There was a stretch of games in September where the A’s pitching seemed to be falling apart. In consecutive games, they gave up 8, 5, 6, 6, 9, 7, 9 and 7 runs. And then Dan Haren went into the Metrodome, threw a three-hitter, and the A’s won the game 1-0. The A’s seemed to settle down after that, and went on a 8-1 hot streak that won them the division title.

If Haren can come through again, and get the A’s a Game 5, I have a feeling Barry Zito will bounce back from his bad Game 1 start. Everyone keeps saying how brilliant the Tigers game plan was against Zito, but how brilliant is it to score runs against a guy who can’t throw his fastball or his curve for a strike? You sit changeup and hit it. Duh. Zito won’t have that kind of bad control again. He’ll be better. Win those two, and suddenly, you’re back in Oakland again, and things get interesting.

Of course, that would mean using Esteban Loaiza again, but we’ll deal with that if it comes to that.

The Scott Brosius trade comes full circle as Mark Kotsay and Kenny Rogers square off at last.

Bonus: there’s Rich Harden and some other guys, too. Lineups:

Oakland Athletics
J. Kendall c
M. Kotsay cf
M. Bradley rf
F. Thomas dh
J. Payton lf
E. Chavez 3b
N. Swisher 1b
M. Scutaro ss
D. Jimenez 2b

Detroit Tigers
C. Granderson cf
C. Monroe lf
P. Polanco 2b
M. Ordonez rf
C. Guillen 1b
I. Rodriguez c
O. Infante dh
B. Inge 3b
R. Santiago ss

Game Three will now start at 1PM Pacific, 4PM Eastern, on Friday. This is partly to accomodate the NLCS rainout last night, and partly because the weather is supposed to be quite cold in Detroit.

One good thing for the A’s: if you’re going to play a game where there’s a chance of snow, having a Canadian start the game for you is an advantage. Rich Harden loves to pitch in cold, damp weather. Back in April, he said this about pitching on a cold, wet day:

“Basically, this is identical to the weather up there in Victoria (British Columbia, where Harden grew up). It’s always wet, like my home,” he said. “Light rain, cold, that stuff. I’m comfortable. It doesn’t bother me at all.”

Hooray for optimism!

I got a phone call at 4:30am Wednesday morning from the Alameda Police Department. They told me that my stolen car had been found in Oakland, slightly damaged, but not stripped. The words that came out of my mouth were, “Thank you.” The words that wanted to come out of my mouth, but didn’t quite make it, were, “Why the #$&*#&(@#$&! are you calling me at 4:30 am?!?!?!?”

I tried to get back to sleep. Maybe I did, but whatever sleep I got did not satisfy.

Next time my car is stolen, I’d prefer it stay stolen. Getting your car back sucks up a whole day of your life. First, I trudged off to the Alameda Police Department to get a “vehicle release form” from the agency that filed the missing car report. Then, over to the Oakland Police Department to stand in a stereotypical long, utterly bureaucratic and inefficient line for over an hour to get yet another “vehicle release form”, from the agency which found the car. And then finally to the auto yard to which the car had been towed, to retrieve the car at last.

If there was anything efficient about my day, it’s that the auto yard was about three blocks from the Coliseum. And since I was headed there anyway that afternoon…well, that was convenient.

Somewhere in there, I heard the awful news about Cory Lidle. By the time I showed up at the ballpark, I was already spent.

On a normal day, I suppose I would have been ready to promote Esteban Loaiza to #1 on my least favorite A’s list for immediately blowing two leads he had been handed. I would have been ripping my hair out wondering why Ken Macha left Loaiza out there in a playoff game in the sixth inning when he was having a bad day, especially after Magglio Ordonez almost took him deep. I would have been cursing our fate every time D’Angelo Jimenez messed up a play that Mark Ellis would have made look easy.

But I was just kinda numb to all that negativity. It should have been a most agonizing loss, but oddly, I actually kinda enjoyed myself.

