The A’s are clearing out their 40-man roster, trying to make room to protect some potential Rule 5-eligible prospects. They tried to sneak Chris Snelling through waivers, but he was claimed immediately by Tampa Bay. I’m not so much surprised that he would be claimed, but by Tampa Bay? The Rays have outfielders coming out of their ears: Baldelli, Crawford, Dukes, Gomes, Upton, Young. Do they really need a seventh-string injury-prone outfielder on their roster? Well, maybe this will be the year they finally trade an outfielder for a pitcher or two.

And yet, the A’s managed to sneak a boatload of AAAA pitchers off their 40-man roster and back down to Sacramento: Connor Robertson, Jason Windsor, Shane Komine, Ron Flores, and Brad Halsey. So many teams starving for pitching, and nobody wanted to take a free chance on those guys? I guess everyone else is too busy trying to clear room on their own rosters to notice anyone else’s housecleaning. Meanwhile, the A’s lost one pitcher who pitched worse than any of those other fellows. Jay Marshall was claimed by the one team who should be too busy these days to notice, the Boston Red Sox.

Meanwhile, two middle-aged mediocre freely replaceable middle relievers, Ruddy Lugo and Colby Lewis, are still on the 40-man roster. Weird.

I’m not a big believer in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but sometimes when a concept is expressed in a different language or using a different metaphor, it’s like coming to the top of a steep hill, and a whole wide valley opens up beneath you.

For instance, you’ve probably understood the idea of "Earned Run Average" for years; it doesn’t thrill you much anymore, does it? Ah, but what happens to your understanding of that concept if you start calling it "Traffic Vibration Rate" instead?

Suddenly, you’re not looking at ERA as just a number of baseball events divided by another number of baseball events. You’re imagining the advancement of baseball runners to be like cars on the freeway, sometimes getting congested, and other times moving unobstructed. You imagine the pitcher not just as a trigger of single individual events, but as a source of oscillation over time. Runners flow around him, like a stream around a boulder. Baseball is governed not just by the laws of averages, but by complex systems of fluid dynamics.

And then, on further inspection, we imagine that the game inhabits the very paradoxes of quantum mechanics: each baseball event is not just a particle, but it is also a wave. Like string theory, all matter consists of tiny vibrating strings, and the rate at which they vibrate determines how they manifest themselves in our perceptions. Each particle exists as an individual unit, but each wave interacts with every other particle/wave in its vicinity, amplifying and/or cancelling its effects. The fastball up-and-in exists as a fastball up-and-in, but has a profound effect on the curveball down and away that follows.

The pitcher is no longer just a single man throwing a single ball. He is, in his moment of throwing, at one with the universe: both creating it and being created by it. He is a happy young boy, standing barefoot along the shore, skipping stones atop the waters, making waves that cross a wide, wide ocean.

The Oakland Athletics claimed Jose Garcia off waivers from the Florida Marlins yesterday. This shocks me, because I had Jose Garcia as my sixth grade teacher thirty years ago, and that would make him what? At least 60, probably 70 years old or so? Not only that, he missed the entire 2007 season with Tommy John surgery.

Now don’t get me wrong, I liked Mr. Garcia a lot; he was a good teacher. But Billy Beane’s search for "undervalued" players has gone completely off the deep end. Sure, Mr. Garcia’s previous minor-league numbers look good: 203 career strikeouts in 198 1/3 innings is excellent. But the A’s suffered through all of 2007 with injury after injury, and now they add another injury-prone player to their roster? I know the prognosis for Tommy John surgery is usually quite good, but that’s not a prognosis derived from a population of people who are eligible to collect Social Security checks. The Marlins must be completely flabbergasted that they were unable to sneak Mr. Garcia through waivers.

Admittedly, I haven’t seen Mr. Garcia since I left Lincoln Elementary School back in 1978. Maybe he’s in phenomenal shape. I’m skeptical, but I guess we’ll find out in March. I look forward to seeing him again.

Good news, everyone! Billy Beane has recognized that there were issues with the Oakland A’s medical and training staff in 2007, and has taken a big step towards correcting the problem. His solution is a classic example of that famous book you all know about.

