

Jason Giambi was the lone bright spot in the series, batting .429 with a homerun and 2 RBI. It was announced after the game that he signed a 7-year extension worth a total of $36.6 million.

"I'm glad I'm going to be wearing this jersey for a long time," said Giambi. "I'm going to use this series as motivation for next season and years to come. I never want to feel like this again."

[Hendu Style]

October 10th, 1998

This one stings pretty bad. I really thought we had a World Series squad this year. But things got off on the wrong foot, literally, when Johnny Damon tore his ACL in Game 1. He's now out for the next 9 months. Luckily we have a strong outfield and a capable replacement in the leadoff spot with Brian Giles. We'll be fine, but this is the kind of injury that can set back a player, and the entire team.

In other news, Eric Chavez was named the PCL player of the year. .349, 44 HR, 133 RBI. He's clearly ready. We'll have to move Jeff Kent over to second base, but I can't imagine a scenario where Chavy isn't our opening day third baseman.

Our payroll is going to jump by about $7 million next season. Ugueth Urbina and Dustin Hermanson are both eligible for salary arbitration and could easily make $2 to $3 million each, after earning minor league pay up until this point. Jason Giambi's new contract extension will kick in, earning him $4.2 million next season. We're also trying to lock up Giles to a long-term deal, which would bump us up another couple million next season.

There's another strong class of free agents coming up this offseason. Trevor Hoffman, Chipper Jones, Larry Walker, Ryan Klesko... and, yes, Mark McGwire. Big Mac hit .290 with 31 homers and 71 RBI in just 103 games for Houston this season. I'm sure the Astros are regretting not giving him a longer deal. McGwire is primed for a mammoth contract this winter.

I have to stay focused on the offseason. If I think about the playoffs and what went down, I just get depressed. Good luck, I suppose, to the Twins against the Blue Jays in the ALCS. They really did a number on us in the first round.

[Hendu Style]

October 24th, 1998

Expos Beat Blue Jays in Canadian Affair

TORONTO (AP) -- For the second time in seven years, the Montreal Expos are World Champions. The Expos beat Toronto 7-6 on Saturday to avoid becoming the first team in MLB history to blow a 3-0 Series lead and lose the World Series.

"I tip my hat to the Jays for coming back like they did," said Montreal outfielder Cliff Floyd, who hit his fifth postseason homerun in the 7th inning off of Toronto reliever Jose Silva. "But we never backed down. We never doubted ourselves."

Curt Schilling was tagged with the loss, giving up six runs on eight hits in 6.1 innings. He has yet to win a World Series in his 11-year career with Baltimore, Houston, Philadelphia, Oakland, and Toronto.

"Losing sucks, plain and simple," said Schilling after the game. "I really thought we would win this thing. I really did. "

The 1998 World Series featured an all-Canadian matchup for the first time in Major League Baseball history. Toronto's 79-71 record was the worst of any of the six playoff teams this season, while Montreal was a Wild Card team after finishing 1 game behind Atlanta in the NL East.

"I don't think we are underdog," said Expos outfielder Vladimir Guerrero, a lock for the NL MVP award in just his third big league season after hitting .379 with 37 homeruns and 127 RBI. "We always feel like we are best team in baseball and today we proved it."

[Hendu Style]

November 1st, 1998

The awards season is upon us, and we were completely shut out on the podium. No love for Bartolo Colon for Cy Young (he finished 3rd behind winner Pedro Martinez and runner-up Kevin Brown). The biggest surprise came in the AL MVP, where Seattle's Jose Cruz Jr. won the award. Who woulda thunk it? A Mariners centerfielder named Junior winning the MVP! Kudos to the "other" Junior. He stepped up with Ken Griffey Jr. leaving via free agency, batting .314 with 36 homers and 28 steals. Not bad for a guy making the league minimum.

Speaking of money, Mr. Haas has given me a $48.5 million payroll for the upcoming season. That leaves a little over $10 mil to pursue free agents and $13.9 for extensions. We've already locked up Jason Giambi and Brian Giles to long-term deals. My biggest priority this offseason would've been to ink Johnny Damon to an extension, but his torn ACL has scuttled that talk for another year. We'll see where he's at when he gets back on the field next season.

We're letting Graeme Lloyd walk and become a free agent. We already have enough lefthanded relievers in our bullpen (Eddie Guardado and Charlie Leibrandt). We also have a can't miss prospect ready for the Bigs next year in Tim Hudson and he could very well earn a spot in our rotation.