Perhaps I felt a sense of redemption, that even though the A’s were losing, they were going down fighting. Things have not gone the A’s way so far this series; the hits aren’t quite timely enough, the defense always seems just half an inch from making a play, and the starting pitchers have let them down. The A’s could have easily rolled over and let the Tigers just walk away with this game, but they slogged their way back into the game, with the help of some home runs by Eric Chavez and Milton Bradley.

When Frank Thomas came up, down by three, with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, I thought maybe, just maybe, that this long day would climax with a memorable, magical moment.

But, sadly, this was a day we were merely meant to endure, not to celebrate. Magic did not befit the day.

Thomas popped up, and that was that. I got into in my dirty old car, and we trudged back home together once again.

Time it was and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, a time of confidences.

Long ago it must be, I have a photograph.
Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you.

–Simon and Garfunkel

I was just about to head out to the Coliseum for tonight’s game, when I heard the horrible news about the Cory Lidle plane crash.

This is terribly, terribly sad news.

The game doesn’t seem to matter much right now, does it?

Phil, here… subbing in for Ken, who’s at the park. Here are the starting lineups for tonight’s game.

Condolences to the Lidle family.

Detroit Tigers

Curtis Granderson — CF
Neifi Perez (!) — SS
Placido Polanco — 2B
Magglio Ordonez — RF
Carlos Guillen — 1B
Ivan Rodriguez — C
Craig Monroe — LF
Alexis Gomez — DH
Brandon Inge

Oakland Athletics

Jason Kendall — C
Mark Kotsay — CF
Milton Bradley — RF
Frank Thomas — DH
Eric Chavez — 3B
Jay Payton — LF
Nick Swisher — 1B
Marco Scutaro — SS
D’Angelo Jimenez — 2B

And your pitching match-up: Justin Verlander versus Esteban Loaiza — a replay of a game I attended back in April. It was the best of Loaiza’s pre-DL starts, though he didn’t factor into the decision. Nick Swisher won the game with two home runs, both hit off of Verlander.

I would tell you that I anticipated that game would be a dry-run for Game 2 of the ALCS, but my mother raised me not to lie.

I have a ticket for Game 2 and Game 7, but I’ll be watching this one on TV.

The good news: the radio and TV announcing crews for the series are apparently devoid of any cursed Bucks.

Lineups:

Detroit Tigers
C. Granderson cf
P. Polanco 2b
S. Casey 1b
M. Ordonez rf
C. Guillen ss
I. Rodriguez c
C. Monroe lf
M. Thames dh
B. Inge 3b

Oakland Athletics
J. Kendall c
M. Kotsay cf
M. Bradley rf
F. Thomas dh
J. Payton lf
E. Chavez 3b
N. Swisher 1b
M. Scutaro ss
D. Jimenez 2b

I’m sure you can find plenty of ALCS previews out there. No need to repeat that stuff. I’ll just dash off a few thoughts as the ALCS approaches:

• Trivia question:

  Which member of the A’s organization has the highest career OPS against Kenny Rogers?

• Teams have styles, and it’s often hard to discern teams’ true modus operandi just by looking at the common statistics.

  The A’s style was evident in their series victory over the Twins. I call this style “outnotmistaking”.

  The Twins made all kinds of mistakes: defensive mistakes, batting approach mistakes, baserunnings mistakes. The A’s outnotmistaked the Twins.

  • The Twins committed five errors. The A’s committed one.
  • The Twins had one costly caught stealing, and another costly runner thrown out at home. The A’s did not attempt a stolen base. Nobody was thrown out trying to take an extra base.
  • The Twins cost themselves several baserunners (mostly named Nick Punto) by sliding into first base. The A’s did not slide into first base.
  • The Twins wasted several opportunities for big innings by giving up an out with a bunt, or falling behind in the count while trying to. The A’s had no sacrifices.
  • The Twins swung at a lot of pitches out of the strike zone. The A’s generally swung at strikes, and laid off the balls: few wasted at-bats because of poor pitch selection.

  The A’s aren’t the most talented bunch of players in the history of baseball. They can be defeated. But if they lose this ALCS, it will probably be because the Tigers defeated them, not because the A’s defeated themselves.

