Barry Zito’s sky is falling for the seventy billionth time since his career began: Tim Marchman has a column today wondering whether Barry Zito’s contract is the worst of all time.

I guess my three–part series about Zito has made me somewhat of a Zito expert, so I suppose I should respond. Let us summarize what we know about Barry Zito:

1. His detractors over the years have looked at his peripheral stats and conclude he’s not as good as his ERA, because his (luck/big foul territory/good defense) masks his shortcomings.

2. Point #1 is crap.

Barry Zito’s success rests on his proven ability to reduce the BABIP of right-handed batters far lower than normal. That’s what makes him special. It’s skill, not luck (see TangoTiger for more);  it’s not the foul ground (no significant home/road splits), and it’s not the defense (he did this even when he had Ben Grieve, Terrence Long and Matt Stairs in the outfield behind him.)

Against left-handed batters, he’s pretty much been an average ho-hum major league pitcher. But because the vast majority of batters are right-handed, Zito succeeds.

So Zito is having a bad year.  I’ve heard that he’s lost his control, he’s lost his velocity.  Is the sky at last falling?

Um, no.  Let’s look at the important numbers:

If Zito was losing his stuff, he’d be struggling against both LHB and RHB this year. But he’s been just as good as ever against RHB. His bread and butter is still there, and still working just fine.

Zito’s struggles this year are entirely with left-handed batters.  Like his worst season in 2004, he’s allowed an extremely high BABIP against them.  In addition, the word has apparently gotten around about his reverse splits, and he’s facing a higher percentage of LHB this year than ever before.

Zito has had these troubles with LHB before, and fixed them.  I think he can fix them again.  I wouldn’t quite give up on him yet.

My youngest daughter, eleven days old, attended the first ballgame of her life this afternoon. The Seattle Mariners and the Oakland Athletics demonstrated to her, in many ways, what an amazing world she was born into. As a token of my appreciation, I would to sing them a song, and it goes a little something like this:

The colors of a rainbow
So pretty in the sky

Continue…

The Angels are the current MLB Heavyweight Champions (see the Catfish Stew sidebar for details) and today, they play the Pittsburgh Pirates in a pivotal game: if the Angels win, the Heavyweight title will stay in the AL for the rest of the season; if the Pirates win, the crown stays in the NL.

The way things are going, the heavyweight crown might remain not just in the AL for the rest of the season, but in Anaheim. Are the Angels ever going to lose again? It doesn’t matter how far behind they are, or how late, they end up winning the game. Obviously, this is their year.

The Angels are on pace to win 104 games; the A’s are on pace to win 87. While it’s pretty easy to imagine that the A’s could pick up the pace after adding Rich Harden to the rotation, and Justin Duchscherer and Huston Street to the bullpen again, it’s pretty hard to envision the Angels slowing down enough for the A’s to catch them. The Angels would have to play under .500 for the rest of the year to fall below 92 wins. Clearly, the Angels are better than a .500 team, so even if they don’t win 104, they’ll almost certainly win 95-100, and make the playoffs. If the A’s are going to make the playoffs, the wild card will have to come out of the AL West.

Plus, you have to wonder how much Harden, Duchscherer, and Street will actually improve the team. The A’s already have the fewest runs allowed of any AL team; only the Padres, in their cavernous ballpark and non-DH league, have been stingier. It’s the offense that needs improvement, and it’s hard to understand how booting Milton Bradley off the team is going to help matters. On the other hand, the offensive production from the outfield hasn’t been the problem–the problem has been the three major sinkholes in the lineup: Eric Chavez, Bobby Crosby, and Jason Kendall.

I am certain Chavez will improve his first-half numbers in the second half. He says his arms are finally healthy after 1 1/2 years of pain, and he looks like he says. In the last two weeks, the ball has been jumping off his bat in a way we haven’t seen in, well, 1 1/2 years. So consider that sinkhole filled, at least.

But Crosby and Kendall are still problems. Kendall’s hole can be filled by giving more playing time to Mike Piazza and Kurt Suzuki, and the A’s have taken steps in that direction, so that’s good.