No, not Moneyball. The step Beane has taken comes straight out of Scott Adams’ book, The Dilbert Principle, which states that organizations systematically promote their least competent employees to management, where they can do the least amount of damage.

Former Head Trainer Larry Davis has been promoted to a newly created desk job called "Coordinator of Medical Services". Steve Sayles takes a step up from Assistant Trainer to fill Davis’ old role, while Walt Horn moves up from AAA to complete the shuffle.  In addition, A’s team orthopedist Dr. Jerrod Goldman has resigned, replaced by Dr. John Frazier.

Good to know that the A’s know when to apply new principles of management, and when to use the old, time-tested solutions.  That’s the true test of intelligence.  Next year, the A’s will be fully healthy all year, I’m sure!

In my preseason predictions over on the Juice Blog this year, I picked the Cubs to win the World Series. Last year, my preseason prediction was right, as I picked the Cardinals to win it all. The year before, I didn’t make a preseason World Series prediction, but my postseason playoff prediction formula correctly predicted the White Sox as champions. This formula, which relies solely on the number of errors each team committed during the season (and accurately picks the Division Series winner 67% of the time), fell apart last year with a number of ties in error totals. This year, there are no ties: it predicts the Cubs to lose the Series to the Yankees.

The formula says:

(LDS: pick the team with the fewest errors)
Rockies (68 errors) over Phillies (89).
Cubs (94) over Diamondbacks (106).
Yankees (88) over Indians (92).
Red Sox (81) over Angels (101).

(LCS: reverse it, and pick the team with the most errors)
Cubs over Rockies.
Yankees over Red Sox.

(World Series: pick the team with the fewest errors)
Yankees over Cubs.

OK, so which one do I choose as my final answer–my formula or my preseason choice? Picking the Yankees is boring. I’ll go with my preseason one–the errors formula works better in the LDS than in later rounds, anyway. Plus, I’d rather have fun than be right, any day. Go Cubs!

Feel free to leave your own playoff predictions in the comments.

* * *

Congratulations to the Seattle Mariners for winning the highly coveted title of Heavyweight of the Year. They swept the Texas Rangers in the final weekend of the year to take the crown.

* * *

I should probably add the disclaimer that while I’ve had some success in making predictions in general, I totally suck at predicting the AL West.  Whenever I pick the A’s, the Angels win the division, and vice versa.  Clearly, I know nothing at all about that particular division.

There will be an epic battle this weekend, quite possibly the greatest finish ever. Three games, winner takes all. It is so compelling that it clearly needs an Muhammed Ali-like name, so we can remember it forever with just the phrase. So get ready for: The Battle in Seattle!

Yes, this weekend’s Mariners-Rangers series is one for the ages! It’s the one you’ll be telling your grandkids about! For the winner of this series will crowned the 2007 MLB Heavyweight of the Year.

For those of you unfamiliar with this crown, it works like boxing: if you beat the champion, you become the champion. We start out each season with the previous year’s World Series winner. Every game the champion plays is a title bout.  If the champion loses, a new champion is crowned. The team that finishes the regular season with the most title bout victories is declared the Heavyweight of the Year. (In case of ties, the team with the fewest losses wins.)

The Mariners are the current champions. See the Catfish Stew sidebar for the full MLB Heavyweight standings.

Going into this final weekend, the Chicago White Sox are in first place, with 13 wins. But oddly, the White Sox have actually clinched a second-place finish, despite their current lead in the standings. That’s because the teams tied for second with 11 wins, Seattle and Texas, play each other this weekend. By Sunday, one of them will at least match Chicago’s 13 victories. And since the Chicago will have more title bout losses than either the Mariners or the Rangers, the White Sox can’t finish in first place.

And so, we are left with possibly the greatest Heavyweight finish in the history of major-league baseball: a three-game, winner-take-all series for all the marbles.

Seattle Mariners. Texas Rangers. The Battle In Seattle! It’ll be great. I just can’t wait.

Am I bad person for laughing out loud at the video where Milton Bradley got tackled by his own manager and ended up injured?

Where is Ken Macha when you need him?

How is Jorge Velandia still playing in the major leagues?