Still, I think it's time we strengthened our rotation even more. I'm going to shop around Kenny Rogers again and see what comes up. If the Angels offer up Jim Edmonds again, I may have to jump on it. We'll also dangle Dustin Hermanson. He's become arbitration eligible, so his contract could be anywhere from $2 to $3 million a year. If we can snag someone like Tom Glavine or David Cone (again?), we would be golden. But each of those guys could earn upwards of $8 million a year. But if you do the math, that's really only a $5 million bump for us if we're able to deal Rogers and Hermanson. Imagine a rotation with Bartolo Colon, Al Leiter, Tom Glavine, and Rick Reed. That could be dangerous.

Anyways, we've got a long road ahead of us this winter. Here's to no unpleasant surprises and some nice additions to the A's roster for 1999!

[Hendu Style]

November 19th, 1998

Players filed for free agency today, and while everyone else is making their pitch for a blockbuster signing, we quietly made a couple ofmoves to address some holes on our roster.

The first order of business was to find a new leadoff hitterto fill the void while Johnny Damon rehabs his torn ACL. I was able to close a deal with the White Sox for second baseman Ray Durham. I’ve always been a big fan of this guy. He’s coming off a career-low .227 season in 1998, but he still finds ways to get onbase, evidenced by his 235 walks in 562 games in his career. He will battle Jeff Kent for our startingsecond base job with Eric Chavez primed to take over at third. To get Durham, we had to give up DustinHermanson (16-8, 4.11 ERA last season) and utility man David Bell. The move left us one man short in the rotation.

The market has gone very soft on Kenny Rogers. He now has 10 years of major league serviceand can exercise his 10/5 right to veto any trade. That’s unfortunate, since we had a deal in place to land JimEdmonds from the Angels last season. It looks like we’re stuck with Rogers for the next two years while he plays outhis contract. Hopefully both sides canbenefit from this.

Knowing we need another arm in our rotation, I wanted tofree up some more money to make a push for Tom Glavine. So I decided to call up that SOB JP Ricciardi in Seattle. You figure you’ll never do business with a man, but that self-righteousness takes a backseat when the two sides are perfect trading partners. Ugueth Urbina (47 saves, 2.57 ERA, 63.0 IP,98 K) has emerged as one of the premiere closers in baseball, but is set tobecome a highly-paid player. He will make a little more than $2 million this upcoming season through arbitration, and in a couple of years he’ll be looking at a mammoth contract. I would rather invest that money in a guy who’s going to give you 200 innings and 20 wins. So I pitched him to the Mariners straight-up for their closer, Derek Lowe (36 saves, 2.38 ERA, 68.0 IP, 57 K). Of course, the big difference is Lowe’s $188K big league minimum salary, and Ricciardi knows it. After a little back and forth, I sweetened the deal with two of our backups who will immediately become starting position players for the M’s: catcher Dan Wilson and second baseman Mark Bellhorn. Wilson was a great backup for us behind Mike Piazza, but we have a strong catcher coming up through the minors in Ramon Hernandez. Bellhorn also has become expendable with Durham and Kent moving over to second base. We made the deal, and saved about $2.5 million in the process.

Those two deals give us enough breathing room to start our pursuit of Glavine. I have submitted a 3-year deal worth $7.5 million a season. It's our best offer and our last offer. If we can't land Glavine, we're pretty much up a creek.

[Hendu Style]

November 21^st, 1998

Still not much buzz on Glavine. Word on the street the M’s have made an offer and the Braves are trying to re-sign him. I’m focusing my energy right now on our coaching staff. I decided to shake things up a little bit and not re-sign our longtime bench coach, Rene Lachemann. We’ve also signed retired A’s outfielder Dave Henderson and catcher Mickey Tettleton to be coaches in our farm system. I’m still confident Tony LaRussa can get us to another World Series, but at some point, I’m going to have to take a long, hard look at him and our other coaches if they can’t take this to the next level.

[Hendu Style]

November 29^th, 1998

It’s not that often I’m pleasantly surprised in theoffseason, but I was taken aback today to find out Tom Glavine had agreed to our 3-year, $22.5 million offer. No back and forth. No haggling. We gave him our best offer and he took it.

So what do we get for our big investment? The reigning NL Cy Young winner (22-3, 1.99 ERA last season for the Braves). A leader in the clubhouse. And a guy who will give us arguably the most feared 1-2 punch in baseball with Bartolo Colon.

Glavine’s signing does present a couple of dilemmas for us. First and foremost, it pretty muchg uarantees our prospect Tim Hudson won’t be able to find a spot in our 5-man rotation. Glavine and Colon are our top two starters, followed by Al Leiter (19-5, 2.30 ERA), who is coming off a breakout season. Rick Reed is solidl yentrenched as our fourth starter, though he only made 23 starts for us after a season-ending finger injury for us last season. And for better or worse, Kenny Rogers looks like our #5 starter.

