Morning all!<\/p>\n
The Super Bowl has come and gone and with that comes the smell of fresh grass and Spring Training! Things are still happening on the free agent and trade markets but soon pitchers and catchers will be reporting and closely followed will be the start of exhibition games. It\u2019s time to play ball!<\/p>\n
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What do the A\u2019s have in store for us this year? Shortstop Jacob Wilson and first baseman Nick Kurtz are set to be the young cornerstones of the Athletics\u2019 lineup along with veterans Shea Langeliers and DH Brent Rooker, so we have the heart of a playoff-worthy lineup already set. There remain questions regarding a couple positions (mainly third base) but the A\u2019s won\u2019t miss the playoffs because of their hitters.<\/p>\n
Where the club will live and die will be on the pitchers. The team has found an interesting arm in Jacob Lopez but he\u2019s just one man and had an injury to end his first full season. The A\u2019s will need more from the guys in-house if we\u2019re going to succeed. Veteran starter Luis Severino looked good at times but also not good at home and he\u2019s not the front-line starter that we need. Lefty Jeffrey Springs was solid throughout the year but like Sevy doesn\u2019t have the front-line upside the A\u2019s need right now. Maybe that player will be Luis Morales but that\u2019s asking a lot of a pitcher who has just 48 innings in the big leagues. But the pitching needs to get better all around, from the starting group to the relief corps. If the A\u2019s sign a veteran starter to hand the ball to every fifth day that helps stabilize things a bit, but does it move the needle in our direction? We need to see improvements from guys like JT Ginn, Mason Barnett, Gunnar Hoglund, and hopefully even Luis Medina, who was once considered the future but lost his 2025 season to Tommy John surgery. Can one of the young guys step up to that challenge? We\u2019ll be finding out soon enough. Who else is ready for baseball?!<\/p>\n
Have a good Monday everyone!<\/p>\n
A\u2019s Coverage:<\/p>\n
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MLB News and Interest:Best of X:<\/p>\n
Not too sure, but Ibanez does add a different element to the third base question\u2026<\/p>\n
Speaking of third base, we should all be focused on Hernaiz during the upcoming WBC:<\/p>\n
May be controversial, but I don\u2019t think so. We know Brent doesn\u2019t have a bad bone in his body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Morning all! The Super Bowl has come and gone and with that comes the smell of fresh grass…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2391],"tags":[146,537,5,545,37028,1628,1655,632,1950,3239,7146,706,1327,43042,4,3226,459,8823,18,3442,1949],"class_list":["post-562481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-athletics","tag-arizona","tag-athletics","tag-baseball","tag-brent-rooker","tag-darell-hernaiz","tag-getty-images","tag-gunnar-hoglund","tag-jacob-lopez","tag-jacob-wilson","tag-jeffrey-springs","tag-luis-medina","tag-luis-morales","tag-luis-severino","tag-mason-barnett","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-athletics","tag-nick-kurtz","tag-peoria","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-shea-langeliers","tag-the-athletics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116041348789044499","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}