The next A’s game I have tickets for is Saturday. As it turns out, this may turn out to be Barry Zito’s last game in an A’s uniform. I’ll have to remember to give him a standing ovation when he comes off the field, even if he gives up 10 runs in the first inning. Zito has provided a lot of viewing pleasure over the years, and I want to be sure to thank him.

This is relevant because rumors are flying around that Billy Beane is shopping Zito again. And of course, that means that the neverending Zito-for-Lastings Milledge rumors are back, too. I’m not going to write anything about it myself. I’ve already speculated about it, let’s see…1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times already, and you know what they always say, eleven times is enough.

If you want more Zito/Milledge speculation, let me point you to MetsBlog, where Matthew Cerrone discusses the idea with ESPN’s Buster Olney. The words “Lastings” and “Milledge” shall not pass through my keyboard again until we are certain the trade will or will not happen. It’s all up to Omar Minaya.

Olney thinks that Beane would also be willing to go for Aaron Heilman instead, which I think is ridiculous. Heilman is only six months younger than Zito, and he’s accomplished almost nothing in comparison. Olney mentioned Heilman’s “upside”, but Heilman is running out of time for upside. His ERA is 4.47. In a weaker league. As a reliever. If Heilman is the return, I’d much rather keep Zito, try to win this year, and get two draft picks in what is supposed to be a very strong draft class.

The bigger question is a philosophical one: should the A’s trade Zito at all, when they’re still tied for first place with 62 games remaining? Is there any way they could get anything for Zito that wouldn’t decrease their chances of winning the division this year?

It’s an interesting question. The A’s upper farm system is so barren, that it’s hard to imagine the A’s getting much better than they are now in the next couple of years. This may be there best chance to win a division for a while. On the other hand, Zito is probably their best, or only, tool they have to restock the upper levels of the farm system with some talent.

Perhaps the Zito dilemma shouldn’t be viewed in a vacuum. There are ways Beane can improve the A’s in other areas to make up for the loss of Zito, and give the A’s a chance to compete this year and next. For example, I’d like to see the A’s go out and nab a third baseman like Joe Randa, just so they can let Eric Chavez hit the DL and fix his tendonitis with rest. Randa, mediocre as he is, would still easily improve on the .100 batting average that both Chavez and Antonio Perez are putting up there right now. Then maybe you have a healthy Chavez for September.

Memo to Moore as he cleanses:
Dump your MacDougal-Dessenses,
But dodge the Odalises
Who pigpen your palaces
And Yugo your Mercedes-Benzes.

Tonight, the Angels caught the A’s for first place in the AL West standings. The pessimist in me thinks that it should be obvious now that the Angels have fixed their problems and are just going to zoom past the A’s, Rangers (half a game out), and Mariners (three games out) and run away and hide with the division.

However, for the optimist in me, there’s this:

Angels' series opponents, since June 1
Cleveland
Tampa Bay
Seattle
Kansas City
San Diego
San Francisco
Arizona
Colorado
LA Dodgers
Seattle
Oakland
Tampa Bay
Cleveland
Kansas City
Tampa Bay

The highest current winning percentage amongst any of those teams is the Padres, at .520. The Angels haven’t faced a good baseball team in almost two months.

Meanwhile, the A’s have gone up against the Twins, Yankees, Detroit (twice) and Boston (twice).

So maybe the Angels aren’t quite as good as they seem right now, and the A’s aren’t quite as bad. The schedule has been kind to the Angels so far, but it will strike back later. The Angels have the most difficult remaining schedule of all four AL West teams:

Team      Remaining Opponent Win %
Athletics  .501
Rangers    .505
Mariners   .511
Angels     .528

If you take out the intradivision AL West games, the table looks like this:

Team      Remaining Opponent Win % (non AL West teams)
Athletics  .499
Rangers    .506
Mariners   .510
Angels     .548

Even if the Angels are the best team in the division, they have the toughest road ahead to win it. Still, there are so many intradivision games remaining (at least 28 for each team), the division will probably be decided by who can knock the other teams out in their head-to-head matchups.

This division is still a wide open sea of unpredictable mediocrity. I can’t say I’ll be watching events unfold with much enthusiasm. It’ll probably be more like watching four boats with large holes in their hulls slowly take on water. You’re horrified by the disaster, but you have to keep watching, just to see which one sinks last.

I stayed with a friend in Boston, and he had a curious picture hanging on his wall, of a building in York, England:

Those silly British. I already knew they had funny spellings for words like “color”, “organize”, and “jail”. But it was news to me that they even had their own spelling for “Billy Beane”.

