Archive only

May 14, 2009

This site exists only as an archive of an ambitious but ultimately failed experiment; it will not be updated.  The Second Foundation exists, but you’ll have to find it yourself.

-salb918


Game thread to tide us over ’til transition time

May 13, 2009

GO HERE.

Everybody is there now. mikeA gso has even posted a disturbing photo to inaugurate the site.

You gotta create entirely new logins. Do that, then the re-naming thing. Then go forth and populate the new site with the usual insight and frivolity.


Leave this dump behind and head over to FK 2.0 … when nevermoor says so.

Royals up 1-0 going to bottom 2.


A’s vs Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus vs Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

May 13, 2009

P & P & Z

The team meeting, and not a crappy opposing pitcher, led to the offensive explosion. This is so well written. Thank you.


Royals

May 12, 2009

This thread is for discussing the Royals, who are playing against the A’s right now.


DLD 051209: The Great Empathizer

May 12, 2009
  1. I’m not sure, but I think this is arguing for robot umpires:
  2. [He] now proposes to appoint a Great Empathizer who will call balls and strikes with a strike zone that depends on the sex, race, and social and economic background of the players. Nothing could be more damaging to the fairness of the game[.]

  3. Let me get this straight: Ostler is calling someone else a “twit”?
  4. Slusser brings the reportage for her take on the Moneyball-movie article
  5. mikeA should change his name to mikeT:
  6. as a child, one night I peeked out from my bed covers and I saw a court jester wearing curly-toed shoes and a spiked hat with bells on sharp points

  7. And speaking of dreams:
  8. The night before last I dreamt that I was a basketball, and everything I experienced was through the up and down motion of being dribbled.

Inspired by item 4:


The “Watch out! Don’t accidentally write anything interesting!” Lame Duck Open Thread

May 11, 2009

Lest your genius be lost in the translation to Free Kraut 2.0.

I’m not gonna fall into that trap, lemme tell ya.

I’m considering the baseball geek cross-Bay double header on Wednesday.

Followed by live coverage of the Planck launch at 6am Thursday green star oaktime.


Dividing Things Into Categories

May 10, 2009

The 2008 A’s had a .686 team OPS, which was the worst team mark in the AL since the 2003 Detroit Tigers, who went 49-113. 2009 carry-overs from the that team are hitting at a remarkably similar clip.

In other words, not even their MOTHERS! could pretend that they had even a shred of offensive talent, or really any other type of human worth.

A’s players not on the ’08 team so far:

.219/.293/.319

I feel bad that the A’s suck, but I feel worse that these players’ MOTHERS! were too reticent in exercising their constitutional rights.


Game Thread

May 9, 2009

Crafty righthander Justin Duchscherer has avoided the bobble-jinx today, so the A’s are in good shape.

via slusser

Copeland era comes to an end. Kennedy is starting batting 7th. Petit down. Gray up.  Someone on the scout.com boards said that someone on the radio said that geren said that Bobby C. will get most of the starts at 3B. Boo. Also there is some other nonsense about other 3bmen.

In other news, I need to stop looking at **…

Lineup:


De-kludging Free Kraut; Game Thread

May 8, 2009

In place of your basic lineup list, DFA and I present to you the following:

Beta Version of a usable FK site

You should probably set up your own login (it defaults to editor), but it may take longer than expected to get your password, so you can also sign in as jcrewjr / freekraut. Either way you’ll get Editor (not administrator) rights. I don’t know what, if any, settings you can change but please FOR THE LOVE OF PICKLED CABBAGE don’t change any site-wide settings (you can upload an avatar and play with your sigline if you want). The software is heavily customized, so changes through the admin interface may break things that you can’t unbreak. Also, do not post actual content on this site as it will not survive the transition (as, I hope, the content here will).

Now, features:

Threaded comments which use ajax (post without reloading page) and are much less space intensive
Support for siglines and avatars
Unread comment tracking (plus Z key functionality – note that when you press the z key you’ll get an alert that says “called,” this ensures the function is triggered. If pressing z doesn’t work as expected, I’ll want to know whether you get the alert and what browser you’re using.)
Wide-screen format
Post filtering (DLDs and Game Threads to sidebar so they don’t knock out other posts)
Post minimizing (All main-area posts except for the first one display only their excerpt)
Images in comments (and buttons to do html markup)

Please let me know if there is anything unintuitive/missing/whatever. If I can add it, I will. Please check it out and play around this weekend so that I can move forward with implementing whatever bugs there are.


Bob Melvin Fired, replaced with Daily Link Dump

May 8, 2009

Effective immediately.

Wait a second.  A.J. Hinch?  Late ’90s catcher-of-the-future A.J. Hinch?  The guy who put up a 328/420/568 minor league line in 1997 and was at one point a top-50 prospect?

via Flickr, without permission

Hey, is that Corey Koskie? (September 13, 2000 - Dave Ross/Oakland Tribune, via Flickr, without permission)

Hinch, you will recall, arrived in Oakland in 1998 in the same position-player bumper crop that yielded Eric Chavez, Miguel Tejada, Ben Grieve, Scott Spiezio, and Adam Piatt.  He’s best remembered for being packaged with Grieve and Angel Berroa for Cory Lidle, Johnny Damon, and Mark Ellis.

The incoming and outgoing talent in that trade looks a little silly eight years down the line, huh?

Hinch and Eric Byrnes were teammates on the 2000 squad.  While it’s not that strange to have a manager manage a former teammate – Joe Girardi is doing it in New York and Ozzie Guillen did it in Chicago – what is strange is that Hinch is only two years older than Byrnes.

{edited to remove universal strikethrough pervading the rest of Free Kraut, fsu}