Welcome to Rates and Burials. It's Friday, December 11th. Derek Van Riper, Enos,

Sarris, Bridgeroli, and a special guest today, Melissa Lockard. Eno, Britt, and Melissa teamed up

for a great piece about the lost season for minor leaguers. So we're going to talk about that.

The long-term impacts that are feared around the game from not having a minor league season,

that missing development

time critically important. We'll dive into some A's specific topics with Melissa as well,

some interesting things happening in Oakland. They're always fun, even when teams aren't doing

anything. The A's are making little moves and doing something. So first, Melissa, thank you for

joining us today. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here. So first, Melissa, thank you for joining us today.

Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here. So I want to start digging into your

guys' combined effort earlier this week. Everyone lost. The minor leagues canceled season.

We'll reverberate for years. We'll put the link in the show description for people

who haven't not read it yet. As you got a chance to speak to people around the A's about this

loss season, what do you think their greatest concern was organizationally speaking by not

having the full scope of minor league development in 2020? Yeah, I mean, I think the sense was

pretty similar across most organizations that, you know,

they don't, what they don't know is what concerns them. You know, I think they could have some

control over how much they were talking to their players, what feedback they were getting from

their players, what little they saw of them in alternate site and instructional league. But ultimately,

they're not going to know until they actually get to

a spring training whenever that happens in a regular season, whenever that happens, you know,

exactly what was lost and where the players that sort of fell through the cracks end up winding up.

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