for 12 months with a one-year price guarantee. this is delicious. ♪ [ male announcer ] save the day in an instant. at&t. ♪ high and deep to left. it is gone. what a way to end this series. >> how's it going everybody? welcome to oakland a's 2013. built for success. and yes, this team is loaded with talent but with it comes just about as many questions that need to be answered. last year's manager of the

year, bob melvin has got to get them answered quickly if this team is to have any chance of repeating in the western division again. he has definitely got his work cut out for him. >> fry ball. center field ballgame. western division. >> the oakland as have shocked the rangers and the basketball world. >> the art of managing has changed over the years. the as have gone from billy martin to dick williams and all points in between which work with yesterday's players to varying degrees. this time around, it's the very now bob melvin who seems to be the perfect fit for players of this era. his relaxed personable approach most certainly contributed to all the come backs of last season. >> there's a shot to left and

that baby is gone. >> creating an atmosphere of less stress during the high tension late innings. his style, certainly works for him. >> i pinch myself to think that a guy with this kind of qualities was available to us and was unemployed. now we have a professional working relationship and personal relationship too which i sympathy unique between a general manager and manager. we're almost the same age. we played in the same area error. >> he's a good person. when you have someone like him that is your manager and leader that understands the game, he understands personality people. he's a communique to. it makes him special. >> the sports pages are full of stories about managers with a short shelf life and usually their demise can be traced back to an inability to get along with the modern ballplayer. if you don't carry credibility

with those players, you won't be around long. bob melvin has the resume as a former big leaguer and he understands the game fully. but it's the psychological aspect regarding his players that differentiates him. >> he has been great for us. very interactive guy. door is always open. i know you hear that a lot but you don't know the truth of it until you see it. >> go have a clubhouse that's loose and we spend 6 plus, 7 plus months together. you want them to be able to be their own people in the clubhouse. >> we have a lot of young guys. you don't want their confidence to shrink because they're not in there and don't know why. >> another thing he does so well is lets everyone's personalities run wild. there's no make everybody shut up at some point. serve loud all day every day. unless we lose. that's obvious. you can be 100% yourself and on the ball field. >> of course it goes without saying, you can have the

greatest psychologist or strategist calling all the shots but if you don't have the players, chances are the postseason will not await your team. >> two runs are going to score. >> after the a's long shot success of last year, they now face that double edged sword with great triumph comes expectation. >> the good thing is that nobody's picking up again to win the west. that's a good thing. particularly the young team. we're what you would classify as a heavy weight division. >> as far as this year, the determination, the work ethic, all of those thing versus to remain the same. you have to continually try to get better because if you remain neutral you're losing ground. our focus this year is to try to find with a we were deficient in last year and get better. >> far too early to tell what type of personality this year's a's team will develop but last season it was all about the come backs and walk off victory and a very in your face way of celebrating. joe has more on the a's life of

pi. >> left center field and that is going to get down, here he comes. and this baby is over. >> okay. here they come. double barrel. >> it's something the a's did more than any other team in the major leagues last year. the blood bloop hit and sacrifice and homerun. they had 15 walk off wins. when you develop a track record like that, a team starts to feel it's never out of a game. >> you watch some of those games, if the guys hustle in the 9th inning and made a bad throw or the guy bobbled it because you were running down the line hard then some of the walk offs are going to happen. you play hard and anything can

happen. >> often times it did. consider these numbers. at the end of june, the a's trailed the division leading texas rangers by 13 games. >> with just 9 games left they were still 5 back. >> the a's needed to sweep the rangers in the last three games of the year and did. >> ballgame. western division. >> after game 162, they had soul possession of first place for the first time all year. >> i haven't seen as resilient as we were and knew we were still in it for the last out and we're able to come through in a lot of tough situations workout of jams and somehow some wins that quite frankly we shouldn't have come away with. >> that all start with the pitching. it keeps us in every game. >> a walk off win usually proceeds a victorious postgame interview which thanks to josh redick also comes with with this. >> oh there it is. >> fun.

my son loves it. he's 3. he loves it. every time he sees an interview after a game he says is he going to get pie in his face. >> that's probably still going to be part of it. >> that's going to be tough to top what we did last year but we'll have to stick with the traditional pies. i don't think any super hero outfits will come out this year. >> the a's will take wins of any variety but when they come in dramatic fashion they do know how to celebrate the occasion. >> when we continue, meet the faces that make up the best young staff. and under the heading of you can never have enough great arms, we're introduced to a former first baseman that could be a bull pen main stay. built for success continues [ male announcer ] the southwest airlines nationwide sale

