It’s been seven years since the A’s were a truly bad team, so I’m not sure how to deal with this, with looking for silver linings every day instead of basking in golden sunshine. Things seem backwards, upside-down, as if the dry season had flipped to winter and the rainy season was now summer.

* * *

I wasn’t really paying attention to the A’s last couple of games, but sources tell me that the A’s lost two consecutive games to some team called the Washington Generals, who, until they faced the A’s, had lost 1,270 games in a row. Washington manager Red Klotz can now retire a happy man.

* * *

The Florida Marlins must feel ripped off that they’re the only NL East team that won’t get to play the A’s. I’m sure they, too, would like the A’s help in launching a long winning streak of their own.

ESPN.com had a nice new story about Dontrelle Willis and his agent, an excerpt from a Jerry Crasnick book called “License to Deal”. This sentence, though, threw me:

They broke down enough societal and generational barriers to bridge the gap from affluent Burlingame to hardscrabble west Alameda.

Hardscrabble?

hardscrabble adj. Of a bare living gained by great labor; “the sharecropper’s hardscrabble life”; a marginal existence.

Makes us West Alamedans sound like dust bowl farmers suffering through a drought. And all this time, I thought I was living in a nice, middle-class neighborhood.

* * *

The A’s concluded their draft today. If they’re lucky, one of those late round picks will follow in the footsteps of Dallas Braden, a 24th-round pick, who threw eight shutout innings Tuesday night for AA Midland. When your team is suffering through a bad year, you survive on any scrap of good news you can find.

* * *

A rainstorm passed over Alameda tonight. The water pattered my roof, gurgled down the gutters, and melted away into the earth. I couldn’t sleep.

Here, I’m a Phillies defender.
Dombrowski is off on a bender.
They aren’t facing the truth:
They need talented youth,
The Tigers are not a contender.

Forget all that A’s draft coverage. The big news of the day is this:

Barry Zito got a hit!

He singled to left off Tony Armas, Jr. and is now 1-for-23 in his career.

* * *

Ironic Note of the Day:

Armas’s father was traded from the A’s to Boston for Carney Lansford, the father of Jared Lansford, who was drafted by the A’s today in the second round.

Cliff Pennington is a 5’11”, 180 lb. shortstop out of Texas A&M. He was one of three college shortstops taken in the first round, along with Troy Tulowitzki (7th to the Rockies) and Tyler Greene (30th to the Cardinals). Pennington hit .363/.453/.561, with 37 walks, 25 strikeouts, and 29 stolen bases in 212 ABs.

Here’s what Bryan Smith of Baseball Analysts wrote about Pennington before the draft:

The least-known player of the group is Cliff Pennington, known as a scrappy player that impresses scouts and statheads alike. Pennington has great contact skills, runs well, and shows very good defense up the middle. What power he has shown this season is unlikely to transfer over much professionally, though he could very well be hitting 30 doubles a year in the Bigs. I might go as far to say that Pennington is the most likely of the group to be a league-average player across the board in the Majors, as Cliff looks to be everything Russ Adams was coming out of college.

With Bobby Crosby at shortstop for the next five years, you’d have to think that if Pennington moves quickly up the ladder, he will eventually move over to second base.

Update: According to this Pennington fan page, Pennington went 2-for-3 with 2 walks in his battles against Huston Street. Now I’m really impressed.

Also, Bryan expands upon his comparison of Pennington to Aaron Hill here.

* * *

Travis Buck was the A’s second pick, a 6’2″, 205lb. outfielder from Arizona State. In the same Baseball Analysts article, Bryan was less impressed with Buck, who didn’t have a great year:

While Buck was Baseball America’s top-ranked outfielder heading into the season, unimpressive BB and ISO numbers have led to a freefall this year.

Buck hit .398/.451/.545, with only 4 home runs in 257 ABs in 2005. In 2004, he hit .373/.486/.573, with 9 home runs in 225 ABs.

* * *

With their next three picks, the A’s (shockingly!) went for high school pitchers: Craig Italiano, Jared Lansford, and Tommy Manzella.

Italiano, from Texas, was regarded as the hardest-throwing high-school pitcher in the draft. He’s raw, but talented. Zachary thinks his arm is going to fall off.

