Oakland Athletics

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports Oakland Athletics shortstop Jed Lowrie is officially out of Wednesday’s lineup against the Texas Rangers with a foot contusion. That means the Athletics will have to attempt a series sweep over the Rangers in the series finale without one of their hottest hitters. Lowrie suffered the injury in the fifth inning of Tuesday night’s 1-0 win. A pitch hit him directly in the right foot, which forced the designated hitter for the night to be removed from the game. The good news is X-rays showed that there were no broken bones, but unfortunately, Lowrie will have to take some time to rest. It was clear that Lowrie was unlikely to make the start on Wednesday due to soreness, especially since it is an afternoon game after a night game. It is unfortunate because Lowrie has been fantastic at the plate over his last 13 games. In fact, the sixth year player has recorded at least one hit in 11 of those contests. Since May 8, the 29-year-old is batting .294 with six RBI, four doubles and two walks. More importantly, Lowrie has hit in three consecutive games while Oakland has won five straight. The Oregon native has posted a .301 batting average with three home runs, 21 RBI, 15 doubles, 20 walks and 19 runs in 173 at-bats this season. He has also been decent at shortstop in which he has a .962 fielding percentage in 130 total chances. The following is Oakland’s lineup against Texas for Wednesday afternoon: Center Field: Coco Crisp Designated Hitter: John Jaso Left Field: Yoenis Cespedes First Base: Brandon Moss Third Base: Josh Donaldson Right Field: Seth Smith Catcher: Derek Norris Second Base: Eric Sogard Shortstop: Adam Rosales

Every lineup, every day, as they are made public by the clubs.

First, thank you to all who submitted a FanPost for consideration. It was great to read so many different perspectives. With that, I'm happy to introduce to you the three new contributors: SamYam is a sci-fi/fantasy nerd, grammarian, and die-hard Sacramento Kings and Oakland A's fan who happens to be a medical student on the side. He was raised on "Holy Toledo!" and may or may not have pretended to be Chad Bradford in pickup wiffleball games. After being a lurker for almost 5 years, he is very excited to discuss WAR, grit, FIP-, and scrappiness with the Athletics Nation community. He most recently wrote two excellent fanposts on both Brett Anderson and Jarrod Parker. son of ptbarnum is a former concert and theatrical producer (thus, the "ptbarnum" reference in his pseudonym). For many years, he conducted seminars for nonprofit organizations throughout North America on the subject of event fundraising. These days, he fends off disaster in the stock market on a daily basis. He will be writing about the sales, marketing and business management of the Oakland Athletics. In doing so, he hopes to continue a family tradition of fine sports writing established by his brother, Kevin Nelson, author of "The Golden Game," a history of baseball in California, and "Operation Bullpen," a recounting of the FBI sting of the greatest sports memorabilia scam in history." He was author of the Selig's War fanpost. Finally, and not least, Nathaniel Stoltz is a long-distance A's fan residing in Winston-Salem, NC. He has written about baseball online in a variety of capacities since 2008, mostly focusing on scouting (Carolina League, South Atlantic League, and Appalachian League) and sabermetrics. SamYam's debut piece is the current cover story and he will write on Wednesdays. son of ptbarnum and Nathaniel Stoltz will write on Thursdays and Fridays, respectively. Please join me in welcoming these fine gentlemen to our front page writing group!

