Did you make it this far? Whew!
Like I always say, any writer can lose his readers in the story itself. It takes a special brand of boredom to disengage the audience in the headline. But when you see an opportunity to mix Cheryl Crow, a French apothecary, and nonsensical grammar into the title of a fanpost, you don't hesitate; you act. You start slinging apostrophes now and ask questions later.
This is my first post in more than six weeks, and only my third in the last three months. I've also dropped game threads this year after managing Friday night's action last season. At first I thought I AN would struggle without eye-popping post-game headlines ("A's lose 7-0") and pulse-quickening teasers to the overflow game threads ("the game continues"). But somehow the site has held on.
With today's off-day for the A's, I'd like to turn the focus back on AN and introduce Athletics Nation NO(t)STRADAMUS, a celebration of self-deprecation. In (Not)stradamus, we each look back at our own bold, sometimes ill-advised predictions made in fanposts and comments. Especially in the preseason, but really all year long, we all enjoy "throwing darts at the board" and attempting to handicap the A's playoff chances, possible free agent signings, and hypothetical trades. The goal here is to look back at your own predictions over the last few months or years, and find the one that missed the worst. Looking back at your own archive on your personal AN page, you want to find the dart that not only missed the board, but impaled the bartender standing 6 feet to the left.
It could be a comment in a game thread or fanpost, or it could be a full-length diary you wrote that, looking back, really missed the mark.
Here are the ground rules:
I'll get it started. Without further ado, here's a few AN pieces I'd like to have back:
Can I get off now? What a trainwreck. The time stamp for this post says it was made it in the afternoon, but you'd swear I wrote it at 3 a.m., bleary-eyed and in nothing but my G.I. Joe boxers. (Don't lie. You've checked AN in a similar state once or twice yourself). Apparently at the time I was willing to give Rafael Furcal $60 million dollars. Remind me of this the next time I mention that my dream job would've been to be a major-league GM. As we know, Furcal ended up signing with the the Dodgers for literally half the guaranteed money that I suggested, and now has an OBP south of .300 and a nearly identical SLG% a quarter of the way through the year. Don't wait for the women and children to calmly get off the $60M Furcal Train. Just shove and push and do whatever you need to do to save yourself from that disaster of an idea.
What do you get when you cram the talents of Rajai Davis, Donnie Murphy, Chris Denorfia, Bobby McRosby, Emil Brown, and Old Sweeney into the same lineup?
A giant pool of suck, that's what.
But no! Apparently I can clearly to point to April 24th of last year as a date on which that I was a flaming idiot. At the time, my calculus was clearly this:
Against left handed pitching,
three mediocre right-handed hitters + SIX more shitacular right-handed hitters =
wait for it...
The Super Lineup.
This worked a grand total of once, against the Francisco Liriano the first time it was deployed last season. Then left-handed pitchers leaguewide remembered that those players are not good at baseball.
I just have a feeling this one already sucks, even without the benefit of hindsight or anyone reading it yet.
So how about you, AN? What's your prediction or proclamation you'd like to have back?
0 recs | 64 comments
Wow! Twice as nice.
JK. Have not been a member long enough to have any posts that I regret but I am sure I will get there. Nice post, looking forward to reading all the replies.
swishergirl510 - May 27, 2009
So good you posted it twice!
mikev - May 27, 2009
Ha, sorry about that.
Just got rid of the double-posting. Apologies to 67Marquez – can you re-post yours if you get a chance? It was the only comment in the other post, and I deleted that entire entry since it was an accidental double-post. Thank you.
notsellingjeans - May 27, 2009
i'd like to have memorial day weekend back
DyeLongJustice - May 27, 2009
oh ya, and the 'whole signing Giambi is a good thing' back too
DyeLongJustice - May 27, 2009
Geez
You would think people would have commented in the top post.
And sure, nsj, delete the guy who actually posted a link. (But seriously, great to see you on the front page again).
Anyways, I would love to have this proclamation back.
67MARQUEZ - May 28, 2009
Me?
Pretty much every single prediction I’ve ever made in a game thread.
You do have to admit though, Rally Salma was working quite well for the first week of the season or so.
VORP is too nerdy - May 28, 2009
To fall in line with the thread...
Here I predict a Jack Cust HR.
… and…it’s a long single that hits the wall.