Jared Lansford is the son of former A’s third baseman Carney Lansford. From what I’d seen, he wasn’t projected to go quite as early as the second round, but given the connections, there was probably a deal made in advance. Lansford is a pitcher, who throws around 94mph.

* * *

Jimmy Shull from Cal Poly SLO was a curious choice in the fourth round. His 2005 stats are not very impressive: 8-7, 4.61 ERA, 85/33 K/BB, 111.1 IP. His 2004 stats were better, with 102/26 K/BB ratio in 99.2 IP.

So if you look at the choices of Buck and Shull, perhaps we’re seeing that the A’s are finding hidden value in players whose current year wasn’t as good as the previous one.

* * *

The next three picks after Shull were all high schoolers: Scott Deal (5th round) and Kevin Bunch (7th round) are pitchers, while Justin Sellers (6th round) is a shortstop.

Six of the first nine picks are high schoolers? Did someone kidnap Billy Beane before the draft? This draft has been very surprising.

* * *

Back to normalcy: college pitchers in rounds 8-11:

Round 8: Jason Ray from Azusa-Pacific University had some pretty nice stats: 5-2, 3.45 ERA, 72/32 K/BB in 73IP.

Round 9: Trey Shields had unimpressive statistics in 2005: 1-1, 5.50 ERA, 15/5 K/BB, 18 IP. But he was returning from Tommy John surgery the year before, and he’s 6’7″, 230 lbs.

Round 10: John Herrera is tall, too: 6’6″, 195 lbs. His stats at Lubbock Christian are nice, too: 9-4, 2.80 ERA, 117/35 K/BB, 86.2 IP.

Round 11: Steve Kleen is an interesting pick. He was the Pepperdine closer (4-3, 17 saves, 1.75 ERA, 47/18 K/BB, 51.1 IP) but also had decent stats as a first baseman (.350/.436/.525). He fits the A’s tradition of selecting pitchers who have both good stats, and good overall athletic ability.

* * *

Eleven rounds, and the A’s have selected ten pitchers.

* * *

Round 12: Finally, another position player: Jeff Baisley from South Florida. Hit .356/.415/.572.

* * *

Round 13: What is this? A joke? Michael Massaro from Colorado State is listed as a 5’10”, 155 lb. LHP. He has horrible pitching stats: 2-4, 6.96 ERA, 34/22 K/BB, 42.2 IP. Maybe they intended to list him as an outfielder…his hitting stats are better: (.354/.401/.531, 16 SB in 17 attempts, 243 ABs). But then again, this is Colorado, where the air is thin…

* * *

Round 14: Brad Davis, Lewis-Clark State College. 6-2, 2.14 ERA, 58/10 K/BB, 63 IP.

* * *

Round 15: Boy, where do they find these schools? In the last round, they picked someone from Lewis-Clark State College (which is different, apparently, from Lewis & Clark University), and now the A’s draft a player from another school I never heard of, Fort Hays State University. If you’re from a school like that, your stats better jump off the page, and 3B Jeff Bieker’s do: .413/.502/.880 !, 23 HR in 184 ABs. I have no idea what kind of competition he was up against, or what kind of ballparks he played in (no one else on his team had more than 7 HRs), but you gotta think that power like that is worth a gamble.

* * *

Round 16: Justin Smoak, a high-school 1B, was listed as Baseball America’s 95th best overall prospect, with comparisons to Mark Grace. Since he lasted this far, he’s probably headed to college, but the A’s will take a flyer at signing him.

* * *

Round 17: A prototypical Moneyball pick. Isaac Omura, 2B, Hawaii. .369/.464/.568.

* * *

And finally, the last pick of the day, Round 18: Catcher Anthony Recker, Alvernia College, is similar to Jeff Bieker: stats that jump off the page at a Division III school. He hit .461/.544/.855, with 16 HR in 165 ABs.

New York Times columnist Matt Miller asks, Is Persuasion Dead?

Is it possible in America today to convince anyone of anything he doesn’t already believe? If so, are there enough places where this mingling of minds occurs to sustain a democracy?

The signs are not good. Ninety percent of political conversation amounts to dueling “talking points.” Best-selling books reinforce what folks thought when they bought them. Talk radio and opinion journals preach to the converted. Let’s face it: the purpose of most political speech is not to persuade but to win, be it power, ratings, celebrity or even cash.

