Athletics Sign Former Perfect Game Throwing Pitcher

The Oakland Athletics have signed right-hander Phillip Humber to a minor league contract and it is expected he will have a chance to make the roster during spring training.  He hasn’t had the greatest career thus far but has shown potential throwing the 21st perfect game in Major League Baseball History for the Chicago White Sox in 2012.  Hopefully with the A’s pitching staff and coaches can help him turn his potential into production. Humber is 16-23 in his career and has an ERA over 5 but he has played for some bad teams and may not have gotten the guidance he needs yet.  Oakland also decided to pick up Brett Anderson and Coco Crisp’s options for 2014, but declined to pick up outfielder Chris Young, and catcher Kurt Suzuki. Anderson is another pitcher who shows some promise but he has experienced injury trouble almost every season with the Athletics since being traded from the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2007.  He will have what may be his last shot to prove that he can still hack it on the mound after going through Tommy John surgery, an oblique strain, a stress fracture, and forearm strains in recent seasons. Crisp has been productive since joining the A’s in 2009 and has seemed to help change the culture of young guys to having more fun and sharing the wealth offensively.  Next year he should surpass 300 career stolen bases and will hopefully be able to stay healthy all year to stay on the field for his range defensively and his big time hits on offense. Oakland declined to keep Young who was either completely overpaid or completely underperformed in his time in Oakland.  There was no way the team was going to keep his 11 million dollar salary.  Suzuki played about as expected when signed but with Oakland already having other promising catchers, it was just not worth it to keep him around on the roster. The Oakland front office is going to make some moves this offseason after the payroll is said to have jumped somewhere in the 60 million dollar range, and so far things seem to be going well.