Welcome to the Roadwire Prospect podcast. I'm your host, James Anderson, and I've got a great guest tonight. I've got Melissa Lockard from The Athletic joining me. Melissa's a long-time guest on the show. We always talk A's, but Melissa, it's got to be weird watching this team, you know, have all these exciting young players and be a team that I think

most fans would love to root for, but it's on the heels of a messy exit. So what is it like

sort of as a longtime A's follower to sort of watch this team, but have them not be playing

in Oakland? Yeah, it's been very weird. I think, you know, on the one hand, it's been fun to see some of the guys that I covered for a very long time,

finally get a chance to make their debuts even like Logan Davidson, who had such a rough start to his pro career, being a 2019 first round pick, and then shoved up to double a right after the pandemic and um you know so

there's been some real feel good stories denzil clark coming up max munsey but at the same time

you know it's hard not to sort of look at what could have been when you think of the fact that like

you know you look at a that home record at sutter Health Park and how bad it is and how much of an

advantage they'd had for so many years playing at the Coliseum. And they've really basically threw

that away, you know, from a competitive standpoint for nothing. You know, so that that part's hard.

And they do just feel very removed. I mean, it's not like it's, it's only an hour and a half away,

but that can be a million miles away

in terms of your kind of connection to it.

So it's definitely been difficult.

I haven't nearly spent as much time focusing on it

as I have in past years.

I can't hear you. We definitely don't root for owners here.

But yeah, I mean, it's like the players, like I just, I love this team.

I want to talk about them, but I just hate that it's kind of happening the way it's happening.

They've just got so many exciting young players, especially on the

position player side, and they're all about the same age. So it's just a really fun young

core. And I kind of want to dive into it, sort of I want to talk through some of the players,

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