  Unless:

• D’Angelo Jimenez gets too involved in the proceedings.

  Mark Ellis was a huge part of the A’s “outnotmistaking” style. He set a major league record this year for fielding percentage by a second baseman. Ellis is a solid as they come; he always seems to make the right decision.

  How much will the A’s lose by having D’Angelo Jimenez at 2B instead of Mark Ellis?

  Here are some career stat comparisons at 2B:

  Player	Fielding %	Range Factor	Zone Rating	DT Rate	UZR (2000-03)
  Mark Ellis	.987	5.19	.873	104	+22
  D’Angelo Jimenez	.984	4.99	.829	99	+3

  Ellis is clearly better in every way. The good news is, Jimenez isn’t completely horrible. I’m guessing the dropoff will cost the A’s one run, maybe two, over the course of the series. Hopefully, that one run won’t be a costly one.

• Obviously, Kenny Rogers’ career record of 25-4 in Oakland has to be a topic of discussion, if not a source of concern for the A’s. But if you look at what the current A’s lineup has done against him, you wonder what all the fuss is about.

  Here’s are the current A’s lifetime numbers against Rogers, in OPS order:

  Bradley, 10 ABs, 1.238.
  Thomas, 58 ABs, 1.127.
  Scutaro, 19 ABs, 1.034.
  Kendall, 27 ABs, .989.
  Payton, 21 ABs, .935.
  Kotsay, 36 ABs, .760.
  Swisher, 15 ABs, .722.
  Kielty, 35 ABs, .714.
  Chavez, 54 ABs, .603.

  Jimenez doesn’t seem to have faced Rogers.

• Last year, Billy Beane predicted that the playoff winner would be the one who hit the most home runs. Looking over the stats from the A’s and the Tigers, if the Tigers can avoid the same type of mistakes the Twins kept making, I think that the most-homer-rule will probably be decisive in this series, as well.

  Both teams are good at keeping the ball in the ballpark. The Tigers (160) were 2nd and the A’s (162) were 3rd in fewest home runs allowed. The Tigers hit 203, while the A’s hit 175.

• If the A’s have a weakness on the mound, it’s that they walk too many batters. However, the Detroit Tigers hardly ever take a walk. They were next-to-last in the AL.

  This will be of particular interest in Game 1. Barry Zito makes a living off overaggressive teams who chase his pitches outside the strike zone. If the Tigers don’t work the count against Zito, and force him to either throw strikes or walk them, they might be in for a long evening.

• Somebody get the A’s a new scouting report on Placido Polanco! Look what he’s done in his career against the A’s starting rotation:

  Haren: 5-for-12
  Zito: 7-for-11
  Blanton: 7-for-10
  Loaiza: 3-for-10
  Harden: 4-for-4

  If Polanco comes up in a key situation, we might see Kirk Saarloos, who is the only pitcher on the A’s roster who has had any sort of demonstrated success against him. Polanco is only 2-for-13 against Saarloos.

• Trivia answer: Billy Beane. He’s 1-for-1, with an RBI, for a career OPS of 2.000 against Rogers.

Remember how that Scott Brosius baseball card mysteriously appeared in my kitchen last month? And how that convoy of cars with Michigan plates kept driving past my office?

Now a convoy of Michigan baseball players is headed to Oakland. And if that wasn’t coincidence enough, check this out:

• Scott Brosius was traded from Oakland in a deal for Kenny Rogers
• Kenny Rogers was traded from Oakland in a deal for Terrence Long
• Terrence Long was traded from Oakland in a deal for Mark Kotsay

When we look back at the ALDS series between the Yankees and Tigers, what are we going to remember? Kenny Rogers’ shutdown performance, right?

When we look back at the ALDS series between the A’s and Twins, what are we going to remember? Mark Kotsay’s inside-the-park home run, right?

Spooky, eh? I’m beginning to feel like the Japanese guy from the new TV show Heroes who finds a comic book with details of his own life on the news stand. This is getting really freaky.