Suppose, for a moment, that the A’s sign Barry Bonds next year…and you wanted both Bonds and Jack Cust in the lineup on the same day…which one would you put in the field? Would you play a real centerfielder (Kotsay/Denorfia) beside your choice and sit one of (Swisher/Buck/Barton)?  Or would you put Buck or Swisher in CF?

When Bob decided to rename the divisions after the best player from the winning team who played his entire career with that team (Tim Salmon, for instance), it got me wondering. Which retired A’s players actually qualify? The A’s don’t keep players like Tim Salmon for their whole careers; they all leave one way or another. Which one of the following possibilities (those with over 100 career games) would Bob have picked if the A’s had won the AL West instead of the Angels?

Or would Bob have weaseled out of this tough decision and just went with an active player like Eric Chavez or Mark Ellis instead?

How did Rusty Greer become a prototype? Seems like every other OF prospect is compared to him these days. Seems pretty random to me. Can I start using Toaster writers as my prototypes, instead?

It’s driving me nuts, and I can’t put my finger on it: whose swing does Daric Barton remind me of? I want to say it’s kinda like a cross between Ted Williams and Jon Weisman, but that’s not quite it.

Doesn’t Jerry Blevins remind you of Bob Timmermann with a better fastball?

Isn’t disallowing Dallas Braden from using his screwball like not allowing Mark Donohue to write long paragraphs? You’re taking away his genius.

When is Philip going to fork over my hard-won Cesar Izturis bobblehead to me?

Is anybody out there interested in sharing some partial season tickets for next year? One of the people in my group is dropping out. Email me at catfish AT zombia.com if you have any interest.

If you look at the Athletics franchise career leaders in OPS and OPS+, you’ll find a bunch of Hall-of-Famers (Jimmie Foxx, Eddie Collins, Home Run Baker, Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane, Reggie Jackson, Rickey Henderson), a few Hall-of-Juicers (Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi), a couple of classic baseball names (Matt Stairs, Gene Tenace), and…Bob Johnson.

Bob Johnson is largely forgotten in Athletics lore.  His name appears in the top ten of nearly every batting category in franchise history, so being forgotten hardly seems a fair fate.  He played 10 years with the A’s, averaging 25 homers and 104 RBI.  His career rate stats were .296/.393/.506.  So why is he forgotten?

Part of it is that he started late; he was 27 years old in his rookie season, and he never accumulated the kind of career totals that would make him a Hall-of-Fame candidate.

But I think a lot of the reason is because his name was "Bob Johnson".  Johnson had a nickname, "Indian Bob", from his 1/4 Native American lineage.  But that’s not the kind of nickname we repeat in these days of political correctness.  So he remains "Bob Johnson", a name that could not be better chosen to blend into the background and fade from attention.

* * *

Daric Barton made his major league debut this week, and has impressed mightily.  So far, he’s hitting .353/.450/.471.  Those numbers are positively Bob Johnsonesque!  Barton’s debut is probably the second-most exciting thing to happen to the team all year.  The kid can hit.  Dan Johnson’s days as Oakland’s first baseman are numbered.

And yet, Dan Johnson is the source of the most exciting thing I’ve heard all year:  he got a nickname.  Dan Johnson has one of the few names that could possibly surpass Bob Johnson in forgettability.  In ten, fifteen years, will anyone remember Dan Johnson and his brief tenure in Oakland?  Certainly not, especially if we keep calling him "Dan Johnson".

But now there’s this:  apparently, Marco Scutaro was recently making fun of Johnson for the way he was chasing down a popup in Oakland’s large foul territory, saying he ran after it like a crab.  A nickname was born:  Dan "Crab-Man" Johnson.

I hereby declare a new law:  Dan Johnson shall be henceforth be called "Crab-Man Johnson" in all forms of conversation.  Anyone who fails to use the nickname shall receive a $100 fine.   All in favor, say aye!

Dan Johnson was just passing through, a forgettable face in the crowd, in a forgettable year for the franchise.  But Crab-Man Johnson is a classic baseball name that will likely live forever.  It leaves a smile on my face.  This season shall not have been in vain.