Crosby, on the other hand…he’s the unsolvable problem. Sure, every once in a while, he’ll crush some pitch with such force that your eyes pop out, but his high-effort swing contains more holes than the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corporation. He’s everything that Moneyball talked about the A’s avoiding: the player who looks real good in every way except one: the ability to hit a baseball. And they’re pretty much stuck with him, because they don’t have anybody else in or near the majors who can handle shortstop defensively on a long-term basis. Marco Scutaro is OK in an emergency, but he just doesn’t have nearly the range that Crosby does. So the A’s will remain with the status quo: hoping that somehow, someday, Crosby figures something out and starts hitting. Good luck.

"You’ve finally healed your physique!
You hold a consecutive streak
Of one ballgame played.
So therefore, a trade
Will happen in less than a week."

"I don’t really want to critique
A brilliant GM’s technique,
But I think I just saw
That your plan has a flaw:
Ow!  I just pulled my oblique."

Before I headed out to the Oakland Coliseum for yesterday’s A’s – Reds game, Bob Timmermann noted in an email that the game wasn’t going to be televised anywhere, and momentous things tend to happen in games without TV. For instance, Shawn Green hit four home runs in a non-televised game a few years ago.

I said I wouldn’t mind witnessing a momentous event, provided the event wasn’t that my wife going into sudden labor during the game. Bob said it would be bad if we felt compelled to name the child after whoever was at bat at the time, especially since we’re expecting a girl.

"Yes, we decided to name you Ken, Jr., but you weren’t named after me, you were named after Ken Griffey, Jr. It’s a long story."

* * *

I went home thinking that no momentous event had happened at all, just a bunch of little not-quites. Instead, it turned out to Milton Bradley’s last appearance in an A’s uniform. Hmm…how to react? With disappointment? With vengeance?

It’s clearly quite an odd transaction, because when Bradley is healthy and playing, he was still one of their top three outfielders. Swisher (.909) and Buck (.873) each have a better OPS this year than Bradley (.819), but Swisher can play first base, and Bradley is better than Dan Johnson (.786). And Mark Kotsay (.738). And Shannon Stewart (.695). And Bobby Kielty (.477).

It’s the Stewart comparison that really gets me, because they’re both under contract just for this season. The only way that Shannon Stewart is more valuable than Milton Bradley is that he has stayed healthy this year. Stewart is nowhere near the hitter Bradley is, is limited only to left field on defense, and has the worst outfield throwing arm Oakland has seen since Ben Grieve. If it were me, I’d cut Stewart long before I cut Bradley. Same goes for Kielty, who ain’t no great shakes in the field, either, and is somewhat literally half the switch-hitter Milton Bradley is.

All of which leads me to conclude that either one of two things are true: either Bradley did something to wear out his welcome, or Beane already has a trade lined up that couldn’t quite get completed by Friday, when the A’s needed the roster spot.

So I’m pretty bummed out that Bradley is gone. I liked the dude. I liked the way he got psyched up when he earned a base on balls. I liked his goofy goggles.  I liked the way he attacked a fastball. I like his home run dance with Swisher.  I liked the way he played the outfield. I’ll miss him.

* * *

Here are some shots I took yesterday of what turned out to be Milton’s Last Stand:

Continue…

Milton Bradley has been designated for assignment.  Reasons unknown, press conference to follow soon.

The timing is related to Eric Chavez getting hurt again.  If he can’t play this weekend in New York, the A’s are short an infielder.  They needed to call up somebody (Kevin Melillo, in this case), and needed to send somebody off the roster as well.   The fact that Bradley is the guy to go, however, is rather shocking.

Edwin Encarnacion tries to catch a foul ball…

…but doesn’t quite reach it.

Continue…

Enough of this 3 o’clock roadblock – roadblock – roadblock. Hey, Mr. LaRussa, ain’t got no birth certificate on me yet. I’m waiting, but I ain’t got all day, all night, every day, every month, every year. So, them crazy…we gonna chase them crazy…we gonna chase them crazy redbirds out of the yown. See now? See this? Two hours, ten minutes. That’s how things are done round here. We always get to bed early, and nobody stays up late. Hey, Mr. LaRussa, I look down on you with scorn. Then I eat all of your corn.