What’s next? What’s going to happen when Kenny Rogers faces Mark Kotsay? Stay tuned…

One of my best friends grew up in Michigan. If you ask him his favorite baseball team, he’ll say the Detroit Tigers. But the truth is, he pays about as much attention to baseball as my mother, who lives in Sweden; that is to say, he pretty much ignores the topic entirely.

This morning, however, he sent me this email:

Ken,

Can anyone on the A’s roster hit a 102 mph fastball? I think such a skill might come in handy in the near future.

“Uh-oh,” I thought. “This is not good.”

* * *

Those who do not follow sports often cannot fathom why those of us who do devote so much time and energy to it. My mother always thought my passion for sports would be something I’d grow out of. It hasn’t happened yet.

Paul Ford has a fabulous blog entry called Men standing around broken machines. It’s about the mysterious way that men communicate their feelings for each other through the act of fixing things:

For much of my life I was able to bring myself to an emotional boil by reading or writing. I used this as a kind of fuel and assured myself that in my agonies I was more intense than the person sitting next to me on the subway. But I have come to sympathize with those men who stood around saying little, who gathered around the open hoods of brown cars or around malfunctioning typewriters.

And today, over on Bronx Banter and Dodger Thoughts, the men are standing around their broken machines, trying to figure out what went wrong.

And here on Catfish Stew, the men ponder how to avoid the same sad fate, in the face of
102 mph fastballs, and a convoy of Michiganders heading into town.

* * *

It all sounds so noble, this cooperative effort to fix things. But we men aren’t quite such simple creatures. There’s a certain amount of competition within this cooperation, too. There’s a wonderful Darwinian balance between altruistic behavior that helps the group survive, and selfish behavior that increases the social status of the individual within the group.

You want your group to fix the car, but preferably when you find the solution. Men cooperate and compete with their friends at the same time.

* * *

When the A’s beat the Twins, I felt a huge burden lift. The A’s failures in the postseason was no longer a machine that needed to be fixed. I felt like I could simply sit back, and appreciate the beauty of playoff baseball. Whatever else happened would be gravy.

But now, the stakes have been raised. My buddy from Michigan has been given a potentially devastating weapon in our relationship. Should the Tigers happen to defeat the A’s in the ALCS, he will have permanent ammunition over me in any discussion we may have from this point forward.

We could be discussing foreign politics or operating systems or Battlestar Galactica, and I could rebut every point he makes with a brilliant counteranalysis, and all he’d have to do to win the argument is to play the “Yeah, but Detroit won the 2006 ALCS” card and I will be helpless to do anything but crawl back under my rock in meek submission.

And since he doesn’t really give a hoot about baseball, I can’t pull out the “1972 ALCS” card in response. Nor will I gain any advantage if the A’s win. If the Tigers lose, it won’t bother him in the slightest.

What was the subtitle of Moneyball? The art of winning an unfair game? This is an unfair game. I care about this ALCS, and he doesn’t. He can’t lose; I can’t win. My best case scenario in this particular game is a tie.

My feelings of pure altruism toward playoff baseball lasted about a day and a half. My competitive drive has returned. I need the A’s to beat the Tigers. How do we fix it so that happens?

We’ve been here before, haven’t we? The A’s need just one more win to advance to the ALCS.

It’s an overcast October day in the East Bay. But perhaps a hole in the sky will appear over the Coliseum once again, and make fairy tales come true.

Lineups:

Minnesota Twins
L Castillo, 2B
N Punto, 3B
J Mauer, C
M Cuddyer, RF
J Morneau, 1B
T Hunter, CF
R White, LF
J Tyner, DH
J Bartlett, SS

Oakland Athletics
J Kendall, C
M Kotsay, CF
M Bradley, RF
F Thomas, DH
E Chavez, 3B
J Payton, LF
N Swisher, 1B
M Scutaro, SS
D Jimenez, 2B

We A’s fans just can’t ever get to enjoy anything, can we? The A’s take two in the Metrodome, but then find out that Mark Ellis has a broken index finger.

