I didn’t watch Oakland lose to the Kansas City Royals last night. They scored no runs. Kansas City, a shot-in-the-dark team that is (was) of greatly inferior quality to the A’s won with 1 run. I find that highly emblematic of the situation that BB Boy has inflicted on what was the greatest team in baseball.

I predict Oakland will be duking it out with Seattle for the wild card slot in the AL West. The Angels now have it all to themselves. Why do I say that, you ask? Experience in building a team. When you break up a high performing work team, it takes a really long time to rebuild it. Longer than BB has left in this season. So he will have destroyed the team, with not enough time to build it for the World Series, which, as previously mentioned, he got the fever for. It is just too much.

No more MLB for me. I’ll have to find another addiction to fill my retirement evenings. More serious effort at writing than two chapters a week, I suppose.

Why did he do it? Why? Because he never really believed in sabermetrics. It got him some attention – it got him Brad Pitt as his avatar! But former players always return to their roots. The old way of doing business. And sabermetrics be damned. Burn that damn book! (Nod to Gavin McQuade@Realmoneybadger for that illustration). Let me be specific.

If you saw the film or read the book, Moneyball, recall the scouting coaches describing prospects as looking “right” or “not right”. It would appear that taking Jesse Chavez out of the rotation is an example of him not looking “right”. Or giving up Cespedes for another outfielder, just to get a pitcher to replace the pitcher that he got to replace Tommy Milone…I could go on and on. But BB has started the downhill slide that will end in a really bad outcome.

It reminds one of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. The golden fleece is just outside your reach, so you do what you think you have to do to get it, and sacrifice yourself and those around you in the process. The A’s are destroyed, and BB will lose his job for killing them. May they rest in peace.