But I must be hallucinating, watching Angels celebrating. The A’s have gone 12-5 this month, and have lost half a game in the standings. Tonight, Angels 9-4 down and win 10-9? Every year there’s some team, that somehow gets exactly what they need exactly when they need it. This must be a strange deception, by celestial intervention. The Angels have the magic. The Angels are going to the playoffs. Anythems thinking they can keep thems out of the playoffs, them crazy. For Oakland, it’s Wild Card or bust.

From end to end, the noise begins…in the human battle stations, the big ones coming in between July 23 and August 13. In those 22 days, the A’s play the Angels 7 times, the Tigers 7 times, and the Mariners 4 times. Rip through those three weeks, and you make the playoffs. Play .500 or less, forget it. Meanwhile, work, work, work, work, work ’til holes are filled. A Mets-Indians-Yankees road trip. Schedulemakers, them crazy. Sinatra didn’t sing “I want to be a part of it–New York, Cleveland, New York!” Yankees have some wild card dreams of their own. They’re hot hot hot! Hopefully, before the A’s hit town, they will sit at the table too and drink cool water. And their lungs will fill with rain, and the water rushes in.

The last time I can remember going to a game at the Oakland Coliseum like today’s, a game that just seemed to drag on and on

and on

and on and on and on

and on

and on and on and on and on

and on

*sigh*

and on

and on and on and on

and on

and on and on,

was back in the days

ex…hale…

when Tony LaRussa

–pause–

was manning the dugout.

Ah yes…

Thanks for the memory. How lovely it was.

Here’s an interesting tidbit: the day after the MLB draft was complete, the A’s shifted their top prospect, 21-year-old Daric Barton, over from first base to third on an everyday basis. He had seen some occasional time at third before, but since June 8, he’s played there every day.

Perhaps it is only a coincidence, but the A’s did draft Sean Doolittle, a slick-fielding first baseman from U of Virginia, in the sandwich round this year. In a chat at Baseball Propectus, Bryan Smith said:

Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin told me that Doolittle was the best defensive first baseman he’d ever seen at the level. Gotta like that.

Doolittle is considered a safe pick, a player who is likely to make the majors, but not likely to be a star. He hits for average, but not a lot of power. Which sounds an awful lot like Daric Barton, except for the "best defensive" part.

Add Doolittle to Dan Johnson and Nick Swisher, and there’s a pretty long list of fairly young players in the A’s system who can play a better first base than Barton. The line behind Eric Chavez, on the other hand, is practically vacant. Jeff Baisley made some noise this year at low A Kane County, and was promoted up to AA Midland, where he’s done OK, but that’s about it. You hate to see a 21-year-old relegated to DH duties, so the more ways Barton can get himself into the lineup, the better. Especially on a team as injury-prone as the A’s, with a third baseman as injury-prone as Eric Chavez.

Barton has made five errors in nine games at third base, three of them in one game, so the transition has not exactly been smooth. None of the errors were on throws, however. He started out as a catcher, so even if he has little range and bad hands, he should at least be able to make the throw across the diamond.

The move to third may be a struggle for Barton, but the good news is that it has done wonders for his bat. Barton had been off to a slow start at the plate this year, but since moving to third, he has hit a blistering .526/.571/.710.

At last, Adam Melhuse has escaped! The evil double shadow of Jason Kendall and MLB rules have the poor backup catcher in their clutches no longer. Melhuse was traded to Texas this afternoon for Cash Considerations.

Considerations is a lousy player to get in return, and I guess Melhuse is still technically a subject of MLB rules, but I won’t complain. He is, at least, going to a place where he’ll get more opportunity than he was ever going to get in Oakland. I am happy for him; he deserves this.

The presumed A’s catcher of the future, Kurt Suzuki, will be called up to replace Melhuse. I suppose this is what Beane has been waiting for all along–enough of the season has passed now that Suzuki likely won’t be eligible for Super Two arbitration status. It give the A’s an extra cheap year of Kurt Suzuki, plus puts some pressure on Jason Kendall to get his act together, and fast. Somebody is gaining on him.

