Hey y’all. Alex Ferreyra here. Hate mail is few and far between at the Machochip headquarters lately. That’s why when we got this email via our tip line, we were ecstatic. It seems a reader named Jesse found my feature, “Your Ad Here, American League,” not exactly to his liking. According to him, I totally shot down the A’s using flawed logic like thinly veiled facts. Can’t win ‘em all I guess.

Yeah you’re right the A’s are boring. I mean shit, all they’ve done in the last 6 years is make incredible august and september runs to the post season unparalleled across the league, win 20 games in a row one season to break the american league record, pull off incredible trades year after year that get picked up by every news agency…

I guess the a’s are a subaru…yeah you’re right. Subaru’s usually go the same speed for a while then rocket past the rest of the cars… oh wait they dont. you fucking dumbass

Well, Jesse, if you look at the title runs, they’re great. Four first place finishes in the AL West in the past eight seasons… damn, that’s good. But what do they have to show for it in the end? Similarly, Subaru wins all these awards for safety, and is the running for car of the year, but they never seal the deal. What are we in awe of exactly? Incredible runs? The A’s division foe Angels had an incredible run in 2002 when they won it all after a horrible start and entering the playoffs as a wild card.

And what amazing trades are you referring to exactly? The one that brought Octavio Dotel over? Most of the pieces that have given you a leg up over the past few years are no longer with the club: Jason Giambi, Barry Zito, Danny Haren. All gone. This is the Billy Beane, Moneyball-philosophy I’m referring to when I talk about the “bend, don’t break” rule. Beane isn’t exactly playing high-wire tactics building the team. He’s doing it piece by piece, hoping at some point to find the exact configuration. It’s like watching paint dry. And that is why the Oakland A’s are like a Subaru… or that busted Caprice in the pic above.

But thanks for reading and your email Jesse, and letting us take this moment to further explain our point. It makes us seem less crazy when we’re just arguing at a computer screen.

Image [sadkids.com]