Friday Five: My Top 5 Oakland Athletics

Yesterday, I watched the end of the Oakland A's game. It was their last home game in Oakland.

The Moneyball music hits different on this one. 💚🥺 pic.twitter.com/ucOBSBgH78

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) September 26, 2024

I don't want to get too bogged down in the backstory of what has happened to the A's during the past year, so I will let this Jeff Passan tweet do the talking.....

The Oakland A’s were killed by greed. Do not allow the people responsible for this to spin it any other way. John Fisher did not have to move this team. Major League Baseball and its owners did not need to be complicit in it. This was a choice. A wrong one. History will sneer.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) September 26, 2024

As a St. Louis native, I know the disappointment of seeing a professional sports franchise move away.  

I wanted to share my favorite 5 Oakland A's players for today's Friday Five post. 

Here is my list:

Honorable Mention: Tim Hudson 

One of my favorite non-Cardinal pitchers to watch of the past 20 years. I love the movie Moneyball, but if I had to change something about the movie, I would want more time spent on the Big 3, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, and Tim Hudson. The three made the A's rotation far above-average and allowed them to tinker with the offense by focusing on on-base percentage. Without Hudson's quality pitching, the team would not have been a contender, yet he's barely mentioned in the film. The book gives more time to the pitchers, but still probably undersells Hudson, Mulder, and Zito too. Anyway, long-time favorite player who has a Hall of Fame argument too, but I will save that for another post.  

5. Stephen Vogt 

Before Stephen Vogt was the manager of the Cleveland Guardians, he was a fan-favorite with the Oakland A's. The catcher seemingly came out of nowhere to make back-to-back All Star Games for the American League roughly a decade ago. Before he seemingly came out of nowhere, he was actually on the Durham Bulls stuck behind Jose Molina and Jose Lobaton who were catching for the Rays. Vogt was also a fan-favorite in Durham. He was a player who did a little bit of everything on the field, while his personality made it easy to like. There have been several other Durham Bulls players who have made appearances with the Oakland A's over the years, but Vogt is easily my favorite.  

4. Jose Canseco

Jose Canseco is one of my favorite baseball villains/goofballs, but before he was blacklisted from the game for ratting out all sorts of steroid users, he was a really great baseball player. We now have a 50-50 player, along with half a dozen players who have gone 40-40 in a season, but I remember when Canseco first accomplished the feat back when I was in elementary school. He was the best of the power-speed players from the late 1980s. Throw in some tape measure home runs and a hilarious Twitter account and Jose has cracked my top 5 Oakland A's players......

3. Gene Tenace 

I have learned a lot about various baseball players through my years of collecting with Tenace being at the top of the list. When I first ran into Gene Tenace, I was a little kid collecting baseball cards and he was the back-up catcher on the early 1980s Cardinals teams. Years later, I would learn about Tenace's run as the Oakland A's catcher during the early 1970s helping the team win three World Series titles. In fact, Tenace was the World Series MVP in the 1972 Fall Classic against the Reds. I love myself some Gene Tenace baseball cards and have a deep appreciation for his contributions to the A's 1970s dynasty.  

2. Mark McGwire 

I liked Mark McGwire while he was on the A's, he's not just here because he was on the Cardinals for a few years. Such a fun player to watch, who doesn't like long home runs? I will let a video clip do the talking for Big Mac.  

1. Rickey Henderson 

I am going to give you a story about one of my Rickey Henderson rookie cards rather than talk about Rickey Henderson the player. Rickey would be a little sad, but I am hoping my readers will be entertained.  As a kid, I used to love stolen bases, mainly because of Vince Coleman and Willie McGee, but Rickey Henderson was cool too. Anyway, my parents have some people over to our house for dinner. I cannot remember the reason why exactly, but the people had kids who had baseball cards in their car. It was 1985 and my best card was a Dwight Gooden rookie card. This particular evening, I am hell-bent on trading my Dwight Gooden rookie card, which my older brother thought was a terrible idea. At the time, he was right. Forty years later, I was right. The best card I could get in return for my Dwight Gooden rookie card was a Rickey Henderson rookie card. I like Rickey, I made the trade and still have the card to this day.  

Rickey was the greatest Oakland A's player. 

Friday Five: Former Durham Bulls All-Stars

I did a little digging into the stat lines of the former Durham Bulls players who are currently playing in the Majors on the lookout for the five most deserving for an All-Star appearance.  Some of these players are actually on the All-Star team, others not so much.

Honorable Mention- Melvin Upton OF 

Stretch.  There are a whole bunch of outfielders having better seasons than Melvin, but he's one of my favorite former Durham Bull players and was easily one of the most talented Triple A players I have seen in uniform for my hometown team.  While Upton may not get an All-Star game nod, he is having a sort of bounce back season and he's on the hometown team.  I know the A.L. is technically the home team this year.  His line so far this year is .260/.308/.439 with 14 home runs, 10 doubles, and 19 steals.  Melvin should post his fourth 20/20 season of his career and first since 2012 when he was still a Ray.

5. Stephen Vogt - C 

I don't like to talk much about the Stephen Vogt trade, but I have been really happy with the success the former Bulls catcher has enjoyed since moving to the Bay Area.  This year is Vogt's second straight All-Star appearance which came with a .266/.311/.413 line along with 6 home runs and 17 doubles.  Vogt played well during two stops in Durham during the 2011 and 2012 seasons.  While I hear a lot of baseball fans argue that there are better choices than Vogt, the second tier at the position behind Salvador Perez, which he is in, is pretty equal.