As much as I think Melhuse has been treated unfairly by the system, Billy Beane should get some kudos for getting Melhuse a new home as soon as he was able. Likewise for releasing Jay Witasick. Players make a lot of money, and the rules are the rules, but that’s never a reason not to treat people with simple, ordinary decency. I’m glad to see my favorite team show some.

Thank goodness the baserunner in this photograph is not A-Rod. Otherwise, we’d probably never hear the end of it:

Instead, this play is probably doomed to be forgotten because (a) it had no effect on the final score, (b) nobody got hurt, (b) the Twins turned the double play anyway. How exactly Luis "Joe Montana" Castillo managed to release the ball over the head of Jack "Too Tall" Cust and into the hands of Justin "Clark caught a touchdown" Morneau in time to turn the 4-3 double play, I’ll never quite understand.

What will be remembered from this game is the performance of Joe Blanton. Blanton had had two rocky outings since becoming the victim a triple-whammy curse placed on him when (a) Ryan gave him some solid Catfish Stew praise, (b) Rob Neyer spread that praise by (subscribers-only) linking to it on ESPN.com, and (c) Ryan followed up his praise by attending his next start. Let this be a lesson to you all: no good can ever come of such optimistic behavior.

Fortunately, I am happy to report that I was able reverse that whammy by attending Saturday’s game, and saying nothing of it or my expections about Joe Blanton to anyone in advance. As a result, Blanton pitched a three-hit, complete game shutout. You may all thank me in the comments below.

Blanton was masterful today, with great control of all of his pitches. Combine Blanton’s sharpness with Carlos Silva pitching at his ground-ball inducing best (including the one that started the double play above), and you had a recipe for one of the fastest games I’ve ever seen: one hour and 48 minutes. The two pitchers were so good today that they not only removed all the fireworks from the two teams’ offenses (the game’s only run scored on, yes, a double play), they kept fireworks out of the sky as well. The game was over so fast, we had to wait for a full hour after the game for the sky to get dark enough to begin the scheduled post-game fireworks show.

I’ve been pretty busy with travel and work stuff lately, and I have some more busy times coming soon, but I shall try to squeeze in some more whammy-reversing whenever I can. I haven’t even been able to get in any player fasting or anything this year. Travis Buck and Milton Bradley both left the game early with (guess what?) ailments of some sort. I can only do so much.  But does this team need me, or what?

Chapter 1: How to recognize a very good pitcher from a very long ways away indeed

Dan Haren has been the best pitcher in baseball so far this year, but he didn’t have his best stuff today. He’s a pitcher who is always around the plate, pounding the strike zone, throwing strike after strike. But on this afternoon, his location was off, he was throwing more balls than usual, running long counts, throwing 24 pitches in the first inning, and reaching 75 pitches after four. Although the Rangers had only managed one run off Haren early in the game, and his opposing pitcher, John Koronka looked very very hittable, I began to worry that the A’s might lose this game in the end. Haren looked like he would hit his pitch limit shortly after five innings, the A’s would need three-to-four innings of work out of their quite shaky bullpen to win the game. But then, the field tilted.

It happened in the fifth inning. What had been an uphill struggle for four innings, suddenly reached a peak and started racing effortlessly along like the cake of Gloucestershire cheese in today’s scoreboard highlight of choice. A five-pitch inning was followed by a seven-pitch inning, and the next thing you knew, Haren had stretched his one last inning to three, and ended the day with eight innings pitched and only one run allowed.

And that’s how to recognize a good pitcher. When he starts the game with an ERA below 2.00, has a bad day, and still manages to lower his ERA after the day is over: that’s when you have a very very good pitcher indeed.

Continue…

In full appreciation of this map of the Stockholm Subway system, where all the Swedish place names are translated into literal English, I present the 30 Major League team names, translated into literal Swedish, listed in Swedish alphabetical order.

Which team is which, I’ll leave it for you to figure out in the comments.  No fair spilling the beans if you can already speak a Scandinavian language, though.