Naturally, I had to investigate further. I googled Billy Beane’s name using this weird British spelling. It turns out that Billy Beane is so popular overseas, that his mere presence is considered enough to cure all sorts of diseases, such as:

Headache, Biliousness, Costiveness, Piles, Liver Trouble, Bad Breath, Pimples, Face Sores, Female Weakness, that Tired Feeling, Lack of Physical Tone, Sleeplessness, Kidney Troubles, Rheumatism, Indigestion, Dizziness, Buzzing in the Head, Fulness after Eating, &c., &c. A Bile Bean taken now and then will keep one free from these digestive troubles, their attendant evils, and dangerous after effects.

See now, that’s why a little travel is good for the soul. It can give you a different perspective on things.

Here I was, thinking that Billy Beane had been causing all those symptoms as I watched the 2006 Oakland Athletics play baseball. That all the little misjudgments he’s made over the years have added up to all manner of unpleasant symptoms today.

What I need to do is have the confidence that a little Billy Beane, right around the trading deadline, will correct all my disorders of digestion, and I will feel as well as I ever have in my life.

Then I can feel as happy as the Aussies, who love Billy Beane so much they wrote a song called “The Bile Bean March” to express their love and joy for the man.

For those of you who cannot read the sheet music linked to above, I have created a clip of the first section of the song for your listening enjoyment.

And when I feel sick to my stomach trying to digest the thought of rooting for Esteban Loaiza on a Sunday morning, I shall listen to the song, and dream of the magical trade to come that will cure all my ills.

When Shea didn’t plea everydea
He’d prea not to stea as a Jea,
Then displea such a sulk
That todea he and Chulk
Were finally treaded awea.

I’ll bet there aren’t too many people who have made a journey from the geysers of Iceland to Fenway Park in Boston. I went from 50 degrees and a cold rain in Reykjavik one day to a hot and humid 90 degrees in Boston the next.

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The population of the entire country of Iceland is 100,000 less than the city of Oakland, California. Its manufacturing capabilities are limited, as it relies on its unique natural resources to drive its economy. As an island in the middle of the North Atlantic ocean, its geographical isolation makes it difficult and expensive to import products, so it often has to make do with whatever items happen to make their way onto their big volcanic rock in the sea.

Icelanders, therefore, must find innovative ways to compensate when technological innovations such as the scorecard fails to reach their shores. On my recent visit to Iceland, I discovered that, odd as it may seem, Icelanders have turned to license plates for their scorekeeping needs.

Give the Icelanders credit for creativity, but obviously, this is a highly inefficient method. It can take days to gather all the necessary vehicles to record a game. It’s impossible to play a game without this car in attendance:

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So I traded my tank in for a tractor, but wouldn’t you know it, the next place I went, they had banned those, too:

I suppose because that house is so famous for its failure to reach an agreement on a ban (you all know that story, right?), that people felt compelled to ban something. Let us offer our sympathies for the poor tractor, forced to suffer the burdens of history, and the unfair fate of the scapegoat.

What is this All Stars Game of which you speak? Here in Europe, such things we do not hear of.

Billy Beane and the San Jose EarthquA’s went to Europe this summer to study soccer at its highest level, but I fear the Messiah of Sabermetrics is entering the sport too late to exploit its inefficiencies. This year’s World Cup was decidedly boring, riddled with far too much cautious defensive play, and a complete paucity of risk-taking offenses.

Methinks someone over here read Moneyball, and sucked all the risk-taking out of the sport. Whatever the soccer equivalents of bunts, steals and hit-and-runs are, they are gone. When everyone basically plays with eight defenders in front of the goalie–well, how interesting can a 2-on-8 fast break be? Moneyball may lead to the most efficient way to maximize your odds of winning a game, but efficiency never gets called “The Beautiful Game”.

* * *

Of course, judging by how Billy Beane’s Base Ball Team is currently playing, efficiency may not be the best word to describe it. Unless, of course, you define efficiency as “sucking as much as possible, while still remaining in first place.”

I’m too far away to understand how this highly flawed team has reached the All-Star break tied for first, but I shall soon be studying the problem up close and personal.

But before I can do that, I have a few more twists and turns to take on my strange current itinerary. Back in a few days…

I have a blog entry I intend to write, relating the A’s stadium situation to my current travels, but the essay remains unwritten. My travels have taken quite a few more detours than I expected, because it turns out that there are just way too many places that the darn Danes won’t let me drive my tank.

It takes forever to get anywhere around Denmark. I simply haven’t had the time for essay writing. Sorry. Perhaps later.

When your team has the worst batting average in all of major league baseball, but is still somehow in first place, it can be quite stressful. On the one hand, your team is awful. On the other hand, you have hope. It’s enough to drive you nuts.

I couldn’t take it anymore. So I left. Now, I’m in a place where nobody cares a lick if the A’s can’t hit a lick. The only way I can stress about the A’s now is if I go out of my way to do so.

