Even in his worst months he's still a league average bat or slightly better. I suspect every other batter on this team has months way worse than that. He's been our steadiest hitter.
To me the most pleasant surprise was Melky. So steady all year, really never had a single significant slump.
Easily the biggest disappointment was Ramsus; what a horrible season. Last year was such a tease and he crashed right back to mediocrity.
Duds - Rasmus, Morrow, Janssen, Santos, Goins (but we knew he'd be so he didn't necessarily disappoint the way the other 4 did)
Studs - Bautista, Stroman, Cecil, Melky
I think AA grossly underestimated how much his lack of serious activity over the last 8-9 months would undermine the team's morale.
Teams that were already better than us have made significant additions while we've done nothing but waiver wire pickups. I concede that in Oakland's case the addition of Lester came with enormous offensive loss and I would not have wanted AA to make a trade equivalent to that. But damn, even a solid 2B or BP addition should have been easily manageable. These players were thinking the same thing and it shows.
Buerhle appeared to have a runner picked off at first. close play but they called him safe. Buerhle was back in the rubber, next batter was in the box and then Gibby called for a challenge. On the review they overturned the call and declared the runner out. But then Maddon complained that the challenge was late.
Game was played under protest. MLB might make them re play the game.
It's Gibbons who has to know the rule. He was too late to challenge. They could definitely make them re.play it which would suck enormously. Both because we beat a tough opponent at a key time and because the call was wrong to begin with. damn.