Mr. Cube Goes to Oakland

In Game Threads, Postgame, Uncategorized by Rice Cube153 Comments

So hey everyone, I went to the getaway day game at the Oakland Coliseum (named after whatever sponsor they have these days, but like the Sears Tower I only know it by the generic name everyone else uses) and did not regret it. This was, as they say, a game time decision where I weighed how much I really wanted to go to this craptacular stadium while also realizing that if I don’t go now, I won’t see the Cubs in person again until they come to San Francisco later this year, or I actually go to Chicago for a long-due summer trip. For reference, the last time I went to a game in Oakland was this game, and while they reenacted it in the movie, I was actually on the BART when Scott Hatteberg did his thing, but we definitely heard it as the train was pulling out of the station.

To make AC happy, I knew only what I had read pregame about Mason Miller, who has a very live arm that somehow remains attached to his body despite throwing 100+ mph as easily as I wave hello. He coupled that with a high-80s/low-90s set of off-speed offerings, I think most of them were sliders and changeups but the big board did say he threw at least one mid-90s cutter. Nico Hoerner squared him up pretty well to take care of the no-hitter right away, but Miller kept the Cubs mostly off balance until they chased him after scoring the second run in the fifth inning or so. I did remark to another Cubs fan behind me that I thought he was running out of juice as he had gone from 99-102 down to about 96, and then he shut me right up by striking out someone on another 100+ fastball, and while he has a wild pitch and some command issues, he seemed to be able to paint with that 100.

The nifty thing was that as soon as Miller left, even as the A’s tied the game, you pretty much knew the Cubs would break out (I guess that’s optimism for ya, but also it’s this year’s A’s) and they dropped ten unanswered runs against the bullpen, so much so that they could put in Julian Merryweather to mop up instead of leaving Keegan Thompson in for the three-inning blowout save. Which is probably good because I forgot the Cubs don’t get an off-day, heading right back to Wrigley Field to take on a probably pissed off Dodgers team.

Oh yeah, Justin Steele was good. The game was over in under three hours despite the Cubs scoring 12 runs and forcing the A’s to do all the pitching changes. Box score will tell a bit of the story, but the Cubs were pretty much slapping the ball all over the place #phrasing

As for the park experience, unlike with Wrigley, which lets fans in two hours before first pitch (I am unsure if that has changed in the pitch clock era so if anyone has gone to a game lately there, let me know), the Oakland Coliseum only lets fans in an hour before first pitch on weekdays. I think that’s because they’re just not hiring extra workers or they are unwilling to pay for the extra hour of work, and that level of cheapness is probably why there were only 12,112 of us in the crowd, about 12,000 of which were Cubs fans behind the first base dugout (I kid, but at least half of us were Cubs fans). The Coliseum is still trash, but the field this time of year (especially now that the Raiders have moved to Vegas, and the A’s are probably on their way too) looked nice, devoid of the football gridlines that used to be there when both seasons were in progress. A young Cubs fan behind me made a great catch on a foul ball (justified glove work), another young Cubs fan in front of me was celebrating his birthday and we all teamed up to get him a ball as a gift, and at least three of us in the section (including myself) had the W flags ready when the final strikeout was recorded. Pretty glad I decided to take the day off from work to go to the game after all.

You can check out the game highlights below to get a glimpse of Mason Miller and the Cubs racking up the runs once he went away, and below that are some images I took of the lovely day and game (no video though). Since Hosmer homered and has staved off a DFA, but the Cubs swept, I compromised and got some light dinner at In-N-Out.

First pitch before Nico got his leadoff hit
Bellinger vs Mason Miller before K #1
Bellinger scored a run on the fielder’s choice, everyone safe
Hosmer and friends taking the field after he homered because of course he did
The 9th inning rally to put the game out of reach
Cubs win!
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Cubs-win-1024x473.jpg
Handshake line after the Cubs won and swept the A’s

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  1. Author
    Rice Cube

    BVS: Streak averted. Congrats.

    I’m with Berselius in blaming you for Hosmer sticking around. But if he’s suddenly fixed, you can take credit in mid-June.

    My guess is that since Edwin Rios is being sucky all of a sudden, they’ll call up Nelson Velazquez again to replace Bellinger when he goes on paternity leave, then Rios is optioned for Mervis and then they’ll slow burn the Eric Hosmer DFA, but at least he decided to hit one in the air today (dying laughing)

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  2. Author
    Rice Cube

    Forgot to mention, as you see in the pictures, I’m seated directly behind the Cubs dugout as the A’s are bad and cheap and I could actually justify splurging for those tickets, definitely can’t do that at Wrigley (dying laughing)

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  3. BVS

    Rice Cube,

    Especially now that you are paying insurance for a new driver.