Go ahead and try to figure out what city I am in from these photos I took today. No fair guessing if I already told you where I was going.

Ah, now, don’t you feel better already?

The boxscore says Chris Young faced off against Barry Zito in San Diego Tuesday night, but my eyes say that it was more like a matchup that took place in a computerized fantasy simulation: this was Barry Zito 2003 vs. Zito 2006. If you’re wondering why Chris Young suddenly turned into a good pitcher this year, I think it’s because somebody gave him a copy of Barry Zito’s 2003 playbook.

Young was just baffling the A’s hitters with what looked like mediocre stuff, and I kept wondering how he was doing it, until I realized that he was following a Barry Zito gameplan circa 2003, and then I understood what he was doing. The game plan looks something like this:

• Live on three pitches: 86-88 mph four-seam fastball, a changeup, and a curveball.
• First time through the lineup: throw almost nothing but fastballs. Maybe a changeup or two. Don’t show your curveball at all.
• Pound the fastballs inside, just off the plate. Pitch higher in the strike zone than the batters are used to.
• Second time through the order, just as they start expecting the fastball, start breaking out the curve.
• Hope you can throw the curveball for strikes at this point. If you can’t, they’ll start sitting fastball, and then you’ll be lucky to make it through the order a second time.
• If you’re not sharp, don’t give in to a batter–it’s preferable to walk a bunch of guys, and refuse to give up big hits, and you’ll minimize the damage when you get into jams. Keep aiming for the corners or just off it, and eventually, you’ll throw a good pitch and get a lazy popup or a strikeout, and get out of trouble.
• Run a high pitch count so you barely make it through the sixth inning.
• Hope your team’s bullpen can hang on to the lead.

The game plan worked perfectly. Young wasn’t particularly sharp, he walked a bunch of guys, had a lot of deep counts on others, but he never gave in to a batter. The A’s never managed to get a clutch hit off him, despite numerous opportunities.

Zito used that same game plan quite often in 2003, but the scheme seemed to run out of gas in 2004. The hitters learned the pattern, and started making Zito pay for his predictability. Zito had a fairly bad year in 2004, and had to make some adjustments (learn two new pitches: slider and two-seamer) in 2005 to get the hitters off-balance again. He’s a much different (and, IMO, better) pitcher now. It will be quite interesting to see if the batters eventually adjust to Young, and if Young will have to make a similar adjustment back.

The 2006 Zito was a little bit wild today; he didn’t have sharp control, and the Padres worked a few runs off him with a couple timely hits and an unfortunate balk. On an average day, allowing just three runs would be enough to win. But on an average day, you don’t pitch against your past.

Well, my Blanton Fast worked, as he rattled off three straight quality starts as soon as I started it. The Blanton Fast is now over.

Seems like a good time to look at the A’s quality start numbers. If you want to see why the A’s have been hot in June, this chart pretty much explains it:

Quality Start Chart

Pitcher     April    May    June    Total
Zito         2/5     6/6     3/5    11/16
Haren        2/5     4/6     4/5    10/16
Blanton      2/5     3/6     3/4     8/15
Saarloos     0/0     1/5     3/3     4/ 8
Loaiza       1/4     0/0     2/4     3/ 8
Harden       2/5     0/0     0/1     2/ 6
Halsey       0/0     1/6     0/0     1/ 6
Team QS      9/24   15/29   15/22   39/75
Team QS%     .375    .517    .681    .520
Team wins   12/24   12/29   17/22   41/75
Wins-QS        +3      -3      +2      +2

The entire rotation is performing much better in June, and as a consequence, so is the whole team. All those quality starts in June has enabled the team to hide the fact that the bullpen is still not very deep from all the injuries.

So now that Blanton is repaired, who should I fast now? I’m thinking Eric Chavez. The guy is clearly playing injured. He’s swinging right through all kinds of hittable pitches. It’s probably painful for him to hit, and it’s definitely painful for me to watch. I’m not watching him hit again until he comes up with a multi-hit game which includes at least one extra-base hit.

The Esteban Loaiza news prompted a discussion on this blog about our all-time least-favorite A’s players. I laid out a few players in that discussion, but I thought I’d formalize the list, rank them in order of how much I disliked them, and explain why I disliked each of them.

The only rule is this: I have to have honestly disliked them while they played for the A’s. I can’t include players from whom I developed a dislike after they left. So no Giambi brothers, no Jose Canseco, no Troy Neel. And I don’t think Scott Sauerbeck is eligible yet, since I have yet to see him play.

The List:

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I wanted to write down my memories of Saturday, which was probably the most sports-packed day of my life, just so I can look back at this entry and remember this day later, but I’m too busy to make any coherent story of it, so I’m just gonna throw out some bullet points, and get this over with.

