Here is what I know after 20 games:

1) The A’s are playing .500 ball, I am ecstatic! We are an extremely young team with little to no expectations.  I was prepared to be mathmatically eliminated by this point in the season. 

2) The Angels are 6-13, I love this.  I know the Rangers are the juggernaut in our division, but I reserve a special hatred for the Angels. 

3) Cespedes is hitting .269 with 5 hrs, 18 rbis, 4SBs and a .904 OPS. Pujols is hitting .224 with 0 hrs, 4 rbis, 0SBs and a .596 OPS. 

4) Cespedes is being paid 9 mil a year for the next 4 years. Pujos is being paid 24 mil a year for the next 10.

5) Cespedes is 26, Pujols is 32 (Everyone on earth knows that this is a total fabrication and he is likely 2-3 years older than that). Even if Pujols were actually the age he says he is (he isn’t), they will be paying him 24 mil when he is 42 years old. 

6) Pujols OPS has been in decline since 2008 (He was still a monster, but an obviously deterioriting one, and certainly not someone you would pay for the next 10 years.  He was a king in St. Louis and yet they let him go, why?  Because they knew he was older than he says he is and is in the declining phase of his career.)

7) Better FA signing, Cespedes!

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Two games in, and the miracle of small sample size analysis has already given us a pretty good idea of where this team is headed for the season.  Let me break it down for you individually and not collectively, starting from most hopeful and proceeding downward:

It is unfair how many unrealistic expectations this photo gives me.

Yoenis Cespedes – Our Bargain Basement Pujols is off to a phenomenal start and a 1.429 OPS, which if maintained will keep him just north of Barry Bonds’ 2004 season as the greatest offensive season in the history of the sport.  I cannot understate just how excited I am to have this well-maintained lawn on the team, and I hold to this excitement despite a plate approach eerily similar to the way my 1 1/2 year-old son approaches a tee with his oversized red plastic bat, i.e., more vertical than horizontal, and he usually ends the swing on his butt.

Brandon McCarthy – Brilliant.  On pace to throw 210 innings with a historic 1.29 ERA, and there’s no doubt he’ll reach it if he pitches exclusively against the Mariners for the remainder of the season.  While the reality might not be as rosy as my projections, McCarthy is nevertheless set for a sublime season and I look forward to watching him accept his Cy Young award on Opening Day next year in Minnesota or wherever we trade him mid-July.

Jemile Weeks – Yoenis-like, in that I cannot understate how much I look forward to watching Jemile play for this team.  Young, exciting, effective, and fast – oh how he is fast.  Kinda makes me regret ignoring him to get Cliff Pennington’s autograph at Spring Training last year.   (Read the article)

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I have no idea why Billy Beane and the rest of the Oakland front office signed coveted Cuban free agent/potential phenom/anti-Pujols weapons system Yoenis Cespedes today when all signs pointed to 2012 as a lost season.

I have no idea why Cespedes and his agent thought that making this video was a good idea.

I have no idea how the A’s ended up with seven potential outfielders going into Spring Training  - Cespedes, Coco Crisp, Josh Reddick, Seth Smith, Jonny Gomes, Michael Taylor and Collin Cowgill – particularly given that at the end of last season our outfield depth consisted of Ryan Sweeney, the left field bleacher drum guys, and the animatronic Triceratops from the Lawrence Hall of Science with a glove jammed on its right horn.

I have no idea why we’re still going after Manny Ramirez, when the first reaction of every logical, right-thinking A’s fan upon hearing this news was, “Hey, sweet!  An anti-Manny plan!”

I have a pretty good idea why we traded Guillermo Moscoso.

I have no idea why the front office thinks we have at least three separate DH spots (one to hit for the pitcher and two to hit for Kurt Suzuki).

I have no idea whose dog Chris Carter ran over to go from the organization’s top prospect to #5 on the DH depth chart behind something called a Kila Ka’aihue.

Most significantly, after I thought I had a pretty good handle on the agenda for the 2012 Oakland Athletics season, I really have not the slightest idea what is going to happen over the course of the next 8 months of baseball.  Seriously.  I was comfortably resigned to an enjoyable season of “Sure we’re going to lose 100 games but it’ll be fun to watch the young guys progress and maybe we’ll get into a favorable draft position”-type stuff, but now?

Now I’m expecting this.  Whereas before today I had meager hopes tempered by realism for the 2012 season, now I fully expect to end this season sobbing as Jemile Weeks rounds third and heads for home while our cagey veteran (Bartolo Colon?) legs out a bunt single to win the pennant and Ken Korach channels Bob Uecker in the announcer’s booth.  Now my hopes are so high that I will be angry if it doesn’t happen.  Very angry.

I have no idea why I do this to myself.

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