Twitter is good for many different things. Perhaps the most important is for my friends to show me pictures of what they ate for lunch. A close second, however, is that Twitter also happens to be an incredible format for public discourse, and three nights ago we saw a very interesting debate unfold between two very smart men in the baseball industry: former A's starter (and perhaps my favorite Oakland Athletic of the past decade) Brandon McCarthy and respected analyst and scout Keith Law. Often times in modern baseball debates, we hear about the split between the "stats nerds" and the traditionalists. This dichotomy suits the media members who take sides, dividing themselves into camps. Depending on which side of the aisle they choose, they rip advanced statistics for "attempting to reduce baseball to binary code" (a direct quote from Mitch Albom), or lambast traditional scouting for focusing on things like "grit" and "heart". However, this specific disagreement is not one of grit vs. numbers. Brandon McCarthy is well known as a player who embraces the sabermetric movement with open arms. His refusal to buy into Law's argument clearly does not come from a place of steadfast refusal to see the light of statistics. Keith Law is describing a phenomenon that is known commonly as the Hot-Hand Fallacy, and its more well-known converse the Gambler's Fallacy. If you flip a coin, it has a fifty percent chance of landing on heads, but over a short period it will rarely come up 50/50. You will often get a "hot streak" of multiple heads in a row. This is just due to random variation- the coin isn't "getting hot"- each successive flip still has a 50% chance of landing heads. Law's argument is that this applies to baseball as well. A hitter (or a pitcher) has an absolute skill level- and over a short period, you can get random variation. A hitter like Miguel Cabrera might have a 6% chance of getting a home-run in any given at-bat (last year he hit 44 in 697 plate appearances, or 6.3%). In the game Keith Law and Brandon McCarthy were debating, Cabrera hit 3 home runs in 5 plate appearances. Assuming that Cabrera hits a home run 6% of the time in any given plate appearance, Cabrera would by random chance hit 3 home-runs in 5 PA's 0.2% of the time. This would mean that over a 162 game season, Miguel Cabrera has an approximately 32% chance of having a single three-homer game.Keith Law argues that the notion of being "locked-in" has nothing to do with the hitter gaining confidence or getting hot; rather it's random fluctuations in the distribution, much like flipping a coin 5 times in a row and getting all heads. It doesn't happen often, but if you flip enough coins it will happen from time to time. Law even linked to an interesting article from a joint study at Cornell and Stanford to support his case, which can be found in its entirety HERE. McCarthy's response? McCarthy may seem to be dismissing Law out of hand, but he's actually making a very succinct, if blunt, counterargument. Law's hypothesis is predicated entirely on the assumption that a player's talent level is like a coin or a pair of dice: the chances of getting heads, tails, a 7, or a home run does not change no matter the circumstance. McCarthy, on the other hand, is arguing that a player's talent level and his mindset cannot be separated. Here's more McCarthy on the effects of being "in the zone": A player who has gone 0 for his last 7 might be pressing and losing confidence, while a player like Miguel Cabrera who has already hit two homers on the evening might just have the ability to play loose and fluid. How many commenters right here on AN have noted Josh Reddick's struggles when he comes up with men on base in a crucial situation? Of course, according to McCarthy, these things are nearly entirely unquantifiable, but that does not mean they do not exist. Personally, I'm still not quite sure where I stand on this issue. I tend to be a volume consumer of advanced

In for John Hickey, who’s missing all the good stuff … This will be very brief tonight with a quick turnaround day game Wednesday at Rangers Ballpark. Suffice it we saw a morsel of the future Tuesday night, and its name was Dan Straily. We’ve known for awhile what kind of stuff this 24-year-old righthander [...]

Oh yeah, I had that one all the way.  There was not a doubt in my mind that Dan Straily would march into the Ballpark in Arlington an shut down one of the most potent offenses in baseball in the most potent offensive ballpark in the American League.  I knew the A’s would be able to get on the board against Yu Darvish and hand him just his second loss of the season.  The one part of the game I wasn’t sure of would be the ability of Sean Doolittle and Grant Balfour to preserve a 1 run lead to deliver the victory. Okay, no take all my statements from the previous paragraph and the exact opposite was what I expected to see. May 15, 2013; Oakland, CA, USA; Oakland Athletics starting pitcher Dan Straily (67) pitches the ball against the Texas Rangers during the third inning at O.co Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports I’ve been hard on Straily for much of the time he’s been with Oakland, and he’s earned that criticism with his inability to command the strike zone, and to keep opposing hitters in the ballpark.  But last year when the possible acquisition came up of the likes of Chase Headley of the San Diego Padres, Straily’s name came up, and the Athletics balked at such an asking price.  For much of the season this year as Straily got knocked around, questions began to arise as to exactly why the A’s weren’t willing to deal the young right hander.  Tonight, he showed us all why the A’s wanted to keep him in the fold. There wasn’t much in the way of activity, as you could expect in a 1-0 game (just the 13th such game in Arlington’s history).  Straily was the story tonight.  He allowed just 2 hits in 7 scoreless innings, he struck out 5, and walked none.  He was relieved after just 88 pitches, he certainly could have gone further, but with a lockdown bullpen there was no need for Bob Melvin to risk it.  Besides, Straily would be guaranteed to go into his next start versus the San Francisco Giants with a boatload of confidence.  This was a glimpse of the Dan Straily we’ve all been waiting to see, I won’t proclaim that he has arrived just yet, but this was encouraging in a big way. Yoenis Cespedes provided the game’s lone offense with a solo home run to dead center field in the top of the 3rd inning versus Yu Darvish.  While his numbers may not bear it out, he is making an impact with the long ball.  This was his team leading 9th home run of the season.  The A’s had their chances to give themselves some breathing room, but they failed in those chances, leaving 11 men on base.  They’ve left 26 runners on in the last two games, but they’ve come out on top in both games. The A’s are 25-22, just 4.5 games behind the division leading Rangers, and have a chance to sweep them in Arlington, which undoubtedly is a rare feat.  They’ll send Jarrod Parker (2-5, 6.04 ERA) to the mound against a former Athletic Ross Wolf who will be making his season debut for the Rangers in place of Nick Tepesch who was scratched due to a blister on his middle finger.  Wolf appeared in 11 games for the A’s in 2010 and posted a 4.26 ERA in 12.2 innings of work.  This is his first major league action since then.  The A’s can give Wolf a rude welcome back to the Show tomorrow as they attempt to complete this sweep of their division rivals.