If the traditional form of persuasion is dead, it’s not because of some bug in our culture, it’s because of a feature of our brains. Certain types of brain damage have revealed that the human brain’s decision-making mechanism is separate from the brain’s logic mechanism. As I wrote on Saturday in my rant about education:

Analysis and decision-making happen in two separate parts of the brain. Analysis is a rational process, but decision-making requires emotions to work.

…if you want to improve your decision-making skills, you need to experience the emotional consequences of your decisions, good or bad, to retain the memories of your decisions.

A mastery of facts and logic alone does not make you a good decision maker. That’s not how the human brain works. To become a good decision maker, a kid needs to practice making decisions.

You can write the world’s most logical argument and still not convince anyone, because your logic was working on the wrong part of the brain. To make someone decide in your favor, you have to convince the part of the brain that makes decisions, and that system is heavily dependent on emotions and subconscious patterns and memories. Given the architecture of the human brain, logic alone is simply not an effective way to make someone decide something.

Moneyball presents the idea that Billy Beane’s success depends largely on logical processes. The counter-argument has been that Billy Beane’s success has depended largely on Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito. I would argue that the decision to draft those three were largely the result of learning from earlier decisions that failed.

• In 1990, the A’s drafted “The Four Aces”, four highly-touted pitching prospects including Todd Van Poppel, all of whom ended up flopping. It was a continuation of a trend: the only pitcher the A’s had drafted and developed in over a decade who had any sort of decent career at all was Curt Young.

  Beane wanted to understand why they failed. A few years later he looked back and compared Van Poppel, who had the size and velocity that scouts drool over, to Steve Karsay from the same draft, who was short, but much more athletic, and more successful. As a result, the A’s began looking to draft pitchers who could not only throw hard, but were also good overall athletes. A few years after that they selected a short but athletic pitcher named Tim Hudson in the sixth round. And when they selected Mark Mulder, whose size and physique is similar to Van Poppel’s, with the second overall pick in the draft a year later, they could be more confident that he wouldn’t flop like Van Poppel, because Mulder is not only big, but a great athlete, too.
   

• In 1995, the A’s were thoroughly prepared to draft Todd Helton with the fifth overall pick in the draft. Suddenly, though, Cuban pitcher Ariel Prieto defected, and became eligible for the draft. The A’s decided to pick him instead. Obviously, that was a huge mistake; one that bothers Beane to this day.

  A few years later, a similar scenario occurred. They were targeting Barry Zito with the ninth overall pick, when to their surprise a player they had rated higher than Zito (Ben Sheets? I’ve never heard them say who) was available at that pick. Because of the Prieto failure, they stuck with Zito.
   

Notice that most of those failures in decision-making paid off about five years down the line, after you could fully experience the nature of your failure. That’s why I think that even if none of the players from the Moneyball draft become superstars, the draft may not be a failure if the experience improves Billy Beane’s decision-making in the long run. The Moneyball draft may fail, but the value is in failing a different way, a way that you can learn new lessons from.

I think the A’s 2004 draft may turn out to be a great one, and if it is, we can probably thank the lessons learned from the Moneyball draft. I’m not sure what those lessons are; perhaps it was as simple as looking for a certain combination of stats and athleticism. Obviously, the A’s won’t be telling us. But it will be interesting to see if we can discern any more lessons learned after we see who the A’s select in tomorrow’s draft. I’ll be watching closely.

The A’s have won six of seven games since Bobby Crosby returned from the DL, the only loss coming at the hands of one of the best pitchers in baseball right now, Roy Halladay. No shame in that.

I went to both weekend games. Saturday evening, I sat in the upper deck and watched Joe Blanton get his first career major league victory, and Huston Street get his second career save. It was a quick, well-played ballgame that was over in just 2:20.

Blanton pitched well, yielding only a pair of early solo homers in seven innings. Ted Lilly was on his game, too, inducing fly out after fly out. Knowing Lilly, I said to myself, “we’ll just have to keep it close until we can get one of those fly balls to go over the fence.”

