The Rangers and the A's

I feel that the A's manage their games well and do the best with what they have.

I am interested, does anyone else get a sense of hopelessness when we play the A's?

The Angels, just like every club, have major ifs. We know the feeling all to well of prospects not panning out and it can be overly demoralizing. The Angels lack of success recently with their abundance of minor league talent will eventually wear them down.

Their lineup is much like ours, one truly great slugger along with a surrounding cast of good hitters. Their starting staff is where they take the cake.

1.Lackey vs. Millwood Advantage Rangers
2. Colon vs. Padilla Advantage Rangers because of injury and pure fatness concerns
3 Santana vs McCarthy Advantage Angels
4. Weaver vs. Tejeda Advantage Angels
5 Escobar vs. Rupe  Advantage Angels

As for the A's.  Lets start with recent history.  Since 2000 their worse season has been 88 wins.  The Ranger best season was 89 wins.  The A's averaged 94.8 wins in the past 7 seasons.  The Rangers have had one season over .500 and averaged 76.4 games won in the same 7 seasons.

Right now the A's have a better rotation top to bottom.  Haren, Harden, Blanton, Loaizza and Saarloos all can pitch and keep their ERA under 5.00.  Assuming the Rangers go with Millwood, Padilla, McCarthy, Tejeda and Rupe then it is a good bet that 1 or 2 of those guys have an ERA above 5.00.  Granted our rotation is getting better but lets not discount the A's young staff.

Their pen is not too shabby either.  The team did have a 4.21 ERA last year as compared to the Rangers' 4.61.  I'll let you do the math on the park effect.

The A's also comitted 14 fewer errors last year than the Rangers.  It's a marginal difference but one that makes a difference.  One defensive edge the Rangers had was on double plays.

Given the fact that they won 13 more games last year, have a more solid rotation IMO, and generally play a little better defense, I would say they are a team to beat until we beat them.

Let's not forget the Angels who won 9 more games last year and suffered some significant injuries along the way.  

Bottom line is the Rangers will have to prove they can win.  I will agree the line-up is as good as last year, the defense may be better, the pen is looking great and the rotation is about the same as we entered ST last year. (For all the screaming at the last comment, Eaton was healthy going into ST.)  I will also concur that our rotation has more potential than in many, many, many years.  I will not agree that we are a favorite over either the A's or Angels at this point.  But that is why they play the games.

We need a new category for you - not lightside, not darkside, but "Brightside"...

They signed Piazza to replace Thomas.  While he wasn't as good as Thomas last year, he did have an EqA of .289, while having to catch instead of being able to DH.

Getting more than 100 healthy games from Crosby and Bradley would be a big help as well.

The A's were quite fortunate last year to be so much better than their Pythagorean winning percentage, but, at the same time, I think they have reason to expect to be as good in 2007 as they were in 2006.

The A's owe their AL West title largely to their domination of the Mariners against whom they were 17-2.  The Rangers, on the other hand, really didn't dominate any team and failed to beat some teams as often as they should have, e.g. they were 3-3 against the Royals and only 11-8 against the M's.