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I still haven’t gotten around to writing about Saturday, because yesterday a friend gave me tickets to the Giants-Angels game yesterday, so my family and I got on the ferry, and off we went.

I missed the top of the first, because my daughter wanted to take an at-bat in the mini-AT&T Park out in left field. I peeked through the holes in the faux-ballpark and saw Chone Figgins racing around third base and scoring, but I had no idea how that happened.

In the fifth inning, I heard some people talking about pitch counts and no-hitters, and I looked up and was surprised that Matt Cain indeed had a no-hitter going. I had figured there was a hit of some sort in the first inning, but I guess I was wrong.

And so Matt Cain went on throwing a no-hitter, through the sixth, and seventh, and into the eighth. With every out, the crowd seemed to get a little more excited. And I started getting a little more nervous, because Cain’s pitch count was getting awfully high. He got past 120 pitches in the eighth, and there was still over an inning to go.

I’d have loved to have seen another no-hitter in person (I witnessed Nolan Ryan’s sixth, and a four-pitcher no-hitter by the Orioles), but at the same time, I’d hate to see Matt Cain blow out his arm trying for it. So I was torn.

Cain got through 7 2/3 before he gave up his first hit, a clean single to center by Figgins, on this pitch:

Cain finished the inning, and walked off to a loud, standing ovation. He had a great night. And so did I.

Less than a week after Esteban Loaiza was arrested for DUI, the A’s signed another player recently involved in a DUI incident, Scott Sauerbeck, to replace Steve Karsay, who retired.

Sauerbeck was just a passenger in the incident, not a driver. But it was his car involved in the incident, and both Sauerbeck and the passenger tried to hide from police after they were about to get caught.

Is this what counts for players who are undervalued by the market these days? People who (let people) drive drunk? Yes, nobody was hurt in either incident. The ghosts of those not killed are grateful.

I feel sick. First, we find out that for over a decade, the A’s clubhouse was a virtual pharmacy of illegal performance enhancing chemicals. Nobody gave a crap because the juiced up players helped them win. Now, this.

It’s not really signing Sauerbeck per se that bothers me. Innocent until proven guilty, of course. Really, what bothers me more is the historical pattern here.

Do you really think the A’s management went all those years and had no idea all these players were using these chemicals? Have the A’s ever expressed any regret or remorse or disapproval of any sort of chemical abuse? Maybe the Jeremy Giambi-John Mabry trade was…but we can only guess.

The question is: what kind of values do the A’s really have, anyway?

I want to root for a team that wins because of their values, not despite them. I get enough of that sort of behavior from the politics section of the newspaper. I don’t want it in my sports section.

The A’s have a designated driver program at their home games. With each passing year, they make it harder and harder to sign up. These days, you have to go to two different tables, sign two different forms, get a wristband stuck around your arm, all to get a voucher for a extremely small cup of soda that you can only redeem at certain stands in the stadium, the list of which is published nowhere, not even on the voucher. If you visit the wrong stand–sorry, you just wasted five minutes of your life standing in line for nothing. You need to go stand in that other line over there.

If they want to show they really have some values in this regard, give me one short form to fill out, don’t make me put on a useless wristband that nobody checks anyway, give me the largest soda you have, let me redeem it at any doggone stand in the whole stadium, and make Esteban Loaiza and Scott Sauerbeck pay for it. Then maybe I’ll start believing the A’s actually believe in something truly valuable.

Saturday was a very long day, and it’ll take a long blog entry to write down all my memories of that day, and so I shall. But first, I wanted to post some of my favorite pictures from Sunday’s A’s-Dodgers game.

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Frank Thomas tweaked his quad muscle again, and since he would probably have to miss a couple of games this weekend, and the following nine games are all in National League parks where he wouldn’t play anyway, the A’s put him on the DL.

How convieeeeeeeeeenient. He’ll be eligible to return when the A’s come back home, where the DHes roam, and the pitchers don’t swing bats all year.

Jeremy Brown replaces him on the 25-man roster. It’s the third time he’s been called up this year. He hasn’t played yet. Here’s hoping he gets at least one AB this time.

According to the Oakland Tribune, Esteban Loaiza was arrested at 3AM on Wednesday morning for DUI and speeding. The CHP reported he was driving over 120mph.

It would sure be nice if the A’s could use this as an excuse to get out of that contract, but invoking the “morals clause” in the standard player contract is very difficult to do even in the worst behavioral examples, and unlikely to succeed.

We’re still stuck with him. I was having a hard time liking Loaiza to begin with, but I tried. Now, however, I shall now consider Loaiza as a resident of the deepest levels of my doghouse. He’s going to have to not only play extremely well, but show show a healthy dose of genuine contrition and remorse, to have any chance of getting off my list of least-favorite Oakland Athletics players of all time.