by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

SAN JOSE–The Anaheim Ducks continue to be the class of the NHL Pacific Division with their eight point lead over the Vancouver Canucks and San Jose Sharks. When the NHL season started this is basically the same team from last season with Logan Couture, Joe Pavelski, Joe Thornton, and Patrick Marleau. You know what is going to happen and I asked to do some TV work for Telemundo and the news director said, “call me when the Sharks make it to the playoffs” and I asked “how do you know they’re going to make it to the playoffs?”

We’ll see what happens the Sharks are 2-2 for the month of January and it’s a situation where anything can happen they dropped two key games by five goals to the St.Louis Blues this month not once but twice by scores of 7-2. Otherwise this is going to be a good year for San Jose at this point their 25-15-5 with 49 points. The team is set to play an outdoor game for Sat Feb 21 at Levis Stadium as part of the NHL Stadium Series hosting the Los Angeles Kings.

That game should get a lot of media coverage nationwide. It will be great to see that game outdoors it will be the first outdoor game in Sharks history. The Kings will be playing in their second outdoor game as they and the Anaheim Ducks played an outdoor game last season at Dodgers Stadium. This will be a historic moment to cover a game like that never in the history of Bay Area professional hockey has a game been played outdoors.

Zobrist and Escobar come to Oakland for Jaso: The Oakland A’s General manager Billy Beane never too shy to make a deal dealt catcher John Jaso and two minor leaguers to Tampa Bay for infielder Ben Zobrist and shortstop Yunel Escobar. Zobrist hit .272 with ten homers, and 52 RBIs last season for the Tampa Bay Rays. Escobar hit .258 with seven homers, 39 RBIs and 33 runs scored. Jaso hit .264 with nine homers, 40 RBIs and 42 runs scored.

Escobar is a very good shortstop, he’s an upgrade from Jed Lowrie and look for Escobar to be the everybody shortstop for the A’s looking at Zobrist he’s going to play every position. Zobrist can play in the infield and the outfield as well. So it looks like Beane strikes again these are not double A players these are two guys who step up and play the game. Circle the names on your scorecard Zobrist and Escobar will be big helpers for the A’s this coming season.

Now we can tell the A’s they have the left side of the infield safe with Brett Lawrie who will be the third baseman, Escobar will be the shortstop and Eric Sogard more than likely be the second baseman. Zobrist brings a lot of offensive production to the A’s line up this should be a good deal for the A’s as they seal the deal Saturday and it’s not quite enough to win the division for the A’s and they didn’t win it last year and the Angels won it with 98 wins. The A’s made the wild card and were eliminated in one game in Kansas City maybe that’s why Beane is making so many off season overhauls.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland A’s baseball and does News and Commentary on http://www.sportsradioservice.com Listen to Amaury below for his podcast on the San Jose Sharks and Oakland A’s