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the first strike out for malone. >> just one of the many incredible aspects with regard to the a's success last year. they had 12 rookie pitchers on their staff that combined for 54 total victories. that's a major league record. unless you believe in something like the sophomore jinx, this staff is going to get even better. that has to be a scary thought even for the likes of pujols and josh hamilton in the west. >> shallow center field, chris coming in and that's it. malone with a complete game. >> prior to last year, unless you were some kind of fantasy league fanatic you would have been hard pressed to name even a couple of pitchers in the oakland starting rotation. even though they haven't reached household name status just yet, rest assured they're on the radar of anyone that

matters in major league baseball beginning with anderson who made his presence felt last august following a return from tommy john surgery. he wracks up four wins and a 2.57 e.r.a. a youngster who on this staff is considered a veteran. >> i'm 25 and feel like i'm 45 next to the young guys. we have young pitching that stepped up last year and i like where we're at and where we're headed this coming year. >> when it comes to this team's pitching, the a stands for astonishing. think about it. the tampa bay rays are the only team staff that allowed fewer runs than the a's. the story gets better considering that two of the guys who helped put these numbers together were rookies in 2012. tommy malone and jared parker. they tied for the team's franchise record for victories in a first season with 13 both are so fresh they don't even understand what it is they should feel in the big league.

>> i haven't been around long enough to know. i feel like the guys we had didn't make it feel like -- you know, we went out there and battled and kept the team in the game and it just felt like we were out there doing our job and we had a friendly competition between all the starters to just go out there and try to outperform the guy that just went before you. >> we realized at times when we see another team that has, you know, a lot of guys that have put in 10 or 15 years we can't even add up to that many. it's something we know who we are and we don't put too much into it. >> by the end of last season the a's were the 5th youngest staff in the majors. that said, not to forget the senior starter who at age 39 will hold down the 5th spot in the rotation once he serves his five game suspension for performance enhancer. >> swings and misses. >> rounding out the fab5, 25- year-old a.j. griffin that bolted up only to

firmly implant himself with a 7- 0 record and 3.06 e.r.a. >> the drive is to come in and have it be like a seamless transition and you want to contribute right off the bat. you never want to be the weak link on the team. >> we have a lot of confidence in our stuff. that's why we're at this level. it's the preparation for ourselves just to get ready for our next start. we don't take that lightly. we go in and because we pitch every 5th day doesn't mean every other day is important. we play a big role. we have trust no matter what kind of pitcher we are and i think we're able to see that last year. >> the name recognition, the angels and the rangers so we have the underdog attack for what seems like forever but we kind of like it. we go out there and nobody really knows who we are but we win ballgames. >> under the heading of you can never have enough great arms, he introduces us to a foreman first baseman that could be a

bull pen main stay. >> it's like the first base is played by a pitcher. >> a's reliever made his major league debut last june. >> finishes it inside with a strike out. >> sean averaged more than 11.4 strike outs for 9 innings pitched. that's the third best ratio in athletics history and sean's fastball has been his key to success. >> the velocity with it is one thing but the deception on it and the location are the two biggest things for me. we have been developing the secondary pitches. but by no means am i going to be a guy that's going to come out and try to roll a breaking ball in there and surprise you. oh, you know, i'm still going to attack with the fastball. >> 96 miles per hour from do little. >> sean thought he'd get her as a first baseman but he was held to 28 games in a three year span and that's when he remembered he used to pitch in

college. >> it did come back really quick. so i don't know if maybe one of those things that was just meant to be. this was something i was supposed to be doing from the beginning. >> last season sean pitched 6 games with single a stockton. a game with double a mid landscaping texas and just two game with sacramento before getting the call to the big leagues. >> how about that inning. >> this conversion is pretty spectacular. you realize that right. >> it's not lost on me how crazy last year was. for me to be able to make the transition and go from high to big leagues in two months is not something i take for granted. i don't know that there's a better story last year in baseball than sean doolittle but a very humble kid, very grounded and that's one of the reasons he was able to have the success he did at many levels and changing positions on top but he's a special kid. >> i think there is a little bit of that knock to there that there is a natural knack for

it. really my body is able to repeat my delivery and that sort of thing. so it's something that i'm really proud of and i'm just really glad it worked out. >> and that's the ballgame. >> if you think three say crowd. wait until you get a look at the a's outfield. an abundance of talent lead by super star in the making. built for success back in a moment [ birds chirping ]

