AP file photo: Oakland A’s Coco Crisp dives into the Angels Stadium crowd for a Ji Man Choi of the Los Angeles Angels ball that Crisp wound up catching preventing a home run in the Thursday August 4th game

On the Oakland A’s with Charlie O, Keeping Coco Crisp out of the A’s line up is not something new in MLB. Coco says the Athletics and manager Bob Melvin are keeping him out of the line up to avoid having him fulfill the 130 games to reach vesting on part of his $13 million contract which expires this season. Crisp needs to play in 130 games to reach bonuses from hits, runs, home runs, and defensive play accumulated.

Melvin counters saying that Crisp will not be facing left handed pitching and Crisp says that’s cutting down not only on his playing time but his vesting time. This is pretty common kind of option that happens in a lot of contracts and what it does it puts in incentives usually these kind of contracts include a number of at bats, average, number of innings played, number of games played. Crisp had sat during Sunday vs. Seattle and Monday game vs. Texas. Crisp played the extra inning game in Texas leading off and going 1-5 on Tuesday.

Charlie O covers the A’s and does weekly podcasts on A’s baseball at http://www.sportsradioservice.com