There’s a big defensive dropoff from having Bobby Crosby and Mark Ellis up the middle to having Marco Scutaro and D’Angelo Jimenez. Huge, huge bummer.

I was planning not to watch yesterday’s game at all, but as game time approached, a strange zen-like calm descended upon me. The nervousness I usually suffer during A’s playoff games left me, and I was able to watch the fabulous pitching duel between Johan Santana and Barry Zito with great pleasure. For about two hours, anyway.

The best thing about yesterday’s playoff games is that all the games were decided by great players making great plays: Derek Jeter, Albert Pujols, Cris Carpenter, Johan Santana, Frank Thomas, Barry Zito. Any sport is at its best when its best players rise to the occasion when it counts the most.

How much money do you think free-agent-to-be Barry Zito earned with yesterday’s performance? $10 million? He’s already the most durable pitcher in baseball (he’s never missed a start), with a Cy Young award under his belt. And now he can add “can outduel the best pitcher in baseball in a playoff game on the road” to his resume. Scott Boras went to bed last night a happy man.

This game was a great example of why Zito is a much better pitcher in 2006 than he was back in, say, 2003. Back then, he was strictly a three-pitch pitcher, and if one of his pitches was off, he had no way to adjust. Since then, Zito has added a slider and a cutter. When his command of a pitch is off, he has plenty of other options for attacking a batter. Yesterday, his fastball wasn’t particularly sharp, but he still got batters out, by throwing his fastball out of the zone, and mixing in some changeups, sliders and curveball with masterful effect.

Santana was similarly masterful. The dude is awesome. He will, however, give up the occasional long ball. Which leads us to Frank Thomas. What else can you say about Frank Thomas? He is THE MAN.

So it was a beautiful day for baseball, with one exception. Which was exactly the sort of thing I had feared about facing the Twins: that great baseball would be ruined by bad architecture. In the ninth inning, the Metrodome decided to insert itself into the proceedings and score a run for the Twins, as Milton Bradley lost a fly ball in the roof.

I flipped out. I ranted. I shouted. I screamed in horror. I think I punched a wall for good measure. Thankfully, my wife stepped in and restored calm in the Arneson household, by ejecting me from the ballgame. I spent the rest of the game exiled in the kitchen.

Huston Street closed out the victory without me, and the A’s have a 1-0 lead in the series. We A’s fans know not to get too excited about that, though.

So here comes Game 2: Esteban Loaiza vs. Boof Bonser. Do I dare test the Metrodome fates, and watch the game again?

Today’s Lineups:

Oakland Athletics
J. Kendall c
M. Kotsay cf
M. Bradley rf
F. Thomas dh
E. Chavez 3b
J. Payton lf
N. Swisher 1b
M. Scutaro ss
M. Ellis 2b

Minnesota Twins
L. Castillo 2b
N. Punto 3b
J. Mauer c
M. Cuddyer rf
J. Morneau 1b
T. Hunter cf
R. White lf
J. Tyner dh
J. Bartlett ss

Barry Zito has started a playoff blog over on MLBlogs. He’s not giving away any secrets, but the summary of his victory over the Twins in game 1 is a pretty entertaining read.

Check out all the division series previews over at Baseball Analysts. The last section is written by yours truly.

Then feel free to chat away, all you toast eaters.

Whether I’ll join you, I’m not sure. Will I have the courage to follow the action, or the discipline not to?

Lineups:

Oakland
J. Kendall c
M. Kotsay cf
M. Bradley rf
F. Thomas dh
E. Chavez 3b
J. Payton lf
N. Swisher 1b
M. Scutaro ss
M. Ellis 2b

Minnesota
L. Castillo 2b
N. Punto 3b
J. Mauer c
M. Cuddyer rf
J. Morneau 1b
T. Hunter cf
R. White lf
P. Nevin dh
J. Bartlett ss

The Scott Brosius weirdness continues…

Last year, I invented a formula for predicting the playoffs. The formula correctly picked the White Sox to win it all. Of course, since it worked so well, I decided to use the formula again in 2006.