4. Wil Myers - 1B 

Long ago in 2013 Wil Myers appeared for the Durham Bulls after being traded over from the Kansas City Royals for pitcher James Shields.  Myers was a huge deal in these parts.  Sure, he was a local kid from High Point, North Carolina, but he was also a Top 10 prospect.  He got called up to Tampa for the second half of the season and played well.  The next year was not so great and he got traded to the Padres where he only played half a season in 2015 due to injuries.  This year he is hitting .291/.355/.535 with 19 home runs, 19 doubles, and 14 stolen bases.  First base is always a deep position for the All-Star game, but Myers is more than deserving of this honor.

3.  Evan Longoria - 3B 

The one player on my list who did not actually make the All-Star Game.  Longo is high up on my list of favorite former Durham Bulls, so I had hoped that he could get in with the Final Vote online.  However, he came in last.  Can't win them all.  It's still been a nice bounce back season for Longoria who has posted a .280/.330/.514 line with 18 home runs and 23 doubles.

2.  Wade Davis - P 

Wade Davis used to be one of those former Durham Bulls players who kind of slid through the cracks until he started blowing people away during playoff games for the Royals.  For the last three seasons he has basically been untouchable posting a 26-14 record, 2.91 FIP, and a142 ERA+ in his three and a half years in KC.  This year Davis has saved 19 games for the defending World Series Champs.  He was named to the American League All-Star team, but was headed for a possible DL stint.  I am guessing he does not make it.  

1. Ben Zobrist - 2B 

I hear a lot about Kris Bryant, Jake Arrieta, and Anthony Rizzo, but why isn't anyone talking about Ben Zobrist?  The longtime Ray, and one-time former Durham Bull, is enjoying a great season with the north siders.  He still had a strong stat line last year with the A's and Royals, but at 35 you'd expect his line to start to fall off at some point soon.  Instead, Zobrist is on pace to hit the most home runs he has hit since 2009, record his highest OBP since 2009, and drive in more than 90 runs for the first time since 2011.  The Cubs have a lot of young players, and the window for the team to be competitive is going to be open for a long time, but Zobrist is doing a great job of helping the team out with a little veteran presence.

Friday 5: Five(ish) Cards I Love In 2015 Topps Update

I opened a little bit of Topps Update last weekend and walked away with an obscene number of throwbacks.  There were other cards in the boxes outside of the all of those cool 60s and 70s Topps cards.  For this week's Friday Five I am going to work a little bit with the base set cards from the Update set.  I tried to go through and pick out just the five coolest cards from the set, but that proved a fairly tough task.  So, instead I am going with five cool things I found in my two boxes of Update using five(ish) cards.


5. Former Durham Bulls in the Majors 
The ultimate goal of a minor league team is to graduate players to the Major Leagues.  Even if they do not end up playing for the Rays in the long term, it is still cool to watch a baseball game and see somebody in there from the Bulls.  This year's Topps Update set offered several Durham Bulls, but since this post is using five(ish) cards I am going to limit this section of my blog post to exactly five cards.

First, there are the normal Minor League types who get called up to the Majors and make the team.  Mahtook was a high draft pick by the Rays out of LSU and Andriese was in the Brad Boxberger/Logan Forsythe trade with the Padres.  Both players had been with the Bulls before this season and had proven their worth to the Rays.  

Then there are a few former Durham Bulls who are good stories.  Joey Butler was a career Minor Leaguer who started the year out in Durham, but spent the majority of the summer with the Rays playing well in his first extended stay in the Majors.  Sometimes players like Butler can fly under the radar in the Update sets, great to see Topps get him a card.

Stephen Vogt has an All-Star card in the set.  He was kind of a forgotten player with the Rays and ended up being more or less dumped in a conditional trade to the A's.  Awesome to see him get a little recognition for his good play this year with a trip to the All-Star game.

and then there is this card.  Yes, Travis Shaw is a nice looking prospect for the Red Sox, but Allan Dykstra is also on the card.  Last summer he won the Triple A All-Star Game home run derby in Durham.  He signed a minor league deal with the Rays, spent time in the Majors during April, but was released in the middle of the summer.  He still has the championship belt.....

4.  Former Cardinals on the All-Star Team 

It was great to see Albert Pujols regain some of his power this summer, although his slash line was down across the board, and make the American League All-Star team.  Shelby Miller was a really good story this year.  Sure, his win-loss record was something terrible, but he still pitched well for the Braves and seems to be an important part of the team's future.  

3.  Current Cardinals All-Stars 

I really liked these cards in the Update set.  Not every team has a card like this, but I liked the idea of having a team like card show the All-Star Game representatives.  Not sure why they did not just make this a straight team card instead of assigning it to a player, this is a Trevor Rosenthal card, but I still like it.  These guys all got booed......

2.  Jason Heyward on the Cardinals 

I'm not sure if the Cardinals are going to sign Heyward.  I have enjoyed watching him play this year, but this card could be just about the last wearing a Cardinals uniform, or this could be the start of a long run of cards with him in Cardinal red.  

1.  Rookie Cards 

The best part of buying Update sets is the rookie cards.  I liked the Joey Gallo and Kris Bryant cards the best.  I swear that's Joey Gallo in all of that Gatorade.  Pretty cool card.  The Bryant card is a little simpler, but it's always nice to see a card with Wrigley Field in the background.