Some things never change, ex-Athletic department:  Joe Blanton pitched a seven-inning one-hitter last night, but his team still lost.

The A’s break their 10-game losing streak.  Dallas Braden pitches seven effective innings.  Brad Ziegler throws two more scoreless innings, giving him 37 consecutive shutout innings to start his career, and picks up his first career save.  

Braden’s ERA is 4.62.  Since he’s essentially replacing Joe Blanton (4.96 ERA) in the rotation, that’s pretty good.  Blanton is easily replaced, and the A’s both save money, and get three prospects.  That deal has worked out well so far.

Ziegler’s ERA is 0.00, obviously.  If Ziegler went out in his next appearance and gave up 19 runs without recording an out, his ERA would be…(drumroll please)…4.62.

Forbes declares the Sacramento River Cats to be the most valuable minor league franchise, worth $29.8 million. 

Forbes also declare A’s fans to be the third least loyal in the majors.  Doggone Angels finish first again.

Vincent Mazzaro is one of Peter Bendix’s "eight prospects to watch" over on Beyond the Boxscore.

A’s prospects Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson are both possibilities to start the Olympic opener against South Korea.  But apparently, the starting pitcher is kept a secret in international competition, so US manager Davey Johnson is keeping mum.  We won’t know for sure until game time.

The opener for the US is scheduled 6pm Beijing time on Wednesday.  That’s 3am ET, midnight PT.  The game is scheduled to be shown on MSNBC on tape delay between 10am and 2pm PT.

The A’s have lost 10 in a row, and are now eight games under .500, but they have still outscored their opponents, 4.04 runs/game to 3.93 runs/game.

Which player has the highest 2008 Win Probability Added among A’s batters?

First, a little hint: the player that leads the team in Win Shares (14) is dead last on the team in WPA (-10.45).

Made your guess?   OK, now you can peek.

Bet you were wrong.

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Also, be sure to check out our little experiment on the Catfish Stew home page.  Explanation here.

Graham Goldbeck takes a look at the debut of Gio Gonzalez using Pitch/FX.

Huston Street, unsurprisingly, did not pass through waivers.

Brad Ziegler admits to contemplating his bobblehead.

Lenny DiNardo likes sad songs.  Is a losing streak like a sad song?  Is Lenny DiNardo enjoying himself?

Sure, Rob, it’s easy to boycott watching the Olympics for two weeks in protest over the Chinese government.   But can you go two weeks without using any product made in China?  That would be a much more impressive feat.

The closer on the 1988 US Olympic baseball team was Joe Slusarski.

15-year-old Bryce Harper has a beautiful swing.

Sometimes, my life circumstances make it impossible for me to write at any length about stuff. Like now.  The A’s are on a 10-game losing streak, and I don’t have time to think or write about it.  So I’m trying a little experiment:  throwing up a bunch of quick links on Catfish Stew when I find something interesting, but don’t have time to absorb it.   For now, these quick links will only show up on Catfish Stew, and not on the Toaster home page or in the "Hot from the Toaster" list.   We’ll see how the experiment goes.

The trade deadline came and went, as I suspected, without another trade by the A’s. Justin Duchscherer, Alan Embree, Huston Street, Mark Ellis and Bobby Crosby are still going to be hanging out in Oaktown for a little while longer.

As I write this, I’m sitting here watching the A’s get their butts kicked by the Red Sox, feeling curiously detatched about the whole affair.  The lack of activity at the trade deadline was a bit disappointing.  As much as I love Mark Ellis and Justin Duchscherer, I’m ready to move on. 

It’s like senioritis: we know what college we’re going to go to for the next few years, but here we are still hanging out at the same old school, with the same old classmates, doing the same old work, and the whole scene feels rather pointless.

How many of these current classmates will be going to the new school, the next good A’s team? Let us count to 25 + 4 DL guys*:

Fer sure:
Kurt Suzuki
Daric Barton
Carlos Gonzalez
These guys are the core of the future lineup. Suzuki is already a solid, league-average catcher. Barton and Gonzalez have opposite problems: Barton walks well enough, but has not hit for average; Gonzalez has hit for average, but needs to walk more. But they’re both very young and talented, and should improve enough to stick around for years to come.

Probably:
Ryan Sweeney
Sean Gallagher
Both these guys are producing well enough at the major league to be regular contributors already. But they’re not quite as young as Barton and Gonzalez, they have lower ceilings, and there are a whole lot of talented players in the minors at their positions who could push them out in the future.