    Agree about Rios.

    Maybe they can trade Hosmer for a low A pitcher next month. Phillies perhaps.

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  7. Author
    Rice Cube

    Rice Cube:
    Oakland is on the verge of losing all the sports now 😔

    https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/04/as-turn-attention-to-las-vegas-reportedly-agree-to-land-purchase-for-nevada-stadium-site.html

    OK so this could be its own post if I gave more of a shit (and honestly if I were more in the know), but instead I’ll just share the following articles for your reference:

    https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/oakland-athletics-ballpark-howard-terminal-city-may-lose-out-on-millions-in-grant-money/

    https://theathletic.com/4431782/2023/04/20/oakland-athletics-las-vegas-stadium-agreement/

    I don’t know how familiar you all are with the Bay Area, but I-80’s sub-interstates includes everything that funnels into San Francisco either across the various bridges or around the peninsula, and that of course includes 880 which runs along the sports complex site in Oakland (very close to Oakland Airport). Despite having all the lanes, that stretch of highway has always been a nightmare, and BART is notoriously annoying and unreliable at times. Makes me miss the CTA even with all of Chicago’s various traffic issues, it was never as bad for me there as here in the Bay.

    That being said, I haven’t been back to the Jack London Square area because it is way off the beaten path (at least the Coliseum was literally right off the highway and the BART, whereas with JLS you had to drive or bus or walk quite a bit further from the station or the highway). JLS is off the Lake Merritt station and I think the proposed Howard Terminal (which is now dead) is between that and the West Oakland station. At least with the Coliseum, again, it was like you getting off Addison to go see the Cubs or walking across from the 35th St station to go see the Sox.

    Per the first article from January, the city of Oakland was trying to snag at least $600MM to help the project along. Per the Athletic article, that project would have taken something like $12B which seems ridiculous and destined to fail, while Vegas would be around $1.5B with Vegas only expected to put up $500MM. This would suggest that Oakland was always being used for leverage for one, and that the A’s definitely had the money to spend if they wanted to just buy up the Coliseum site and rebuild. But now they’re going to do what Rachel Phelps couldn’t in Major League and move the franchise to Vegas, where honestly no human being should be living and also WTF Bellagio wasting all that goddamned water.

    If you see the attendance report from the box score from above, that Moneyball game was PACKED. It shows that an actual investment in a winning club will bring the fans. My first in-person game was also here in 1989 when the A’s won the World Series and it was similarly packed (I wasn’t sure if that’s when the Raiders returned to town or not but we were definitely in the nosebleeds (dying laughing)). I think the fan base is there and the interest is there, but only if ownership shows they’re trying, which they clearly are not.

    If that 2024 deadline is true, I hope that Vegas uses it as leverage to force the owner to pay more of it, the guy is rich enough not to need revenue sharing and since he’s barely paying for his team anyway, he’s obviously got money socked away.

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  9. berselius

    Rice Cube: OK so this could be its own post if I gave more of a shit (and honestly if I were more in the know), but instead I’ll just share the following articles for your reference:

    https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/oakland-athletics-ballpark-howard-terminal-city-may-lose-out-on-millions-in-grant-money/

    https://theathletic.com/4431782/2023/04/20/oakland-athletics-las-vegas-stadium-agreement/

    I don’t know how familiar you all are with the Bay Area, but I-80’s sub-interstates includes everything that funnels into San Francisco either across the various bridges or around the peninsula, and that of course includes 880 which runs along the sports complex site in Oakland (very close to Oakland Airport). Despite having all the lanes, that stretch of highway has always been a nightmare, and BART is notoriously annoying and unreliable at times. Makes me miss the CTA even with all of Chicago’s various traffic issues, it was never as bad for me there as here in the Bay.

    That being said, I haven’t been back to the Jack London Square area because it is way off the beaten path (at least the Coliseum was literally right off the highway and the BART, whereas with JLS you had to drive or bus or walk quite a bit further from the station or the highway). JLS is off the Lake Merritt station and I think the proposed Howard Terminal (which is now dead) is between that and the West Oakland station. At least with the Coliseum, again, it was like you getting off Addison to go see the Cubs or walking across from the 35th St station to go see the Sox.

    Per the first article from January, the city of Oakland was trying to snag at least $600MM to help the project along. Per the Athletic article, that project would have taken something like $12B which seems ridiculous and destined to fail, while Vegas would be around $1.5B with Vegas only expected to put up $500MM. This would suggest that Oakland was always being used for leverage for one, and that the A’s definitely had the money to spend if they wanted to just buy up the Coliseum site and rebuild. But now they’re going to do what Rachel Phelps couldn’t in Major League and move the franchise to Vegas, where honestly no human being should be living and also WTF Bellagio wasting all that goddamned water.