My formula is based on one little-known fact: the team that committed fewer errors in the regular season wins the division series 2/3 of the time. I’ve looked at a whole bunch of stats, but I haven’t found another stat with a better success rates (fielding percentage comes closest).

This correlation only holds for the division series, not for the whole playoffs. So I set up my formula to work like this: in the Division and World Series, pick the team with the fewest errors. In the LCS, reverse the trend, and pick the team with the most errors.

Quite simple, eh? You’d think, but this year, the formula completely falls apart. Watch:

Division Series (fewest errors wins)
Mets (104 errors) over Dodgers (115).
Padres (92) over Cardinals (98).
Yankees (104) over Tigers (106).
Twins (84) and Athletics (84): it’s a tie!!!

Oh, no! We can’t predict who is going to win the A’s-Twins series!

No matter, we can continue anyway:

League Championship Series (most errors wins)
Mets (104) over Padres (92).
Yankees (104) over A’s/Twins (84).

Which leads us to this:

World Series (fewest errors wins)
Mets (104) and Yankees (104): it’s a tie again!!!

Yikes! We have no World Series winner, either! The formula fails!

Scott Brosius, what hast thou wrought?

The other day, Philip wrote, regarding the 2006 A’s, that “this has easily been, for me, the most maddening team to follow. Hardly are those words out than I find myself moving from lacking all conviction one minute to a quiet confidence the next, and then right back again.

My unstable emotional state is probably a sign that I don’t really understand this team very well. I cannot forecast to you the action of Oakland. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

I don’t mind having an unsolved mystery or two, like the tagline of this very blog, Stop Casting Porosity, lurking in my life. But when too many unsolved mysteries begin to accumulate, the riddles start turning and turning in my mind, as my mind tries to bind the disparate enigmas together into one impossible story, like a shape with lion body and the head of a man. I become vexed; there is too much data to control; the circles turn wider and wider; the center cannot hold. Questions become obsessions becomes paranoia. Anarchy is loosed upon my mind.

There’s something’s happening here. What is, ain’t exactly clear. You’ve got to be a very wary bear. Stop, listen, what’s that clown, everybody look what’s going down:

The Missing First Draft

I wrote this blog entry once before. But just before I was about to save it, my editing window vanished, and everything I had written disappeared. I gazed blankly at my screen. When something dies, you expect a shadow: some sign of the departed, desert birds circling indignantly for their meal. But nothing. No other computer problems; my other windows stayed intact. Just the one window with my first draft disappeared. How perfectly…inconvenient.

Was there something I wrote in my first draft that somebody didn’t want publicized?

The Racket

Let’s say there’s a product you think you’d like to buy. The product comes in a set. You might want the whole set, but more likely, you’d only want a few pieces of the set. A piece costs about $50-$200, depending on the quality of the individual piece. The set costs about $1,200. Here are the terms that the manufacturer offers you:

1. At invoice time, there is roughly a 50% chance that the manufacturer will deliver at least one part of the set, and a less than 10% chance that the manufacturer will deliver the entire set.
2. You must provide the manufacturer with a two-month, interest-free loan for the cost of the entire set, whether the manufacturer delivers the product or not.
3. You must pay the manufacturer a non-refundable $25 ordering fee, whether the manufacturer delivers the product or not.

Would you purchase the product, or try to renegotiate the terms?

I feel compelled to reject the deal, just on principle. However, it turns out the manufacturer can sell out the product anyway, despite the ridiculous terms.

There are two mysteries: 1. Why do so many people accept these terms? Do people lack all conviction? Are they so full of passionate intensity, they will pay anything, on any terms, to join the ceremony? 2. Given this troubling deal, is there any way to beat this racket?

I have no answer for either question.

The Convoy

For a whole week earlier this month, two or three times a day, a convoy of eight or so SUVs and minivans, all with Michigan license plates, kept driving past my office. About one or two minutes later, the entire convoy would turn around and drive away in the other direction.