"Baseball analysis is dead."
— Gary Huckabay

"Well, he was an ugly guy. With an ugly face.
An also-ran in the human race.
And even God got sad just looking at him. And at his funeral
all his friends stood around looking sad. But they were really
thinking of all the ham and cheese sandwiches in the next room."
—Laurie Anderson

I went to the A’s-Tigers game on Sunday, the one where the A’s came back from a 7-0 deficit to win, 8-7. I got home and couldn’t think of a single intelligent thing to write about it. It was only when I read the obituary after the weekend that I realized why.

"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry, and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases.

"For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?"
—Douglas Adams

So I turned off my analytical mind, stopped thinking about why the game turned out the way it did, and just let whatever seemed interesting lead me wherever it would go. I ended up with this, a montage of a bunch of batted balls that fielders failed to catch:

Don’t try to understand what this means, you unsophisticated ape-descendant. Just relax and enjoy your Catfish Stew.

Coming soon to a theater near you…

Continue…

Goodbye, Esteban Loaiza. Thanks for last August (4-0, 1.48) and 2006 ALDS Game 2. I’m not sure it was worth the $13 million the A’s paid you for that, especially considering the 2006 ALCS Game 2, and the DUI, and all the time spent on the DL, but what’s done is done…

I suppose saving the $8 million remaining on Loaiza’s contract is a good thing. The A’s filled in quite nicely this year without him for a lot less money. I’d hoped that the A’s could get something in return for Joe Kennedy and Loaiza except salary relief, but I guess that’s not how things work these days.

If the days of unloading veterans for prospects are over, you have to wonder what methods are left for the A’s to rebuild. Suck for a few years, so you can get some top draft picks? If that’s the case, maybe dumping salaries is the thing to do. It will be an interesting winter of Beane-watching, for sure.

My baby daughter turns two months old today. For the first six weeks of her life, she didn’t do much of anything; she was like a cute little simple robot that was programmed to just eat and sleep and fill her diapers. Lately, however, there have been signs of sentience. If I sit her on my lap, she will stare intensely down at her own bare feet, studying them as if they were the two most interesting things in the universe.

* * *

I woke up yesterday morning and found my seven-year-old daughter in a state of hunger. Of course, she didn’t tell me this, I had to deduce it from her attempts to pick a fight with her older sister. When she’s hungry, she gets cranky and loses all ability to reason. She feels like nothing can ever possibly make things right (save food, but she’ll never admit that): she’s unhappy, that’s the way it is, and that’s how it always will be, and everyone else around her might as well be unhappy along with her.

Come to think of it, that behavior is not too much different from the two-month-old, minus the foot fetish. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose:

Me: What do you want for breakfast?
7-year-old: I don’t want breakfast.
Me: You need to eat. What do you want?
7-year-old: I don’t want breakfast.
Me: OK, let’s skip breakfast and go straight to lunch. What do you want for lunch?
7: I don’t want lunch.
Me: Dinner?
7: I don’t want dinner.
Me: How about dessert?
7: I don’t want dessert.
Me: You must be sick, if you don’t want dessert. Shall I call the doctor?
10-year-old daughter (sensing an opportunity): I want dessert for breakfast! Let’s have chocolate-chip cookies!
Me: I was kidding. You can’t have dessert for breakfast.
10: What about donuts? Can we have donuts?
Me: We don’t have any donuts, and I’m not going out to buy any.
10: How about chocolate-chip pancakes?
Me (sighing defeatedly, heading towards the kitchen): Oh, all right. I’ll make chocolate-chip pancakes for breakfast today…

* * *

Reason is an elevator to Enlightenment. But Enlightenment is a just a small, lonely bus stop on a long journey to a chocolate-chip beach. Enlightenment is nobody’s final destination. Dessert, on the other hand…

* * *

(You got your loaves, your cheeses, your walking on water, and then the topper–Wow! Look at the front of that bus! What a header! Who was that–Jesus or David Beckham?)

Continue…

Thanks to their sweep of the Blue Jays and their victory tonight over the Devil Rays, the A’s are back in a familiar position: as MLB Heavyweight Champions. (It’s like boxing: beat the champ and you’re the champ. See the Catfish Stew sidebar for details.) The A’s will have to stay hot to keep their two-year run as Heavyweight of the Year going. They’re currently seven victories behind the White Sox for first place.