Yoenis Cespedes went deep, which was enough for a dealing Dan Straily, who tossed seven shutout innings as the A's topped the Rangers, 1-0, on Tuesday night in Arlington.

Ross Wolf will make his first big league start on Wednesday afternoon against Jarrod Parker and the A's, who will be looking to cap a sweep of the Rangers.

A's shortstop Jed Lowrie, acting as designated hitter on Tuesday night in Texas, took a pitch off his right foot in the fifth inning and was out of the game by the seventh.

There are some rare feats in baseball. Once or twice a year, someone throws a no-hitter. Another couple times, someone hits for the cycle. But even rarer than both of those is a 1-0 victory by the away team at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. John Shea has the record: It's the 13th 1-0 game in Rangers Ballpark history. — John Shea (@JohnSheaHey) May 22, 2013 Since its opening in 1994, this has been known as a place of horrors for the A's and any other visiting team. The A's once lost a game 17-16 in 2000 that they led 15-7 at one time. Bill King famously did not travel on road trips to Texas at the end of his career. He hated the heat and the crazy "alcoholic-filled nightmare" games. Today, with Yu Darvish starting for Texas and thunderstorms threatening above, it had nightmare all over it for the A's. He's the best pitcher in the American League, and he did have a decent start today. He threw 100 pitches over 6 innings, K'ed only 5 A's and walked 3. The A's helped him out, again leaving double-digits on the basepaths (and the bases loaded in the 8th) and 8 in scoring position, and not adding on when they could. Indeed, despite the win, the most frustrating sequence of the game came in the 5th inning. Eric Sogard led off with a walk, and Adam Rosales bunted. Not only that, but to confound the stupidity, Rosales did not do his normal all-out hustle out of the box. What resulted was Darvish alertly throwing to second to get Sogard, and Elvis Andrus making an off-balance throw to get Rosales by a step at 1B for a double play. It was a good play on both ends for Texas, but equally dumb for Rosales to assume they would throw to second and nothing else. Before that, however, in the battle of Eastern Hemisphere vs. Western Hemisphere imports, the Western Hemisphere won. Yoenis Cespedes crushed a Darvish pitch with two outs in the top of the 3rd to give the A's the only run they would need. This was because Dan Straily had his best MLB outing today. Over 7 innings, he faced only one over the minimum, allowed 2 hits, and struck out 5. Most importantly, he allowed no walks. Perhaps visual forms are better. Here is Dan Straily's location diagram from today, courtesy of Brooks Baseball: via www.brooksbaseball.net And here is it from his start, last Wednesday: via www.brooksbaseball.net As you can see, he worked down in the zone more often and was overall in the zone more often. That is what he will be need to do consistently to be successful in a big league rotation. With any luck, he builds on this start, and Sonny Gray is allowed to stay down in AAA where he belongs to get more seasoning. That was pretty much it. Between Straily, who finished the 7th on 6 pitches, and Sean Doolittle and Grant Balfour, the Rangers were kept quiet all night. Doolittle struck out 2 of the 3 men he faced, and Balfour got Profar to groundout, struck out Elvis Andrus, and got David Murphy to fly out to Cespedes - fittingly- to end it. This was the A's 5th consecutive victory, and their 6th of the last 8 games they've played. Having now won two consecutive series, the A's will look to finish off a road sweep of Texas tomorrow. At 11:05 AM PST, Alex Hall will host your game thread. Edit: Lowrie will live. Barely. Lowrie had an X-ray on foot. No break but he won't be in there tomorrow.— Jane Lee (@JaneMLB) May 22, 2013 He was one of 3 HBPs the A's received today (two on Moss)