Our Name in Print

Catherine Howard was nice enough to include our response to her query on the A’s. Which means our name gets on the SF Gate page.

Cool.

Here’s what Catherine asked and how we responded:

Elephants in Oakland: How do you feel about the A’s record coming out of division play? It stinks. There were several situations where the A's played as if the games didn't matter. As if the mantra, "it's only April" were a truism. The games do matter, that's why they keep score and they go in the win/loss column. Comments from veterans like Ron Gant after the A's lost the getaway game in Texas on April 10th are suspect, "We should have won the game, but we won two of three against a very good hitting team at their park," Gant said. "If we continue to do that, we'll be right where we want to be at the end of the season..." Yah, sort of like winning three out of five in a series is good. But the A's haven't done that the last three years in the playoffs. The A's need to pick up every game they can against their division rivals. If the season comes down to a tie-breaker situations, the Wild Card may very well depend on interdivison play. Further, if the A's win more games now, they don't have to worry about September if they are 15 up going into the month. It's not as if the team philosophy is, "hey, it's a day game and we played last night, let's go out and give it a 60% effort and let the chips fall where they may." It's going to take individuals being selfish. Making sure each at bat is taken seriously. Putting batters away instead of trying to nibble the strike zone for a called third strike. Example, a certain gold glove third baseman has a tendency to give at bats away in lopsided games rather than taking pitches on the outer half and sending them to left field. Or, better, laying off of sliders in the dirt and working the count. As far as the bench and bullpen...those are issues that will take time to work out. Ken Macha hasn't done a very good job of dictating his procedure and has made some bad decisions based on arbitrary numbers. For instance, pulling Ted Lilly on April 20 for Chad Bradford because he liked the match up with Michael Young better. Fine, but Michael Young hadn't hit the whole weekend so why bother? As it turns out, Bradford got Young to strike out on three pitches but gave up a solo homerun to Everett on a 3-2 pitch for the go ahead run for the Rangers in the next inning. Everett hit a homerun off Bradford the week before and Everett had hit a homerun in the last four games he played. Hey, first base was open. The little three of Ron Gant, Adam Piatt and Eric Byrnes may not be together the rest of the year and it would be a shame to lose any of them to another team. But all three deserve playing time. While Terrence Long has several home runs he still is swinging at pitches that are off the plate and inside. Terrence broke several bats last week on pitches that made contact on the handle.

Well, she asked.

We have put the Jermaine Dye surgery on the back burner to let everyone take a breather.

You’re break is over.

Lets talk cartilage, shall we?

If you don’t have Baseball Prospectus Premium you are missing out. Whereas you might get a listing of injuries from a media source, Will Carroll’s Under the Knife provides information and insight that illustrate the injury and its repercussions. Will describes medical procedures and practices as if he were a physician (he isn’t) and if he’s had sports related injuries before (he has). We would say Will makes sports injury fun and interesting, but every time we read Under the Knife we get a dull numbing feeling somewhere.

It never fails. If we read about a shoulder injury, the shoulder gets a little numb. If we read about a knee injury the knee starts to feel a little dull and clicky.

If there is such a thing as injury compassion pains, we have them.

We sent an email to Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus about Jermaine Dye to get an idea of how he felt about the injury.

Jermaine was put on the 15 day Disabled List, but the A’s project he will be out 3-5 weeks. That doesn’t jive.

So, we posed the questions to Will and he responded faster than, something that, is, ugh, moderately fast.

Here’s are Will’s comments from Monday:

Jermaine Dye will undergo knee surgery to fix a torn meniscus. Some of the comments surrounding this surgery indicate it may be more removal of the meniscus that repair, so Dye may come back quicker, but could have more problems long term. There's a lot of interesting research being done on meniscal replacement or lubrication, but for now, Dye will simply have to suck it up.

Sacramento seems to be a necessity rather than an option that will be used, although the DH thing poses some problems. What to do with Scott Hatteberg and Erubiel Durazo? How can you take those guys out of the lineup? Sure they could have a day off, but not too many.

Dye should be able to play the outfield for several years to come with only simple procedures now and again to clean things up in the knee. But, long term, it might not be a bad idea to get Jermaine to learn how to play 1st base. It could prolong his career. Dye’s 6'5" and has a monster’s reach. His footwork is decent. He’s not much of a conversationalist, though. That might hinder him chatting away when a guy gets on the bag.

We’d rather see Jermaine finish his career playing in the field somewhere than being a DH. He’s too good of an athlete not to have on the field. Guys like Andre Dawson, Ellis Burks and Darren Daulton come to mind.

The whole procedure on Dye’s knee took 20 minutes and they completely removed the cartilage which had torn away.

Anyone for calamari?

There apparently wasn’t any major structural damage and everything else was okay.

Dye will be looking at a few days of RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation) and crutches. By Monday he should be working on strength with weights and by the end of the weeks some plodding. He should be in the cage by then taking hacks. The following week would be a good chance to see if there’s any major swelling after running. Some plyometrics and facing live pitching will follow the week after.

It can be hoped that Dye turns his time off into a positive. He was due for a big year and was having problems mentally at the plate. His swing looked like he was using someone else’s body and pitchers ate him up the first few weeks.

Dye is one of those talented baseball players who showed glimpses of being great early and then got mired in mediocrity. Dye needs a transformation and who the hell knows what will provide the spark.

Don’t think about trades involving Jermaine Dye because they won’t happen. Dye is making $11 million this year with an increase set for next year. With his injuries and struggles, he’s the A’s problem or the A’s answer at this point.