* * *
Is Jack Cust as good at catching the ball as Mark Ellis? If you think so, I suggest you follow in Billy Beane’s footsteps and go watch a sport where people aren’t allowed to use their hands at all. Baseball isn’t for you. If you can tell the difference, however, it’s time for you to go fill out TangoTiger’s annual Fan Scouting Report.

* * *

Interesting that Susan Slusser thinks the A’s might go into major rebuilding mode this offseason, and trade off a bunch of players, like Dan Haren, Joe Blanton, and Eric Chavez. Hard to imagine trading Haren, but on the other hand, starting pitching is starting to get way, way overvalued and expensive. And it will probably only get more overvalued this offseason: as Jayson Stark reports, now that Mark Buehrle and Carlos Zambrano have signed new contracts, it will be a truly awful free agent market for starting pitchers this year. With every other GM seemingly hanging on to every last pitcher like they’re the last piece of gold on earth, Beane might be holding baseball’s two most desired and available commodities. Heck, he might even be able to get something good for Esteban Loaiza, if he keeps pitching like he did on Wednesday.

As for trading Chavez, he’s kinda in the same boat as Rich Harden: he’s an attractive talent, but unless he comes back and has a monster September to prove he’s healthy, he’s not going to bring much back in a trade. Check this out these 2007 stats from the A’s third basemen:

Eric Chavez:   .240/.306/.446, $11 million.
Jack Hannahan: .241/.333/.448, Minimum wage!  Hee-yah!

Which would you prefer?

You know the old saying, first you get back to .500, then you think about how to get to the playoffs.  OK, the A’s are back at .500 with their sweep of Toronto; how’s the playoff picture look?

11.5 games behind the Angels in the division.
9 games behind the Mariners for the wild card.
7 games behind the Yankees for second place in the wild card.
5.5 games behind the Tigers for third place in the wild card.

Nope.  Too many teams ahead of the A’s, too many games back.  I think we need another saying.  First you get back to .500, then you get to within 5 games of the lead, then you think about how to get to the playoffs.

I shall now return to my relaxing summer, free of the stress of playoff worries.

I went to the A’s-Royals game yesterday. Unlike the other game I went to this season against a team from Missouri, which had the fingerprints of the visiting team’s manager all over it, I didn’t find any evidence of Royals manager Buddy Bell at all. I was a lovely day, after all, he’s retiring soon, the Royals had already won the series, so why make any fuss? He probably scribbled his game plan on a napkin at breakfast, set the team on autopilot, laid back and took a nice afternoon siesta.

That’s the only way I can think of to explain how the Royals essentially gave the A’s a free victory yesterday. In the top of the sixth, with the A’s up 2-0, the speedy Joey Gathright led off the inning with a single. Jason LaRue, he of the .147/.229/.287 batting line, was due up next, with the top of the order to follow. Good chance for a big inning, so you’d expect a pinch hitter, right?

Nope. LaRue hits. Not only that, but he bunts. When down by two. With a guy on first who could probably get to second base on his own if that’s what you think you really need. A total waste of an at-bat, of an out, and, as it turned out, of an inning.

Then, in the bottom of the sixth, Kyle Davies, who had thrown 99 pitches, was replaced on the mound by John Bale. The A’s were not fooled by Bale for a second, and smacked him around for two consecutive innings, scoring three in the sixth and another in the seventh. Not once in those two innings did the Royals get anybody up in the bullpen. Apparently, the plan was for Bale to pitch two innings, no matter how much he stunk, and if it cost the Royals a chance to win the game, who cares?

At least the A’s were trying to win. But even with the A’s, a feeling of resignation was in the air, as I looked out on the field and saw a lineup with only three players who played on opening day. It felt like I was rooting for an expansion team, instead of a team that made it to the LCS just last season. Who are these guys? Is that Dave Telgheder I saw out there? Patrick Lennon? Damon Mashore?

I took the usual assortment of photos, but the game just didn’t seem worthy of photos. But my seven-year-old daughter said she wanted her picture on this web site, so I’ll put this one up:

Last year, we were rooting hard for the glory of the A’s winning the World Series. Now we’re reduced to hoping against hope (and Placido Polanco–not him again!!!) that Mark Ellis finally wins a gold glove. It’s not quite the same thing.

