Oakland Athletics

We all love Kurt Suzuki and Andrew Bailey, but Dallas Braden is the next player the A's need to lock up long-term.

All the starting pitching hype coming into the season was centered on former All-Stars Justin Duchscherer and Ben Sheets coming back from a 2009 season lost to injuries, and the expected growth of young Brett Anderson looking to follow up his brilliant rookie campaign.

Oh, and there was that big spring training battle for the fifth rotation spot between Gio Gonzalez and Trevor Cahill.

The A's very good start has left them sitting pretty atop the AL West standings with a 9-5 record. That's got to have the A's feeling good about their chances.

Breaking down the first four series of the season, the A's are now 4-3 vs. the Seattle Mariners, 2-1 vs. the Los Angeles Angels, and 3-1 vs. the Baltimore Orioles. Not bad.

The A's know what they have in Brett Anderson. Two scoreless starts into his second season, Anderson was granted a four-year extension with two option years, effectively buying out Anderson's first year of Free Agency.

Multiple sources reported the extension quickly, but as far as I could tell, it was ESPN first reporting the annual salaries:

2010: $500,000, 2011: $1,000,000, 2012: $3,000,000, 2013: $5,500,000.

If you've read my articles so far this season, you many have noticed that I'm a strong believer in the Oakland A's being a good, underestimated team. I'm thinking their good start will continue to go overlooked until they're still playing this well after 30 or 40 games.

A 7-4 start is good, but with such a small sample size, what critic will be deterred by an 11-game record?

The given coming into the season was that the A's had a good-to-formidable pitching staff, and a defense designed to give an extra cushion for the pitching.

Look, the Oakland Athletics can't get half the number of fans to create one-quarter the amount of buzz that the San Francisco Giants get in the Bay Area.

If the A's could move to San Jose, to a new stadium, the thousands upon thousands of Giants fans in that city wouldn't just flock to the American League team. Fans aren't that fickle. I mean, look at the 7,000 loyal A's fans in Oakland! They never give up on their team.

There were really no relief pitchers during the first 40 seasons of Major League Baseball, through the 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, and 1900s. The first relief pitchers really came along in the 1910s.

During those first 40 seasons of MLB, in the rare occasions that the starting pitcher did not finish the game and a relief pitcher was needed, one of the other starting pitchers who had the day off would go in and relieve the starter.

That’s really how it worked during the first 40 seasons of MLB.

With Opening Day now behind us, rosters for the season are now set.

The A's finalized their 25-man roster two days ago. I didn't agree with everything they did, but overall, they did a strong job of picking the best players.

What follows are five reactions I had to specific moves.

Happy baseball season! Let's enjoy the game!

Begin Slideshow

In a flurry of last minute roster moves, the A's set their Opening Day roster after the Giants-A's Spring exhibition finale.

Despite a reportedly healthy camp, several players will start the year on the DL. But thanks to all the depth the A's stockpiled over the offseason, the stand-ins stand to fill in admirably.

Over the next few slides, I will break down the A's roster by position and offer a few predictions at the end.

Begin Slideshow

The A's always seem to have a surprise up their sleeve when announcing the Opening Day roster. Usually the big news is some hotshot rookie made the team.

This year that hot shot is Tyson Ross. Not bad for a starting pitcher who was only drafted in the June 2008 draft. Ross will make the club trying to help out a rather depleted bullpen.