Where were they going? There isn’t really much at the end of my road except a dumpster, a turnabout, a tennis court, and a boat dock. Why did they come all the way from Michigan to California? Why wasn’t one car enough? Why did all of these cars need to travel together? There wasn’t really enough time for them to load or unload much cargo and turn right around. What in the name of Bo Schembechler is going on here?

Dude, Who Stole My Car?

As darkness dropped on Wednesday evening, I lay in a stony sleep, nursing an injured neck, when my wife awakened me to a nightmare: some pitiless thief had just stolen my car from in front of my house.

This is the second time this car has been stolen. Were they looking for something in my car? Did the Michiganders have anything to do with it? Was Scott Brosius involved?

The Return of Scott Brosius

Some weeks earlier, I arrived home one night, went into my kitchen, and flipped on the light. Right in the middle of the floor, I found a 1997 Topps Scott Brosius baseball card.

I had never seen the card before. I asked my wife. She had never seen the card before, either.

Where did the card come from? Who put it there? Is it a warning? An omen?

Why a baseball card, and why Scott Brosius? What does Scott Brosius mean, anyway?

This image from the past troubles my sight. In my eyes, if Scott Brosius is a symbol for anything, it’s the lost sheep, the prodigal son. Brosius left the A’s after a miserable 1997 season, and went to the Yankees, where he became a postseason hero. In fact, Brosius’ departure began an incredible run where nearly every World Series featured someone who had done practically nothing in Oakland, but seeming out of nowhere became a postseason hero in their new homes:

1998-2001: Scott Brosius
2002: Scott Spiezio
2003: nobody, really, but Dontrelle Willis is a local kid who got away, so maybe he counts
2004: Mark Bellhorn (plus Johnny Damon and Keith Foulke, I suppose)
2005: Jermaine Dye

FWIW, here is a list of players who match the above criteria, who are eligible for the postseason:

Octavio Dotel, Cory Lidle, Sal Fasano, Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, Kenny Rogers, Jeremy Bonderman (minors), Andre Ethier (minors), Olmedo Saenz, Chad Bradford, Tyler Johnson (rule 5 sendback), and two former champions, Mark Bellhorn and Scott Spiezio.

Will it happen again? Is one of those players on this list the next ex-Athletic to earn postseason glory?

Or does the second coming of Scott Brosius mean something else? Is some new revelation is at hand? Is there some great Spirit of Baseball loosing a strange new tide upon the world? What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Oakland to be born?

And The Last Puzzle Piece…

There’s a v

How the heck do you get swept against the worst team in baseball when you need just one win to capture the division title? The Tigers should be automatically disqualified from the playoffs for that simple fact alone. Let the White Sox in the playoffs instead. At least they’d put up a fight. I wouldn’t usually root for the Yankees in any playoff series, but the pathetic display by the Tigers this weekend has disgusted me so much that I am now rooting for the Tigers to suffer the most humiliating, lopsided playoff defeat in major league history. If they’re gonna choke like that, why couldn’t they have saved their major choke job for one more day (i.e. in the playoffs against the A’s)? Argh.

I guess I spent whatever good karma I had on winning the division, because everything else in my life has pretty much sucked since then. The day after the A’s clinched the division, I injured my neck so badly that I could barely move, and every time I tried to do anything, I ended up with a pounding headache. And then, the same evening I hurt my neck, someone stole my car. And now, the coup de grâce, the stupid Tigers have gone ruined the whole playoffs for me by getting swept by the Royals, of all teams.

The playoffs are ruined because now the A’s have to face Johan Santana and the Twins. Facing Santana is the toughest possible playoff assignment, but that’s not what’s ruining the playoffs for me; I actually enjoy watching Santana pitch. Santana is probably the only Twins player I’ve ever liked outside of Kirby Puckett.

