Ratto: A’s postseason begins now

My Colon cannonballs don’t work in the playoffs!

It was the end of a stretch of good baseball in Oakland under what people would call the Moneyball Era and the beginning of five years of dull, tedious, slow-witted impermanent treacle. Some will call it the Bob Geren Era, but that’s the lazy way out. It was an organization-wide malaise, made worse by the energyless pining for a stadium they seem to want handed to them by people who don’t care whether they get anything at all.

And now, twelve days – two with Texas, four with New York, three at Toronto, three at Baltimore. Twelve days for Beane to decide if this cohesive and entertaining group of players is skilled enough to hold together for the 61 games after that.

They are 46-43, tied for sixth with Detroit and Tampa Bay, a half-game behind the faltering Orioles for the second wild-card spot and three behind the second-place – well, fourth-place Angels for the purposes of this discussion.

...They will influence whether Beane is enamored enough of his seat-of-the-pants creation to hold it together for a stretch run that might not come – or turn it into another bazaar for the worthies, sending Coco Crisp here, and Bartolo Colon there, and Johnny Gomes and Seth Smith and Brandon McCarthy other places for a haul of prospects, most of whom tend to disappear or get turned into other prospects down the road.