Probably (reliever version):
Brad Ziegler
Joey Devine
Andrew Brown*
Jerry Blevins
Santiago Casilla
Relievers are unreliable. They can be great one year, and terrible the next. But this is as good a group of young relievers as you’re going to find. Only Casilla had more than one full year of major league service coming into the season. The A’s will have control of all of these other guys for five more seasons.

Maybe:
Greg Smith
Dana Eveland
Dallas Braden
Jack Cust
Jack Hannahan
Gregorio Petit
The service clocks for Smith, Eveland, and Braden can keep them around for five more years, as well, but there’s so much talent behind them, that it’s hard to imagine they’ll all stay here when those younger pitchers are ready to make it up to the majors. I’m betting that they all get traded as soon as the Cahill/Anderson generation starts pushing for roster spots. Meanwhile, Hannahan and Petit might hang around not because they’re good, but because because SS and 3B are the two positions where the A’s don’t have any really good prospects. Cust is an interesting case; I have a hard time imagining him aging very gracefully. He’s only batting .226 right now…at some point in the next few years, I imagine he’ll go into an extended slump, lose his job to some younger hotshot and never get it back.

Doubtful:
Justin Duchscherer
Huston Street
Mark Ellis
Bobby Crosby
Eric Chavez*
All these guys are young enough to still be in the majors in three or four years, but they’ll all have hit free agency by then. And only Street won’t be in his decline years.

No Way:
Alan Embree
Frank Thomas
Keith Foulke*
Mike Sweeney*
Rajai Davis
Lenny DiNardo
Rob Bowen
The first four are too old, and the rest just aren’t good enough.

The current roster has more relievers of the future than anything else. But relievers are the easiest commodity to find, so even if you project Brad Ziegler to not give up a run for five more years, it’s still not enough to put dreams of pennants dancing in your head. It’s hard to watch a team when half the batting order and most of the starting rotation are simply placeholders. We’re bored of this limbo. We want to see our new campus, and meet our new classmates. The future can’t get here soon enough.

My wife and I disagreed about Wednesday’s game–she thought it was a sloppy game, particularly defensively, while I found the defensive miscues forgiveable, and the game tense and full of interesting storylines, even if the final result was disappointing. I couldn’t pick just one main theme to go with, so we’ll run all the different headlines, and you can pick your favorites.

Shoved Backwards

Carlos Gonzalez gets thrown out at the plate, and gets a fistful of Miguel Olivo when he tries to run him over. You can call it bad baserunning, or bad third-base coaching, but I think it was just a good play by the Royals, a well executed relay throw on a double by Jack Cust. If this run scores, the A’s probably win this game in regulation. Instead the A’s lost in extra innings, and got swept by the Royals. In recent years, such a sweep would be a total embarassment, but this Royals team isn’t that bad anymore. The back half of their bullpen is quite solid and the starting pitching isn’t at all embarassing as it once was. Find them a real shortstop and first baseman, and they’re probably a .500 team. Meanwhile, the A’s are moving backwards, falling below .500 for first time in many weeks. They’ve been freefalling ever since the Rich Harden trade.

Continue…

My Yankee Stadium reflections are now running over at Bronx Banter.

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With the A’s Infinite Playoff Improbability Drive now running at only 6% and falling, the actual games seem to take on less and less significance, while the trade rumors grow in importance.  The rumors about Huston Street, Alan Embree and Justin Duchscherer make sense, but I don’t get the Jason Bay ones, unless Beane thinks he can flip Bay for more than he’d give up.

I’m not really expecting Beane to make any more moves.  There are a lot of relievers available for trades, and the Jon Rauch-for-Emilio Bonifacio trade between the Nats and the DBacks probably set the market price for veteran relievers lower than Beane would like.  The A’s could have had Bonifacio in the Dan Haren trade, but chose Chris Carter instead.  The A’s aren’t going to trade Street for some team’s 7th-best prospect, and who’s going to give up much more than the established value for a closer?  Also, I’m guessing that all the saves Alan Embree racked up last year will bump him into the Type B reliever category, and given how much Embree has sucked lately, no one’s going to pay more the value of a sandwich pick for him.  So the A’s might as well keep him, decline his option, offer arbitration, and hope he goes elsewhere.