The game almost got away from the A’s in the top of the sixth, when with runners on first and second, no outs, and the Jays up 2-0, Vernon Wells hit a fly ball to Eric Byrnes in center field. Orlando Hudson tagged and headed to third, and I immediately shouted out for everyone in the vicinity to hear, “Throw it to second, Byrnes!” I figured the odds of Byrnes throwing out the speedy Hudson with his inaccurate noodle of an arm were quite slim, so it was better to keep the double play in order by throwing the ball to second base, keeping the runner at first. But Eric Byrnes is Eric Byrnes, and playing it safe is not in his vocabulary. To my utter amazement, he threw a bullet directly to Eric Chavez at third base, and Hudson was out.

After that, I had to endure about two innings of teasing about my outburst. When Byrnes hit a two-run homer to tie the game in the bottom of that inning, I heard someone shout, “Hit it to second, Byrnes!” But I still think I was right. If Byrnes makes that throw more than 25% of the time, he’d be lucky.

The A’s won when Bobby Crosby, Dan Johnson, and Nick Swisher combined for a two-run 7th-inning rally, and Eric Chavez added a solo homer in the eighth. Huston Street got the final four outs on twelve pitches to finish the night off.

***

Sunday’s game lasted only five minutes more than Saturday’s game, but it felt like days. The game was over early, as the Blue Jays acted as if they had never encountered sunshine and blue skies before, flubbing numerous popups and fly balls. Add in a few home runs by Scutaro, Chavez and Hatteberg, and the A’s had a 12-0 lead after three innings.

In the fourth, I started feeling drowsy and almost fell asleep. Although I think my eyes technically stayed open until the end, I don’t really remember much after that. It’s all fragments:

There were these giant colored disks rolling around. They were chasing me.

The word “Schoenwuss” lingered in the air.

Rich Harden got injured again.

Will Carroll reports Harden may miss several more weeks with a severely swollen and severed head.

John Gibbons suggested giving Millie and Jimmy candlesticks as a wedding gift.

A bagel dog disappered under a large A’s cap, and then suddenly reappeared.

Kiko Calero magically appeared on the mound, and then suddenly vanished.

The Stay-Puff man ate Mount Davis.

Sir, it’s time to go now. The game is over. We are emptying the stadium.

This is a non-baseball rant, triggered by a paragraph by Steven Goldman on the Pinstripe Blog.

As you might imagine, I spend a lot of time in bookstores. Almost every time I go, there’s a mother or father with a crying kid. The kid is saying how he or she wants a book, and the parent is saying no. Having seen this, oh, about 500 times over the years, I made myself a pledge: Should I ever have children, I might sometimes say no to buying a toy, or candy, or a goldfish. I would sternly counsel against drugs, drinking, smoking. However, when it came to books I would be the most permissive parent ever.

I probably felt that way, too, until I actually became a parent. Then I learned how much more complex these situations are than I had ever imagined.

Kids (at least my kids–I imagine this is fairly universal) rarely cry only because of the thing they’re crying about. There’s usually both a surface-level reason for crying (that an outsider could discern), and another unspoken, underlying reason that only the parent of the child can know.

Crying is a language unto itself. If one of my kids is crying about not getting a book, she’s usually communicating something else, too: “I’m getting tired now; I should probably have a nap”, or “I’m getting hungry”, or “I need to understand the rules and limits of this unfamiliar environment.” When my kids are well-fed, well-rested, and understand the rules (“you can only buy one book today”), they can usually handle rejection without bursting into tears.

So unless it’s my fault (I didn’t set the rules in advance), I’m usually not going to spend $15 to make her stop crying: (a) it might not work anyway, (b) it’s not solving the real problem, and (c) if she’s crying to test her limits, being permissive is counterproductive; she’ll cry next time, too, if it lands her an extra book. Instead, I’m going to give her the nap or the meal or the firm “no” she’s really asking for.

Goldman also presents the common argument that reading helps kids learn to think:

In this life, critical thinking skills are what it’s all about. Your wits are all that stand between you and being conned by hyenas and devoured by wolves. Reading is a great way to develop them. The only way to recognize arguments, both good and bad, is to be exposed to them.

Whether I agree with that or not depends on how you define “critical thinking skills”. From that last sentence, I suspect that Goldman would define it to mean the ability to make and dissect arguments. In that case, while I’d agree that reading is a great way to develop that ability, I’d disagree that those skills are what it’s all about. There are many different kinds of intelligences, and reading is good for developing some of them.