Björnungarna
Bryggarna
De Idrottsliga
De Klippiga
De Kungliga
De Landsomfattande
De Modiga
De Röda
Fäderna
Gyllingarna
Indianerna
Jänkarna
Jättarna
Nötskrikarna
Parkvaktarna
Rockorna
Röda Fåglarna
Röda Strumporna
Sjömännen
Sjörövarna
Skallerormarna
Spjutfiskarna
Stjärnorna
Storstadsinvånarna
Tigrarna
Tvillingarna
Undvikarna
Ungstona
Vita Strumporna
Änglarna

Few things are less exciting than sleeping, but Sunday’s A’s-Giants game may have been one of them. I arrived back in the Bay Area after my 11-hours-jammed-into-a-French-sardine-can flight from Europe Saturday afternoon, and headed out to the Coliseum the next day still zonked by jet lag. A good nap would have been more valuable to me than watching Matt Morris put the A’s bats to sleep for nine innings with his assortment of well-located slop. On another day, I may have been able to appreciate Morris’ craftsmanship, but on this day, I was simply bored.

I would have much preferred to have seen Barry Zito’s return to the Oakland Coliseum on Friday night than this game. That would have had some emotional resonance worth remembering. Unfortunately, with a 4AM CET game time and a 10AM flight out of Charles de Gaulle Airport (which, I must add, seems to have been designed by committees of Microsoft engineers rather than Jonathan Ive), I spent the entire game sleeping inside Paris Hilton.

And that’s enough of that. To me, personally and for the Oakland A’s, 2007 has been just dragging along, starting, stopping, unable to kick into gear for one reason or another. It’s time to get a move on. Let’s get this party started.

Tomorrow, the Champs Elysées will be closed for the inauguration parade for newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy. I’ve never seen a presidential inauguration parade before, so the thought did occur to take advantage of this opportunity and go hang out behind one of the crowd barriers I witnessed being erected earlier today all along Paris’ most famous boulevard. But since there have been some violent protests following the election results, I think it’s probably safest to keep my 80-year-old mother away from that scene. We’ll probably go check out some museum exhibits instead.

Oh, wait…you probably wanted to read about a Huston Street being shut down, not a Paris street being shut down. About that…well, yeah, it figures, doesn’t it? Is there anything really intelligent to say about all these injuries at this point? "Fire so and so, blah blah blah…" I suppose, maybe, whatever. I don’t really know where to start to assign blame on this. The volume and diversity of injuries on this team is pretty much unfathomable. It’s like trying to communicate something complex to someone who doesn’t speak the same language as you. They don’t make sense, you don’t make sense, so you just kind of wave your hands and shake your head and shrug your shoulders, and sigh, and move on and hope for better luck with the next person you meet. Remind me never to express any optimism ever again.

Bonjour, mina ladies et monsieurs! Oh, låt mig tell you, jag am så confused maintenant.

Min mother fyllde 80 years old last week, et som present, min brother et I decided to take her till Paris. She’s always wanted att se Paris, mais she hade jamais been här before.

Nu, je suis här, trying att juggla three langues at once: speaking Swedish to min bror och mor, trying to drudge up le French je haven’t used since mon high-school classes 20 years ago to parler till shopkeepers et waiters et such, et only when that fails (as den ofta does), reverting back to Anglais. I har never had des problem att juggla deux langues, but le third har tied up min tunga et mon brain into complete knots.

As en resultat of ce voyage, jag n’ai pas anything brilliant att dire om les Athletiques d’Oakland. Jag har not seen un game for över en vecka. Mais je read les box scores på webben, so det seems like les Athletiques are doing pas mal. Oui?

Så, how about that Jacques Cousteau?

So I was watching the A’s-Devil Rays game on Sunday, and my six-year-old daughter asks, "Who’s that guy?"

"He’s a new player on the A’s," I said. "Chris Snelling."

"Who??? Chris Smelly???" she replied, in obvious delight at the possibilities.

"No, not Smelly. Snelling. He doesn’t stink, unlike some other A’s hitters I could name."