Duchscherer seems to me the most likely to go, but he’s been shaky since the all-star break.  He was sick in the all-star game, wasn’t sharp when I saw him at Yankee Stadium, and in his last start, he gave up more than three earned runs for the first time all season.  Other teams might be worried that he’s hitting the wall, having not pitched this many innings in a season since 2003.  The biggest point in favor of his getting traded is that he’s still the best starting pitcher available.  If a team gets desperate, they might overpay to Beane’s content.

With the Eric Chavez "shredded shoulder" news, all A’s fans are drooling over idea of getting Andy LaRoche to replace him.  The Dodgers seem to inexplicably hate LaRoche, but their front office is so disfunctional, it’s crazy to get any hopes up.   You have to want the Dodgers to (a) remain disfunctional enough to keep disliking a good prospect, and yet (b) overcome their disfunction enough to make a decision to trade him.  Good luck with that.

Two names I haven’t heard in trade discussions are Greg Smith, Dana Eveland, and Dallas Braden.  The A’s rotation of the future probably doesn’t have room for any of them, and certainly not for all of them.  Two years from now, the A’s rotation will probably be Trevor Cahill, Brett Anderson, Gio Gonzalez and Vince Mazzaro.   Smith, Eveland, and Braden are merely placeholders until the other guys are ready.  Smith in particular seems to be outperforming his talent, and now might be the best time to sell high.

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Below the fold, some pictures from Yankee Stadium that didn’t make my Bronx Banter piece.

Continue…

I’m looking at the lineup for tonight’s game against the Rangers. Emil Brown is batting cleanup. Against a right-handed pitcher (Vicente Padilla). Yes, the A’s now have a cleanup hitter who is hitting .250/.282/.382.

OK, go ahead and just trade everybody, Billy Beane. Because if Emil Brown is your cleanup hitter, your team is really, really pathetic. Actually, if an outfielder with a .669 OPS is even on your roster at this stage of the season, let alone batting cleanup, you’re not really even paying attention. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that’s because you’re so busy making trade proposals that you haven’t had time to get replace him yet, and not because your TV is stuck on the Fox Soccer Channel. Especially because, you know, Euro 2008 is over, the English Premier League hasn’t started up yet, and the Earthquakes are even farther from a playoff spot than the A’s.

Yeesh.

Spent the weekend in New York City, where it’s been 95 degrees and muggy every day. Had a good time meeting up with fellow Toastmasters Alex Belth, Cliff Corcoran and Diane Firstman on Friday night, and took in the A’s-Yankees game on Sunday. Given the weather, I was quite grateful that I had the nosebleed seats, as our seats were under the upper deck overhang, and we got to watch the ballgame in the shade. It was a good game, as Andy Pettitte was painting corners as well as he ever has, and Justin Duchscherer, while not quite on his game–missing the strike zone a bit more often than he usually does, still varied his speed and location well enought to keep the Yankees’ offense from launching too much thunder.

The difference in the game was pretty much the difference in the teams, as the Yankees have power, and the A’s don’t, and the Yankees have experience, and the A’s don’t. One blast from Jason Giambi provided more power than the A’s lineup could provide, and a baserunning misjudgment by Ryan Sweeney in the ninth inning prevented him from reaching second when Bobby Abreu dropped a fly ball, and he was forced out. Just a few innings earlier, when Sweeney had singled in the tying run at 1-1, my wife said, "Is there a worse baserunner than Ryan Sweeney?" He seems to make baserunning errors every time she watches him, and he made her very prescient.

I suppose that if Sweeney had made it to second on Abreu’s miscue and come around to score in an A’s victory, I could have said that the A’s have defense, and the Yankees don’t, as Sweeney made a nice throw to nail Alex Rodriguez at the plate for the second time this weekend.  But such is the way of talented youthful teams–they’ll excite you one minute, and disappoint you the next.

This was my first and only visit to Yankee Stadium before the new version opens next year. I’ll write a longer post on the topic later in the week after I return home to California. I would have enjoyed a A’s victory more, but if you can’t appreciate a close, well-pitched ballgame, and having a chance once in your lifetime to experience the buzz as Mariano Rivera emerges from the Yankee bullpen to close out a ballgame, you don’t deserve to call yourself a baseball fan. Even if it was unbearably hot and muggy, it was a good day of baseball.