No the problem is simply that I hate the Twins. I really, really hate the Twins. And the Metrodome. I hate the Metrodome, and that stupid turf, and the way its ugly shade of green reminds you that you are playing on fake grass instead of beautiful green grass, and the way the game resembles pinball more than baseball because of that stupid turf, and that stupid roof, and the stupid way all the noise gets trapped in there like a greenhouse traps heat because of that stupid roof, and the way the ball is hard to see through that stupid roof when you play a day game, and the fact that playing a day game is completely wasted when you play it under a stupid roof instead of the open sky, and the way the stupid architecture makes you play an inferior sport with inferior rules and inferior tactics, and how you have to change your approach to take precautions not to lose a game because of a stupid fake grass bounce or a misjudged stupid white roof fly ball, and how you can lose a game that you normally wouldn’t lose under open sky and on real grass because the ball takes a stupid fake grass bounce or a fielder misjudges a stupid white roof fly ball, and the way I can list a whole bunch of stupid things I hate about the Metrodome without even mentioning how stupid I think that stupid plastic bag fence is, and that stupid plastic bag fence.

There’s no way I could possibly enjoy this playoff series now, even if the A’s swept all three games by 16-0 scores. I think that listening to Roseanne Barr sing the national anthem for three hours straight would be a more pleasing aesthetic experience than watch the A’s play the Twins in the Metrodome.

Well, good thing then that the first three games are weekday day games. I can’t watch, I have to work. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.

Over on Baseball Prospectus, Nate Silver runs a quick and dirty analysis of the playoff rotations, and concludes that the A’s rotation is the worst of all the AL playoff teams, with an expected ERA of about 4.23.

This is mostly because Barry Zito is scheduled to be the #1 starter, and Silver’s formula hates how many walks he gives up. The interesting thing is that if you reverse the A’s rotation, so that Barry Zito is #4, and Dan Haren is #1, then the A’s expected ERA drops to 3.99, second best only to the Twins.

And neither of those is the rotation that you’d really want if you ignored the numbers, and went by how each pitcher has looked lately: Rich Harden pitching in games 1 and 5.

But still, the rotations of the Yankees, Tigers, and A’s are all so close, it doesn’t really matter that much. Players don’t usually throw an average game in the playoffs: they’ll have a good day or a bad day, and the chips will fall where they fall. The only certainty out of any of those calculations is that you should try to avoid facing Johan Santana if at all possible.

* * *

A lot of the playoff analysis I’ve seen so far keeps saying that the A’s need to win with their pitching, because their offense is terrible. Well it was terrible, before the All-Star break. But since then, it’s been quite good, as a whole. And the most interesting thing about the A’s offense is that, while no one outside of Frank Thomas has any really impressive numbers, the lineup as a whole is extremely balanced.

I’m going to list (in OPS order) the AVG/OBP/SLG since the All-Star Break for the usual suspects in the A’s lineup. Can you tell which player is which?

1. .300/.396/.559
2. .294/.380/.480
3. .299/.385/.471
4. .250/.364/.470
5. .321/.379/.435
6. .275/.346/.451
7. .311/.348/.434
8. .329/.399/.375
9. .239/.348/.421

It’s not very easy to tell them apart, is it? You can probably pick out Thomas and Kendall from their SLGs, but otherwise, they all look an awful lot alike. The lowest OBP in that lineup is .346. The lineup doesn’t have a ton of power, but it doesn’t really have any OBP holes, either. That gives the lineup an interesting dynamic: a rally is almost as likely to burst forth at the bottom of the lineup as the top.

* * *

So I’m not actually all that worried about the offense in the playoffs. Unless they’re facing Santana, I think they’ll get their runs. I’m also not worried about the defense, and I’m not worried about middle relief.

I do worry about these three things: (1) the starting pitchers haven’t looked very good lately, (2) neither has Huston Street, (3) unlikely disasters. I think the first two are capable of correction. The third, I dunno.

Tonight, after resolving not to watch the A’s, I ended up watching a Nova documentary on supervolcanos instead.

And so it was…the Angels lost to Texas, and the A’s beat the Seattle Mariners, and clinched the AL West, avoiding the massive choke I feared.

Yippee!

The last time the A’s beat their jinxes and won the World Series, there was a massive earthquake in the Bay Area.

Obviously, then, there is a connection between natural disasters and jinxbusting.

So I guess I’ll need to make a list like this one of shows to watch during the playoffs.