Steven Johnson, in his new book, Everything Bad Is Good For You, shows how popular culture, fueled by new technologies, helps to exercise other parts of the mind that reading develops less efficiently. Take, for example, his explanation of the virtues of video games:

Start with the basics: far more than books or movies or music, games force you to make decisions. Novels may activate our imagination, and music may conjure up powerful emotions, but games force you to decide, to choose, to prioritize. All the intellectual benefits of gaming derive from this fundamental virtue, because learning how to think is ultimately about learning to make the right decisions: weighing evidence, analyzing situations, consulting your long-term goals, and then deciding. No other pop cultural form directly engages the brain’s decision-making apparatus in the same way.

Analysis and decision-making happen in two separate parts of the brain. Analysis is a rational process, but decision-making requires emotions to work. Studies have found that people with certain types of brain damage lose the ability to feel certain emotions, and along with it, the ability to make rational decisions:

Those individuals can still use the instruments of their rationality and can still call up the knowledge of the world around them. Their ability to tackle the logic of a problem remains intact. Nonetheless, many of their personal and social decisions are irrational, more often disadvantageous to their self and to others than not.

   –Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens

It makes sense for the brain to tie decision-making to emotions. Emotions function as a memory-enhancer: the stronger the emotion associated with an event, the more likely it is to be remembered. So if you want to improve your decision-making skills, you need to experience the emotional consequences of your decisions, good or bad, to retain the memories of your decisions.

A mastery of facts and logic alone does not make you a good decision maker. That’s not how the human brain works. To become a good decision maker, a kid needs to practice making decisions. A kid needs to play.

As education funds get cut, and the jobs of school administrators come to depend on the reading and math test scores of their students, the value of play gets forgotten. Schools have become places where kids work to improve their scores, instead of play to improve their minds.

Kids need to play games, and learn to make decisions. They need to play music, and learn to recognize patterns and express emotions. They need to play sports, and learn spatial reasoning. They need to play with their friends and learn to handle social relationships.

And the best part is, kids love to play, naturally. Just as a cry tells us when a child’s needs are going unmet, an expression of interest or enjoyment tells us when they are. Evolution has had four billion years to evolve our intelligent species. We should trust and listen to its mechanisms. The best way to turn a blank-slate child into an intelligent adult is to let a kid be a kid.

Mr. Dotel enters a doctor’s office.

Mr. Dotel: Hello? I wish to register a complaint.

Dr. Yocum: We’re closing for lunch.

Mr. Dotel: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to register a complaint about this here elbow what you treated in this very office not two weeks ago.

Dr. Yocum: Oh, yes, the, uh, closer’s arm. What’s uh, what’s wrong with it?

Mr. Dotel: What’s wrong with it? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. It’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it.

Dr. Yocum: No, no, it’s uh…it’s just restin’.

Mr. Dotel: Listen, matey, I know a dead elbow when I feel one, and I’m feeling one right now.

Dr. Yocum: No, it’s not dead, it’s just restin’. Remarkable joint, the elbow. Excellent congruity of the bony architecture.

Mr. Dotel: The congruity don’t enter into it. It’s stone dead.

Dr. Yocum: Nononono, no, no! It’s just restin’.

Mr. Dotel: All right, if it’s just resting, I’ll wake it up! Hello, elbow! Wake up, elbow! I’m going to throw a slider now!

(Picks up a baseball, and throws a hanging slider across the room.)

Now that’s what I call a dead elbow.

Dr. Yocum: No, the elbow is stunned.

Mr. Dotel: STUNNED?!?

Dr. Yocum: You stunned it, just as it had almost finished restin’. Elbows stun easily, major.

Mr. Dotel: Um…now look here, mate, I’ve definitely had enough of this. The elbow is definitely deceased, and when I came to see you two weeks ago you assured me that my slider’s lack of movement was due to a temporary buildup of calcium. The elbow is dead. It is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. This…is a late elbow! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! Its ulnar collateral ligament is of interest only to historians! It’s left the yard! It’s shuffled off this mortal coil! It’s run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This…. is an EX-ELBOW!

Dr. Yocum: Well, I better replace your UCL, then.

Mr. Dotel: If you want to get anything done in this country you’ve got to complain ’til you’re blue in the mouth.

Dr. Yocum: Sorry, Bud, we’re fresh out of tendons.

Mr. Dotel: I see, I see. I get the picture.

