Wire Check - 6/3/09

Baseball

The Bay Area could feature two upper echelon starting rotations in the near future. However, as Ray Ratto points out, "The A's, in short, are repelling more people than they are attracting."

Third base has been very ugly for the A's and Matt Holliday would rather be traded to a contender than rot on the A's. Well, if he wants to get traded, he should probably start hitting home runs and up his trade value. Billy Beane will try and get as much value from Holliday as possible and if Beane can't get what he wants in a trade he'll hold onto Holliday and take the draft pick when Holliday leaves as a free agent in the winter.

As the Big Unit targets win #300, Cam Inman looks at former players who came close, but failed to hit milestones. I think my favorite is, "Dale Murphy (398, retired after hitting 0 home runs in 26 games with 1993 Colorado Rockies)" I used to despise Dale Murphy, because he was on the Braves, and the Braves were in the same division as the Giants way back when and he was their best player. You have to give him credit for trying and then realizing if you go homerless in 26 games, 13 at Coors Field, it's probably time to hang 'em up.

Mark Purdy's Top Ten Bay Area related milestones.

Basketball

Really, Scott Ostler? Really? You're going to critique Stan Van Gundy's coaching? After he's knocked off the defending champs and the team with the best record in the regular season to reach the finals? "Ideally, timeout speeches inspire the players to think." Umm, usually timeouts are to stop the other team's momentum, or to draw up a play a the end of the game. This is the NBA. The players are PROFESSIONALS. They know what is required.

Is it just me or are journalists the only ones really upset about the LeBron James thing? Sure, it was poor sportsmanship, but it seems that it's only a story because by walking out of the media, King James made it harder for them to do their jobs.

Football

Jerry Mac has some statistical markers for Raiders fans to keep an eye on.

Nate Clements is missing OTAs with pneumonia.