Check out the 2007 organizational stats for these two Oakland A’s relievers:

Outstanding numbers, and eerily similar. Is it a trick question? Are they from the same guy? Nope…

Continue…

As a fan of a Moneyball-type team, there’s something deeply unsatisfying about watching your offense at work. There’s always a sense as a fan that something is missing from the attack; we grasp at straws trying to figure out what this something is. Sabermetricians pooh-pooh our doubts, patronizing us as if we just silly little children talking about imaginary monsters underneath our beds.

I try to be brave, but I keep hearing noises. It keeps me awake, and as I lie there trying to tell myself that there are no such thing as monsters, my mind ignores my own advice, and keeps looking for proof that monsters really, truly exist.

Lately, my mind has convinced myself that the key to finding the monster lies in the comparison between Dan Johnson and Jack Cust. Jack Cust, as you all know, TOTALLY ROCKS, while Dan Johnson (when hitting without Ryan’s mojo) SUCKS. The thing is, I don’t really understand why. They’re both about the same size: Johnson is 6’2", 225, while Cust is 6’1" 230. They’re both pretty slow, lumbering types. They were both born in 1979. They both have the typical Moneyball approach to hitting: see a lot of pitches, take a lot of walks:

Cust has a slight advantage there, but not a hugely so. There’s nothing there to suggest that the problem with Johnson is that he needs better plate discipline. And while Cust has more home runs, it’s not like Johnson is without power, either. In fact, they both have exact same number of hits (69) and extra-base hits (30) this year; the difference being that Cust turned seven more doubles and triples into homers:

On the other hand, if there’s one thing that’s glaringly different between these two men, it’s the kind of outs they make:

See that? If you didn’t have the middle table in this blog entry, and you were going to guess which guy has more home runs, the guy who puts the ball in the air in 30% of his plate appearances, or the guy who does so in 14% of his plate appearances, which would you choose? If you were going to guess which guy has the better batting average, the guy who puts the ball in play 85% of the time, or the guy who puts the ball in play 67% of the time, which would you choose? You’d think if baseball outcomes were distributed more or less evenly and fairly, Dan Johnson would be better than Jack Cust, but he’s not.

I don’t understand it. Even though their ages and body types and plate discipline are similar, there’s something clearly inferior about the quality of contact that Johnson makes when he swings his bat. Perhaps some smart people out there can explain it to me. Perhaps there is some chart (Plate Discipline on one axis; Quality Contact on another?) that could make sense of this for me. But until I understand how the quality of contact works, how you measure it, and how it impacts an offense, I’m still going to continue to feel like there are treacherous monsters sabotaging the A’s attack.

I was this close to catching Barry Bonds’ 756th home run. Bonds hit the ball almost directly straight at me, but unfortunately, it landed about five miles short of where I was standing in the hallway of my home, as I took a break from cleaning baby bottles to peek into our TV room to watch the at-bat.

Oh well. So I didn’t end up with a valuable piece of memorabilia. I didn’t get to say I was there. But hey, at least I got to hear the fireworks!

The title of this blog entry has been changed from the original, because my two oldest daughters have been calling each other "stupid" and "ugly" for about a week straight, so I just raised the price of using those two words in our home from free to dessert. A parent should require more creativity in the use of language in their households. So in order to have some ice cream myself, let’s just say there that there was a bit of "seaweedity" a lot of "asparagusiness" at yesterday’s A’s-Angels game. Not in the quality of play–both teams pitched well, played solid defense, and put up some good at-bats. It’s just that–well, you have to see for yourself:

In the first inning, this pitch got almost too far inside on Vladimir Guerrero, and nearly hit him.

Continue…

The Arizona Diamondbacks have claimed Joe Kennedy off waivers. This is the third player the Dbacks have claimed this week, along with Jeff Cirillo and Byung-Hyun Kim. The A’s get nothing in return but salary relief. I suppose that’s good, if Kennedy wasn’t going to generate a draft pick in free agency, but it’s also quite unexciting. I’m not exactly an A’s fan for the accounting ledgers.