    If you see the attendance report from the box score from above, that Moneyball game was PACKED. It shows that an actual investment in a winning club will bring the fans. My first in-person game was also here in 1989 when the A’s won the World Series and it was similarly packed (I wasn’t sure if that’s when the Raiders returned to town or not but we were definitely in the nosebleeds (dying laughing)). I think the fan base is there and the interest is there, but only if ownership shows they’re trying, which they clearly are not.

    If that 2024 deadline is true, I hope that Vegas uses it as leverage to force the owner to pay more of it, the guy is rich enough not to need revenue sharing and since he’s barely paying for his team anyway, he’s obviously got money socked away.

    Maybe

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  10. Author
    Rice Cube

    This is a Ministry of Truth level headline, we have always been at war with Eastasia…

    This would be like me saying Eric Hosmer had a suboptimal launch angle on his 87 billionth grounder to the second baseman (although he did hit a homer yesterday and almost cost me dinner)

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  20. Author
    Rice Cube

    Rice Cube:
    All the blue checks are going away, wonder if Ken Rosenthal paid for his so Ken Rosenthai can’t usurp his reputation

    Rosenthal did not pay for Twitter blue, and I don’t think any of the Athletic folks did either, but Passan is still blue checked for now

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  21. andcounting

    Rice Cube,

    Making anything change on Twitter requires at least some resources and coordination, so I wouldn’t expect anything to happen at blinding speed.

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  25. Author
    Rice Cube

    Rice Cube,

    Or it could be possible that they are unwitting pawns in whatever long game Musk Melon is playing

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  26. uncle dave

    Rice Cube,

    If I get a break from work at some point over the next couple of days I’ll weigh in with my thoughts here. I’ve been living out here for 20 years and adopted the A’s as my local team (and my primary rooting interest once I abandoned the Cubs a couple of years ago), but they made quick work of eroding any good faith or loyalty. So the tl;dr takeaway is that I’m sad about how the whole situation shook out and believe that Oakland and the A’s fans deserve better, but at this point it’s just “ok, John, don’t let the door hit ya where the Lord split ya.”

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  45. BVS

    Re: Blue Checks above…

    Apparently didn’t raise enough money to shift to SpaceX to fix sticky valves.

    Also didn’t learn from from historical O-ring fiasco.

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  48. andcounting

    I realize a lot of people want Fulmer pitching when the game is on the line, but with the exception of David Ross they’re all Cubs opponents.

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  51. berselius

    Cashing in some of those runs would have been the best outcome, but given that Merrywhatever was the only guy left in the pen as they potentially headed to extras I don’t think it was the worst thing to just get it out of the way early (dying laughing).

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  54. Author
    Rice Cube

    New guy in town

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  83. andcounting

    This is the third time in the last few games a team has changed pitchers with Madrigal coming to the plate. Such an ego hit to get pulled because the manager isn’t sure you can retire Madrigal.

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  84. Author
    Rice Cube

    andcounting:
    This is the third time in the last few games a team has changed pitchers with Madrigal coming to the plate. Such an ego hit to get pulled because the manager isn’t sure you can retire Madrigal.

    Shut you right up

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  86. Perkins

    I’m cautiously optimistic about this Cubs team so far. They’re pretty fun to watch. Feels a bit like 2015.

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  99. andcounting

    I’m basing this entirely on Gameday results from the two Dodgers series, but Peralta is such a piece of shit.

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  102. andcounting

    Rice Cube,

    It is, but that’s a career-topping performance. He hasn’t had a complete game since ‘14. No Cub has gone 7 perfect innings since’93. That was amazing. Masterful.

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  110. andcounting

    Rice Cube,

    I don’t mind at all. The last time the Cubs threw a combined, no hitter against the Dodgers, it didn’t work out so well after that.

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  122. Author
    Rice Cube

    Wesneski done after 4.1 and 3 runs given up but the Cubs are still in it, smarter people than I should probably help him figure some of these issues out soon

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  134. BVS

    Odd things I learned on Cubs related Twitter today.

    Only Mike Trout has hit more homers batting 2nd in lineup than Ryne Sandberg .

    Rowan Wick is Starting at Iowa today.

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  146. andcounting

    I’d be ok with the umpires paying less attention to the pitch clock and more attention to the strike zone.

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  147. Author
    Rice Cube

    I get why they’re using Fulmer
    I also appreciated what Keegan Thompson did, but Fulmer’s performance here is kind of a waste of that
    Oh well

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