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[ seagulls squawking ] that will be five very talented players for only 4 positions. left, right, center and

designated hitter. but as joe explains as problems go, it's really not a bad one to have. >> the outfield here at phoenix municipal stadium is even more vast than the one at the oakland coliseum. it's in the outfield that bob melvin has his greatest challenge every day. >> the fact he's managing with a designated hitter gives him one more option but he does have a math problem on his hands. >> i'm not sure how it's going to play out as far as a recipe during the season yet. >> that group is coco crisp, and the newly acquired chris young. >> it's a situation right now and as a player you don't have control about things like that. all i can do as a player and everybody else else pretty much celebrate a play every day. >> one way they figured out was to move him to left field. a regular there when healthy t

rookie from cuba batted 292 with 23 homeruns. >> did the team have to continue to work like that and continue batter for all year. >> right field will be handled by josh reddick. all he did last year was hit 32 homeruns in his first season at oakland and develop a loyal following in the bleachers. >> they're great. they get into the whole thing. the rage. me with with all of my wrestling stuff. i always said they either have lenient bosses or have a lot of money and don't work. >> one more battle for playing time, smith, left, right, designated hitter, he'll do it all. >> takes care of itself. none of us will worry about it. bob and his staff do a great job of communicating to us. we always do what we want to hear. for me personally come to the park every day. like a professional ready to play that day and see what happeneds. >> it will be a juggling act

for bob melvin all season but in this case, that's a good problem to happen. >> now more on the cuban beginning his second season in oakland. >> it's not very often a rookie leads a major league team in batting average. but he did that last year with oakland. the human highlight real also lead the a's in on base and slugging percentage. >> wow. this is a bullet. >> this guy is intimidating. he is afraid of nothing. improvements from at bat to at bat were amazing. he was exactly what you hoped he'd become. >> what's more important for him is all about adaptation. in the beginning it was hard for him. he can find a way to connect and recognize everything like that. >> he don't feel really comfortable yet because he cannot dominate the language yet. >> he never played a single game in the minor leagues but just two years ago, he belted a

cuban professional league record, 33 homeruns. >> everyone knew he had power. the question was more about his consistency as a hitter. he learned how to sit on pitchers. he learned pitchers, he's a smart kid and he's a good athlete. >> in a way he reminds me a lot of beou jackson. >> he is not a two sport star like bo but he's built like a line backer and his workouts were a big hit on youtube. >> the only different thing to improve is batting, be healthy for the rest of it. >> the working numbers speak for themselves but what you never heard were the legal and family issues that kept him distraughted most of last season. >> he came from cuba about two years ago and a dozen of his family members escaped to the

dominican republic last year but got caught in a political and bureaucratic nightmare. >> it was hard to tell what was bothering him at times and we didn't find out until later that he was going through some of the things. but earlier this month his family finally moved to miami. >> i'm going to play relaxed. >> his mother is a former olympic softball pitcher and can now resume coaching her son. >> it's a 3 run walk off homer. >> she always talked to him about he had to be prepared. you have to put everything on the field. you have to be the best. >> and like a good son, he is doing his homework every day. >> it's part of the oakland a's legacy. legacy. loose $4 doesn't really buy you much these days, huh?

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back in the 50s when the a's put together three consecutive world championships they were known for their free spirited attitude. well, these days they of course would like to replicate that kind of on field success and maybe some day fans will remember them as the team with the long hair but the beards instead. fred has more on that hair predicament. >> that baby is gone. >> he's outfielder josh reddick and lead the team in homeruns last year. this spring he's lead a new category. most whiskers. >> did you lose a bet. >> no, me and coach made a deal at the end of the deal who could grow the best facial hair

by spring training. have won. >> his facial hair can grow at a faster pace than mine which six because i wanted to come back looking like santa claus. >> we have a lot of guys growing beards. what's the motivation. >> i went hunting and after that i thought i was a woods man. so i let it go. >> if i shave i like 16. it's more to look older. >> it's a nice beard. >> it's better than josh reddicks beard. >> come on. >> this is a professional i have been growing it more than 6 months beard. i know what i'm doing. it's really cool. mine just won't grow that well. >> when charlie finlay owned the athletics in the 70s he paid his player to grow facial hair. the current owner isn't about to dish out the money but he isn't going to stop it either. >> it's like the tarps, you know, i like them and other people don't. i'm not going to ask them to remove them. >> now this beard off has

officially crossed over to reddicks other love, professional wrestling. >> he is the king of beards. >> we can go on twitter and challenging me to a beard off to the end of the year. of course i'm going to say yes. >> and you are not -- >> everybody knows i'm a huge wrestling guy. no shaving throughout the year. no matter what goes down. >> this is not part of the a's fear the beard campaign. it's just another opportunity for this fun loving bunch to unite. >> sure. why can't it be, you know? we had such a close clubhouse last year and in anything you can use in bringing each other together i sympathy big. >> not every player is on board with this facial hair idea. but the bearded terror, he hopes it keeps growing every day. >> so it's pretty clear to see where ever the a's finish this year, they're going to have a

good time getting there. they've got the attitude. they've got the talent. the oakland a's 2013, yes, they are built for success. thanks for watching everybody. well, well, well. growing up, we didn't have u-verse. we couldn't record four shows at the same time. in my day, you were lucky if you could record two shows. and if mom was recording her dumb show and dad was recording his dumb show then, by george, that's all we watched. and we liked it! today's kids got it so good.