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Skating uphill AL Beat: A's playing great, losing ground to torrid M's
Updated: Wednesday May 16, 2001 3:58 AM
By John Donovan, CNNSI.com So, here's the luck the Oakland Athletics have had this season. They start to get a little winning streak going, start to play a little better ... and then they run into Pedro Martinez. So they regroup, get things back together ... and then they run into Pedro Martinez. Again. The A's have gone 7-4 in their past 11 games -- not bad, considering that awful, awful April they had -- and might have been even a tad better except that two of those four losses came to Martinez, the Boston Red Sox ace. In those two games, just six days apart, Martinez handcuffed the A's, going 2-0 with a 2.57 ERA, allowing the A's seven hits in 14 innings, striking out 18 and walking only one. Now, a 7-4 record should be cause for some celebration in Oakland. But when you consider the Seattle Mariners, the team the A's are chasing, went 8-3 in that span, you can understand why the A's aren't breaking out the bubbly. Though it might seem a tad strange, facing another team's ace in back-to-back starts isn't as unlikely as it once was, not in this era of the unbalanced schedule. Granted, it was a little more unusual in the case of the Red Sox against the A's, who play each other only nine times all season. But it happened last week to the Baltimore Orioles, too, who faced their former ace, Mike Mussina, twice within five days. And Mussina, now a starter for the New York Yankees, put the clamps on the O's both times. Mussina went 2-0 with a 3.46 ERA in his two starts. He allowed 13 hits in 13 innings, struck out seven and walked two. "Beating a team back-to-back is tough against any team," the politically correct Mussina said. The good news for the A's is they have only three more chances to run into Martinez again this season. The Orioles, on the other hand, probably will have plenty more chances against Mussina. The Orioles and Yankees still have 12 more games to play.
More heat in St. PeteIt's hard to tell fact from fiction anymore with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, but the latest from Florida is that some of the owners are so ticked off at former managing general partner Vince Naimoli that they want him completely out of the picture now. They don't even want him as a figurehead. They don't even want to give him an office at Tropicana Field. And if they don't get their way, reports The New York Times, they'll cut off money for their payroll. The players could miss a paycheck later this month. Is this rich or what? Naimoli's denying it all and, as we say, it's hard to tell exactly what's going on. But whatever it is, it's not good for baseball. And it sure as heck isn't doing the Rays' image any favors. Talking about troubleHere's a sure sign that a team is headed in the wrong direction. Firing an assistant this early in the season. The Kansas City Royals canned pitching coach Brent Strom, who was in charge of a staff that included the AL's worst bullpen (a 5.37 ERA through Sunday). Bullpen coach Tom Gamboa stays and takes over for Strom on an interim basis. But the Royals' problem isn't only pitching. Their .401 slugging percentage is one of the worst in the league, as is their .313 on-base percentage. This may spark the anemic Royals, a disappointing bunch that was expected to at least make a run of it in the AL Central. Or it may not. One thing it seems sure to do is take the heat off manager Tony Muser for awhile.
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I don't understand what the hype is about NY fans being all well-behaved and civilized people. I'm from Minnesota and I currently go to school in NY. Without a doubt, NY FANS ARE THE MOST RUDE, LOUD, OBNOXIOUS, AND CYNICAL sports fans I've ever seen. Minnesota people are 100 times more civilized than NY people.