* * *

When an entire lineup seems to stink, it’s sometimes hard to tell for sure if the entire lineup really stinks, or if the team is just running into a series of good performances by the opposing team. But all it takes is one new player (Dan Johnson) or two (Chris Snelling, Jack Cust) to be inserted into that lineup and not stink, to confirm that, yup, the rest of the lineup stinks.

But even the successes of these three recent additions to the A’s lineup may be misleading. The whole lineup might still stink, but the stench is simply being masked by the even more malodorous pitching staffs of Tampa Bay and Kansas City.

* * *

But who are we to talk? Catfish Stew must not smell too good itself. Consider:

Ken Arneson is currently 4,650 miles away from Ryan Armbrust
Ryan Armbrust is currently 3,900 miles away from Philip Michaels
Philip Michaels is currently 7,100 miles away from Ken Arneson.

Nobody on Catfish Stew wants to be anywhere near each other. And clearly, you especially want as much distance as possible from that putrid Ken Arneson fellow. We won’t reveal his exact location to protect the innocent, but this picture was taken by him yesterday high above a remote northern ocean:

Keep away from us. Keep far, far away.

Billy Beane is on a roll! He’s trading and trading and trading and he just can’t stop! Today, he sent Charles Thomas to the Brewers organization in exchange for catcher J.D. Closser.

What’s the point of this trade? I can only guess. Both players were once prospects who showed some promise, but flopped at the major league level. Seems on the surface like a pointless shuffle of bodies.

Here’s my guess. The A’s have two players, Mark Kotsay and Esteban Loaiza, currently on the 60-day DL, who are likely to come off in June. When that happens, two players are going to have to be moved off the 40-man roster, and I’m guessing that one of them is going to be Jeremy Brown. Also, Brown is currently on the DL with a calf strain, so Closser provides catching depth, plus another healthy body in Sacramento.

Either that, or he just wants to give A’s bloggers something to do besides complain about the lousy offense, Nick Swisher’s game-winning home run today notwithstanding.

For completions sake, the Tim Hudson trade is now worth Closser, Brad Halsey, and Dan Meyer.  Given that Halsey’s probably gonna be out of here at some point from his recent whining, and Meyer is just now returning from the injury that has ruined the past two seasons for him, the jury on that trade is still out.

Mulder trade?  See today’s starting pitcher.  Dan Haren is awesome.

And the winner of today’s injury lottery is…Mike Piazza! Congrats, Mike! Your sprained shoulder has won you a four-to-six week vacation in beautiful Darlington, England, birthplace of railroads, and home of UK Postal Code DL!

So the A’s add even more important depth to their disabled list, but don’t go thinking Billy Beane is satisfied yet. Beane certainly has his faults, but his most redemptive quality as a GM is probably his ability recognize when he’s made a mistake, and correct it quickly. Beane followed his brilliant trade for Chris Denorfia, who is out for the year with Tommy John surgery, by inexplicably acquiring a healthy Ryan Langerhans from the Braves. Recognizing that Langerhans might actually be able to stay in the lineup for an extended period of time, Beane quickly got rid of him, sending him off to the Washington Nationals after only two games in the green and gold, in exchange for former Mariner Chris Snelling. Snelling is actually healthy at the moment as well, but his track record suggests considerably more upside than he has displayed of late. Snelling is probably the only player in the major leagues who can rival Bobby Crosby and Rich Harden for the title as the majors’ second-most brittle player (behind only the incomparable Carl Pavano) and may, in fact, surpass his new teammates. He is apparently so brittle that even the mere mention of his name can send him to the DL–the USS Mariner blog took to calling him "Doyle" in an effort to prevent further injury.

Even though we still don’t know who the PTBNL is going to the Braves for Langerhans, I am positively giddy over this trade. With the exception of the A’s lone albatross, Jason Kendall, the A’s have never had more flexibility and more potential up and down the lineup to do damage to themselves than they have right now. Maybe Snelling will be blinded by his new white shoes and trip and fall over himself. Maybe he’ll bump into one of the invisible people in the locker room, and break a leg. Or perhaps Crosby and Snelling can collide with each other in shallow left field, and take each other out for good in one big bang. The possibilities are endless; the sky is the limit. It’s a great time to be an A’s fan.