Bob Geren

The Oakland Athletics were hanging tight in the race for the American League 
West division title. After the past two series where the A's have lost five games out of six that were played, it has become clear the A's need to make some major adjustments. 

That would involve making trades for a big time bat in the lineup. The only problem is, what self-respecting player would want to play for Bob Geren? This was shown by the most recent trade the A's have made. 

Today continues the legacy of Bob Geren's incompetency as the Oakland Athletics manager. How he got invited to be one of the managers in the all-star game by Joe Girardi is beyond me. 

There's no manager in baseball as clueless as Geren is! Today's game is just another fine example of just how clueless Geren is on the bench. 

The Oakland A's are currently in a battle between two other teams for the American League West title. The A's have some things that they need to work out to even consider being in contention for the division.

So, here are the seven things the A's must do in order to win the American League West division.

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Oakland A's manager Bob Geren nearly blew another game by having Tyson Ross come into the ballgame to face Delmon Young of the Minnesota Twins. With Joe Mauer on base via a free pass, in came Ross to face the right-handed hitting Young. 

Ross immediately fell behind 2-0 to the free-swinging Young. The next pitch that Ross threw was the last one he would for the game, he gave up a two-run home run that went out of the park in a hurry. 

During his pregame session with the media, before the Oakland Athletics took on the Texas Rangers, manager Bob Geren revealed that Justin Duchscherer "had an MRI and it said there's just some inflation" in his left hip.

So it goes in the mental and physical siege known as the Major League Baseball season.

You'll forgive Geren if one conversation bleeds into another, even if it is only May and the 162-game slate is less than 20 percent complete. I mean, can you really blame his subconscious for transposing the American economic plight with that of his charges?

It looks like the Oakland Athletics will retain their main source of power from the past three seasons by bringing back Jack Cust for a one-year, incentive-laden deal. The deal is reportedly similar to the $2.8 million he made last season. 

Cust was targeted by several teams this offseason, but decided to stick with the A's instead. In 2009, the A's slugger had a .240/.356/.417 season, blasted a team-leading 25 homers, and walked 93 times.

With the A's coming off their third-straight sub .500 season, General Manager Billy Beane has made it clear to the A's very small and ever thinning fan base that rebuilding is key for future success.

The A's over the past two or three seasons have spent most of their efforts trying to replenish their depleted farm-system.

However, last season's off-course "spending spree" that ultimately backfired, caused Beane and the rest of the A's front office to re-evaluate their situation and their biggest organizational needs. 

The Oakland A's ended the season on a seven game losing streak. To make matters worse is the fact that September was the only month of the season that the A's actually had a winning record under the direction of manager Bob Geren.

There's a song the A's remind me of, it's by the Sick Puppies called "All the Same." The premise of the song is about a girlfriend who threatens to leave, but always comes back.

Here's some lyrics from the song:

I received the news as most others seem to receive news these days—via an online social network. According to the A's Facebook fan page status update, what Oakland loyalists had suspected and dreaded was official, delivered with all the cheeriness of Pravda reporting that the Politburo had again thrown its support to Dear Leader Stalin:

Billy Beane needs to take a play out of the Colorado Rockies playbook. The Rockies were playing uninspired and painfully poor baseball under manager Clint Hurdle. So, what did the Rockies management do?

The Rockies did not subscribe to Beane's theory that firing a manager during the season is a sign of weakness for a team. Instead the Rockies fired Hurdle and offered him a job in the organization, which he turned down and is now an announcer for MLB TV.