We’ll also have to make some tough calls as far as our pitching staff goes. David Weathers, Bobby Chouinard, and Paul Wilson are all suddently expendable. We may be able to start Chouinard and Wilson in AAA, but Weathers is out of minor league options and will have to start the ’99 season in the Majors. I’m going to have to move quick and see if I can send him to another club for a prospect.

These are all good problems to have. We were hurt by a lack of depth in our rotation last year, but I’m determined to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

In other news, the Reds have lost Larry Walker to free agency after the Canadian native signed a 4-year deal with the Cubs worth $8.2mil a season. They immediately filled that hole in right field with Tim Salmon, who departed Anaheim via free agency.[/FONT][/FONT][/SIZE]

[Hendu Style]

December 3rd, 1998

Holy smokes, the defending AL champs just got a hell of a lot better! Our annual arms race with the Blue Jays escalated today when Toronto snagged free agent Chipper Joneswith a gargantuan 5-year, $40 million dollar deal. Their $62.5M payroll is by far the largest in baseball, well ahead of the Yankees and Mets who both top out at $48M. Must be nice having all that money burning ahole in your pocket.

That gives Toronto a lethal middle of the order with Chipper, Jeff Bagwell, Shawn Green, and Ellis Burks at 3-4-5-6. Their hitting is second to none, but the smart money is on pitching, and I think we have the Jays beat in that department. I’ll take our 1-2-3 of Glavine, Colon, and Leiter over Toronto’s Schilling, Wells and Carpenter, though it’s a tight race any way you slice it.

The Mets also made a huge deal today, inking David Cone to a 3-year, $20.9 million contract. Personally, I think that’s a bad deal. Cone is a good three years older than Tom Glavine and is a fastball pitcher who is losing zip on his velocity. They would’ve been wise to spend an extra mil or two to get Glavine. But, hey, I’m not complaining. We'll take Glavine, they can have Cone.

[Hendu Style]

February 4th, 1999

I never thought I would hear these words again, but Rickey Henderson is an Oakland A. Rickey just signed a 2-year deal with us for just under $880,000, giving us an extra outfielder and a proven leadoff hitter until Johnny Damon comes off the DL in June or July. The addition of Henderson gave us five outfielders (not including Damon), making Ben Grieve the odd man out. Despite all of Grieve's enormous potential, he just wasn't panning out for us. The Braves were desperate for a left fielder and a starting pitcher. Kenny Rogers finally relented and didn't invoke his 10/5 right to veto a trade, so we were able to package the two along with a couple of pitchers to Atlanta.

OAKLAND GETS:
1B Sean Casey (.292, 17 HR, 81 RBI)
SS Mark DeRosa (.295, 16 HR, 81 RBI in Short Season A, A, AA)
RP Kerry Ligtenberg (7-5, 19 SV, 4.30 ERA, 73.1 IP, 78 K)
$100,000 Cash

ATLANTA GETS:
LF Ben Grieve (.219, 16 HR, 68 RBI)
SP Kenny Rogers (7-16, 5.05 ERA, 180.0 IP, 128 K)
RP Charlie Leibrandt (1-1, 5.32 ERA, 23.2 IP, 15 K)
RP Rod Beck (2-4, 4 SV, 5.55 ERA)

Normally I don't say this, but Atlanta got a steal here. Sure, you look at the numbers and you would say we came out on top. But you have to realize that Rogers and Beck are coming off of fluke seasons and will rebound. Grieve will only get better. Leibrandt had a 1.45 ERA two seasons ago and had a very good run with the Braves from 1990 to 93.

The Braves are thin in their starting rotation, and Rogers will be a #1 or #2 starter for them. Grieve is a lock to be a starting outfielder there. Beck will take over for Ligtenberg as their new closer, and Leibrandt will find a spot in their rotation. These aren't major upgrades by any means, but fill several glaring weaknesses on their roster.

In return, we get a couple of promising young players. Casey became expendable when Atlanta signed Mark McGwire to a free agent contract this offseason. Though he won't be a starting first baseman for us with Jason Giambi locked in there, Casey does give us a very capable pinch-hitter and backup. DeRosa will battle Miguel Tejada for our starting shortstop job in Spring Training. Whoever doesn't get the job will likely start the year in AAA, and eventually take over as a utility man for us for Jose Vizcaino. Ligtenberg probably needs some more time in the minors, but could eventually be a big league arm. The $100,000 cash is just a nice little bonus that offsets the signing of Henderson. All of these moves also gave us a little breathing room in payroll... we're about $1.5 million under budget now.

Like I said, Atlanta still comes out the winner in this trade. But other than the high upside of Grieve and Rogers' veteran arm, we're not giving up anyone that would've impacted our roster this upcoming season. It could be a good trade for us later on down the road.