Congratulations appear to be in order for Athletics manager Bob Geren. He may be with the A's longer than the City of Oakland itself.
The Chronicle's Susan Slusser is reporting that Geren will be offered a likely one-year extension, with an option for a second year. Geren is already under contract for 2009, so the extension covers 2010 and the option year is 2011. By then, this team may well be known as the Las Vegas Athletics of San Jose/Anaheim.
In two years managing the Athletics, Geren has never had a winning season. His predecessor Ken Macha won the AL West twice and took the A's to the American League Championship Series in his final season -- and was then promptly fired. This reporter does not claim to have any idea what Billy Beane is thinking.
Geren was best man at Beane's wedding, but it was a second wedding. You figure there wasn't even a bachelor party there, so owing Geren a big favor or "stripper photo" blackmail aren't really likely explanations.
Geren is a player's coach -- some say too much so -- but this year he's been given better players. He didn't have Jason Giambi, Orlando Cabrera, or Matt Holliday in previous years. All those supersonic bats in this year's line-up could easily make the difference for Geren in '09. Likewise, opponents' bats might be equally supersonic with an A's pitching rotation as weak as it is currently undefined. Don't even get me started on the Cubs scoring 20 runs against the A's yesterday.
According to Wikipedia, Geren once appeared as a contestant on "Family Feud." But don't bother trying to find it on YouTube. I've been searching for it for the last four and a half hours and haven't found squat.
Keeping Geren around on the basis of last year's microscopic improvement doesn't seem all that baseball savvy. But Beane has built countless winning teams by defying convention, and many A's fans realized years ago that Beane sees things the rest of us don't. Before passing judgment on Geren, let's see how 2009 works out. Let's see what the... Survey Says!
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Joe Kukura is a freelance writer who just assumes you don't have bachelor parties for second weddings. Is this incorrect?