VORP is too nerdy - May 28, 2009
hmm
I don’t post much and I think the only thing I’ve ever really predicted was that the A’s would be god awful this season. I wish I could put that here. I really like this concept though, even though people aren’t always willing to make themselves look like morons. Some of my favorite FJM posts were when he took moron sportswriters making predictions that couldn’t be more wrong, even though hindsight is 20/20 its also hilarious.
yo - May 28, 2009
Preparing for the 2010 NO(t)STRADAMUS
1. A’s will finally release the useless Chavy, Crosby, Davis, ad nauseum
2. Holliday will be traded for a slugging 3B
3. For just one year, BB does NOT trade away any of our rotation talent
4. Ditto for not acquiring any broken down veteran bargains next winter
redtopcowboy - May 28, 2009
I swear I just read that as "Holliday will be traded for a struggling 3B"
gigglingone - May 28, 2009
Well that's way more likely.
pam5981 - May 28, 2009
I remember thinking Chavez
might be productive, Giambi was a good idea, and Nomar would make a nice insurance policy. The idea of wading into a hopeless pool of optimism is to heartbreaking.
alox - May 28, 2009
Chavez being productive
I think a lot of us fall into that trap. Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.
colin - May 28, 2009
Someone obviously peed in that pool
fruitattack - May 28, 2009
More like a
“floater”
alox - May 28, 2009
Dooooookieeeee!
LoneStranger - May 28, 2009
I think we played this game before . . .
I always go back to my very first post, November 04, as my “oops, that sh*t was off”:
A question
This may be something that was discussed on an earlier thread, but it’s something I don’t see here.
When Chavy’s contract was being extended, it was reported he was talking to BB about certain assurances that, I believe, was who else was going to be held on to. I have to believe this was who of the big 3.
Now Chavy & Huddy are the elder statesmen of the team & good friends, so my guess is that BB plans to hold on to Huddy, but I could be wrong.
Thoughts?
by OaklandInvader on Nov 12, 2004 3:53 PM PST actions 0 recs
link
OaklandInvader - May 28, 2009
Looking back at that Hot Stove thread there are actually a lot of doozies . . .
The Bronson Arroyo and Byung-Hyun Kim for Huddy from Boston is hilarious, and the overall discussion of the big three, particularly Zito, is good, mind you this was just months before Huddy & Mulder were shipped off . . . .
OaklandInvader - May 28, 2009
Dare I say...
Bronson Arroyo + B.K. Kim > Dan Meyer +Juan Cruz + Charles Thomas
Yikes.
Colorado Fan - May 28, 2009
Dan Meyer?
Didn’t he fetch a good trade? Beane got a Foil Charizard for him I think.
MobiusKlein - May 28, 2009
+1 for the Pokemon reference
if only because it brings back memories of 8th grade. I miss my old gameboy.
DyeLongJustice - May 28, 2009
sadly it was
a counterfeit charizard. if only he knew the stats blastoise was soon to put up…
chipper1001 - May 28, 2009
Here's my two epic fail predictions
1. 10/29/08- This fanpost
This is more for situational irony than anything else. Making the case against trading for Holliday, then Beane trading for Matty within weeks.
I still shudder at the thought of rentals, but I’ve warmed up to the Holliday trade since that thing was written.
2. Now this came out totally false in hindsight:
11/16/08- "Dunn isn’t a better value than Giambi.
There are no 12-14 win players. Albert Pujols was 10 wins above replacement, and he’s the best player in the game. I pegged Dunn as about a 3 win replacement over Barton, and Barton’s barely over replacement level when taking into account offense, defense, and position.
If its between Dunn and Giambi, Giambi is the better bet because he’s cheaper. Both suck with the glove, and both shouldn’t be in the field. And, Dunn comes with a bigger deal than Giambi does. He’ll be under contract when Barton/Carter/Doolittle are ready to contribute at the big league level. Giambi won’t. And, a 2 year deal is much less of a risk than a 4 year deal.
As long as Giambino comes on a two year deal, that is. Any longer and Giambi should be shown the door."
link
Needless to say, Dunn has massively, massively outperformed Giambi.
Blicks - May 28, 2009
And I quote... (ahem)
“I’ll flush with pride when Crosby hits .270 with 18 bombs (bold prediction!)”
On November 16, 2006.
My God.
Joey C. - May 28, 2009
um...i don't think i have words for how ballsy that one is.
mrbendy - May 28, 2009
My shame is my own
But feel free to think of this any time you worry you’ve said something egregiously stupid.
Joey C. - May 28, 2009
Yep, that prediction should definitely be flushed
redtopcowboy - May 28, 2009
I would have found it reasonable
Back in February
fruitattack - May 28, 2009
u mean back in 2006
rktse - May 29, 2009
Buy bear stearns
that one still haunts me.
Future Ed - May 28, 2009
Ha ha ha...
This is the best one!
MMunoz33 - May 29, 2009
Comment looking-up help
Ok, I’m probably overlooking something incredibly obvious, but is there a way to look at a list of my comments from AN while separating out comments from other SBN blogs without using the search feature?
