Sun Aug 12, 2018 7:26 am
If you are not interested in this season, as one poster pointed out above, then that means your favorite team is not in the running for a playoff spot. Being a Red Sox fan this season seems pretty magical to me.
As to players going up and down to the minor leagues....I don't believe the rules have changed in the number of times you can option a player to the minors before running out of options on that player. So this would not be any different from years past. I do not believe they have been cycling pitchers through AAA as a strategy for reasons other than injuries or possibly for an upcoming double header which is no different than years past.
You saw that Fernando Rodney was the 31st pitcher used by the A's this season. They just traded for him. He did not come up from the minors. They have also had bad luck losing pitchers to the DL this year so they are forced to trade for pitchers, bring some pitchers up or sign old pitchers like Edwin Jackson and Brett Anderson who were out of MLB.
The below paragraph is taken from a July 10 CBS article:
The A's injury collection hasn't received the same attention as those of other California-based teams, like the Angels and Dodgers, but it's nearly been as dire. At the moment, the A's have eight players on the disabled list: outfielders Matt Joyce and Boog Powell, and pitchers Paul Blackburn, Trevor Cahill, Jharel Cotton, Daniel Gossett, Daniel Mengden, and Andrew Triggs -- that's two most-days starting positional players and six starting pitchers … yes, six.
I don't know how you could blame the A's bad luck with pitcher injuries as the reason your interest in MLB has waned.