Dr. Yocum: Listen, I’ll tell you what, tell you what, if you go to Dr. Andrews’ office in Birmingham, he’ll replace your elbow for you.

Mr. Dotel: Birmingham, eh? OK.

…

Mr. Dotel enters Dr. Andrews’ office.

Mr. Dotel: Um, excuse me, this is Birmingham, isn’t it?

Dr. Andrews: No, it’s Mobile.

Mr. Dotel leaves, then comes back.

Mr. Dotel: I understand that this is Birmingham.

Dr. Andrews: Yeah?

Mr. Dotel: You told me it was Mobile!

Dr. Andrews: It was an anagram.

Mr. Dotel: An anagram?

Dr. Andrews: No, no, not an anagram–what’s the other thing where it reads the same backwards as forwards?

Mr. Dotel: A palindrome?

Dr. Andrews: Yeah, yeah.

Mr. Dotel: It’s not a palindrome! The palindrome of Mobile would be Elibom! It doesn’t work!

Dr. Andrews: What do you want?

Mr. Dotel: No, I’m sorry! I’m not prepared to pursue my line of inquiry any longer as this has all become superfluous.

Dr. Andrews: Superfluous, sir?

Mr. Dotel: Yes, superfluous. The point of this blog entry has been already made hasn’t it? There’s no point in continuing except to show off some more pop culture references.

Dr. Andrews: Yeah…well…do you…do you want to come back to my place and watch Huston Street take over your job?

Mr. Dotel: Yeah, all right.

The draft is coming up on Tuesday. Mychael Urban has an A’s draft preview on MLB.com. John Sickels is running a mock draft on Sunday.

Baseball America is also kicking into high gear. Here’s their free stuff:
Draft order
Top 200 prospects
Best tools
Pre-draft blog

Looking back at last year’s draft, Huston Street alone makes it a good one. As far as everyone else, it’s still too early to tell. No one else has rocketed up the system like Street. On the other hand, the only early round pick who has struggled badly is Michael Rogers, although Landon Powell’s knee injury puts a big question mark on his long-term prospects as a catcher.

Here’s where the 2004 draftees are now. Some of them were signed and played last year in short-season ball; if they’re not playing now, I’m assuming they’re there still:

There nothing worse than rooting for a losing team with a bunch of players you know won’t be around next year. When my brain starts looking around for scapegoats, I immediately head for the nearest future-ex-Athletic: Hatteberg, Durazo, Byrnes, Ginter, Dotel. If you’re going to lose, lose with youngsters who have a chance to improve.

The last two nights, the lineup has featured Dan Johnson, Bobby Crosby and Nick Swisher, each of whom had at least one extra-base hit. They’re young, and they’ve got power. That’s the way I like it. Suddenly, being an A’s fan feels a whole lot better: it’s a team with a future, not just a past.

I loved the fact that Bobby Kielty hit right-handed against Hideo Nomo last night. He did this once before this season, against Tim Wakefield. Right-handed batters are hitting .327 against Nomo this year, lefties only .244. That’s what switch-hitting is for: to use platoon splits to your advantage. Kielty singled and walked off Nomo.

Dan Haren threw a complete game last night, allowing one run in nine innings. That was an encouraging performance, although I’m not quite ready to jump on the I-Love-Haren bandwagon just yet.

Haren is obviously extremely talented, with great stuff, but at this point, he’s a frontrunner. When things are going well, they go very well, as it did last night. But Haren hasn’t quite mastered the art of getting out of a jam. He has a tendency to let a small problem explode into a huge rally. His ERA (4.34) hides this problem a bit; he’s allowed nine unearned runs so far, for an average of 5.56 RA/9, which is more reflective of his problem working out of jams. Also, he’s given up more multi-run innings this year than single-run innings:

The ability to minimize the damage in a rally is, I believe, a learnable skill. It’s what made Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder such great pitchers. Turn a couple of five-run rallies into two-run rallies, a three-run rally into a one-run rally, and suddenly you’re an All-Star with a 3.50 ERA instead of an Average Joe with a 4.34.

I think Dan Haren has the talent to be such an All-Star pitcher. But nine smooth innings against Tampa Bay doesn’t really show me anything. He never had more than one baserunner on base at a time all night. When we start to see him get out of jams with some consistency, then we’ll know that Haren has truly arrived.