The closest thing I can find is the “Recent Comments” section that has the last 5 comments made on AN.
JLeverenz - May 28, 2009
In the search AN bar type in your screen name.
tresselfan - May 29, 2009
ahh, that makes sense
I figured it would be something like that. Thanks!
JLeverenz - May 31, 2009
In 2007 I thought we should trade cust so that we could keep dan Johnson.... oops
I think that has been my greatest baseball analysis related gaffe.
designatedforassignment - May 28, 2009
I predicted (2 minutes after it happened) that my computer would crash
last night.
After buying a new power supply and motherboard (just in case) and two trips back to the computer store, it now works.
While I was there I bought some more memory to give it 4 GB for the two 3000 mhz processors I have in it. Anyway, it was the power supply and the only reason I thought it might be the motherboard was that it started up in safe mode and then died in normal mode. It then would light up and die instantly. I figured the power was not getting to the MB.
I have only been posting for like 18 months so all my “we are going to score this inning” predictions only came thru about 1 out of 30.
Of course the “Springer is a POS and should be released” is half true at the moment
And the 855 Geren should be fired tirades of mine, have not come true yet.
I did post a GAME OVER this week and we won but that is rare in itself. When I post game over, I really think it’s over and I am pissed off when I post it.
Trainman - May 28, 2009
My Favorite (AN) Mistake?
Does it have to be about baseball?
pam5981 - May 28, 2009
I was rather fond of the time you actually posted
“cxcxcxcx”
mikev - May 28, 2009
Only my obsessive preview habit has saved me from posting that.
Several times.
iglew - May 28, 2009
Well, hell.
Can I change mine?
67MARQUEZ - May 28, 2009
Holy crap.
The internet may not be big enough to contain all of mine.
alox - May 28, 2009
The Internet DOES fit in a small box...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAUyaELfwBo
Swooney's Left Foot - May 28, 2009
What happens at Chez Nico stays at Chez Nico.
notsellingjeans - May 28, 2009
Good rule.
pam5981 - May 28, 2009
Nice post
The one that recently comes to mind is that I said that the A’s offense would be markedly better this year. That definitely has not come to fruition yet. And it may not.
Tyler Bleszinski - May 28, 2009
All the people who said "and then they'll DFA Rajai Davis", sound off now!
Feels like I read that here every day.
stormtown - May 28, 2009
I still can't believe they never DFA'd Emil Brown last year
Swooney's Left Foot - May 28, 2009
DFA DFA?
Why, that’s too literal!!!
Blicks - May 28, 2009
Shameless.
Blicks - May 28, 2009
I held off saying that until the end of April.
I’m on the hook for this month though.
iglew - May 28, 2009
I can't find the AN post, but I know that I predicted
the Mariners to win the AL West last year.
Checking the 2008 final standings now, I see that the Angels finished 100-62 and the Mariners finished 61-101, so yeah, I was a little off with that one.
iglew - May 28, 2009
My bad!
Meant to be written as tongue-in-cheek and loaded with sarcasm, my fan post titled Optimistic about the 2007? Don’t be!
Not only did the main ideas of this post blow up in my face like I was a Coyote with an explosive ACME product, how in the ____ did I leave out the word ‘season’. Now I could have played this off as though I wasn’t kidding about the content in this one — many people who commented there thought that I was being serious.
LowcountryJoe - May 28, 2009
that was a funny post for sure. love it!
mrod - May 28, 2009
I didn't post it on here but...
I definitely gloated to my Angels fan friends that Devine was going to destroy the competition this year and that the A’s would be scoring a lot of runs.
DDroney - May 28, 2009
I predict I won't make any more bad preditctions!
DyeLongJustice - May 28, 2009
I'll bet you twenty bucks I can get you gamblin' by the end of the day
dtownmbrown - May 29, 2009
All I could find was this:
I think Beane will Rule 5 a Shortstop
Instead of a guy who we all knew wouldn’t be an A.
Rebuilding Season - May 28, 2009
I remember posting something about Duke
making 30 starts and being in the Cy Young discussion.
Major “oops!” on my part.
mrod - May 28, 2009
I have just one question.
Who’s Cheryl Crow?
Nate - May 29, 2009
From GOG #0
I predicted the A’s top innings-eater would be Eveland. D’oh!
doctorK - May 29, 2009
Yeah
I didn’t post it here, but I made a bet that the A’s would have more wins than the Giants this year. Kinda wish I can take that back now.
Dub_TC - May 29, 2009
I actually thought Chavez would play 3B? (ouch)
MMunoz33 - May 29, 2009
join the club!!!
Blicks - May 29, 2009
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