It was the first decent ballgame weather of the year, so my wife talked me into heading out to the Coliseum and taking in tonight’s Tigers-A’s game. My reluctance came from the thought of watching Esteban Loaiza throw softballs at the opposition after a long day of work, but I was sufficiently intrigued by the opportunity to watch Justin Verlander’s first career appearance in Oakland to take her up on the offer.

If you don’t know anything about Justin Verlander, or why I would be excited to watch him, all you need to know is shown on this picture of the scoreboard I took at the game:

 
Our seats were way down by the Tigers bullpen, so I didn’t really have a good view of the strike zone, but obviously, he had great stuff. I couldn’t tell exactly what he was throwing, but he had three speeds: 96-101mph, 81-83mph, and 75-78mph. The first was obviously his fastball, the second I’m guessing was a changeup, and the third was maybe a curveball. Correct me if I’m wrong.

When Verlander got ahead in the count, he could make the A’s look foolish at times chasing the slow pitches out of the zone. But he seemed to have trouble throwing strikes to the left-handed batters, and he didn’t seem to have much confidence that he could throw his slow stuff for strikes when he was behind in the count. As a result, the A’s managed to put some good wood on the ball a few times.

Nick Swisher provided two of those times. He launched a two-run homer in the second inning off a fastball. In his next at-bat, Verlander made Swisher look silly with changeups, and Swisher struck out. The third time, Swisher sat on the changeup, and launched it for a game-winning home run.

I wonder whether the difference in speeds between Verlander’s fastball and his changeup isn’t a little too much. If his changeup is 81-83, he might be better off throwing the fastball around 94-96 most of the time, and cranking it up to 101 when he needs to. That’s what Rich Harden, who is Verlander’s most obvious comp, does, and it’s a very effective strategy. Harden’s changeup is a little harder than Verlander’s, though–Harden throws it around 86mph.

Still, when a guy throws 101mph, you’ll take a few imperfections. If I were a Tiger fan, I’d be very excited for his future. If I were a Tiger fan, I’d also be frightened for his future, after watching Jim Leyland let Verlander throw 121 pitches this early in the season, this early in his career. The Tigers didn’t even have anyone warming up until Verlander had thrown 115. That’s crazy.

So Verlander pitched fairly well, but his defense betrayed him a bit with a couple of errors, and the A’s pitched well, too. Esteban Loaiza gave the first of what the A’s hope will be many quality starts. Loaiza’s velocity was better than his last time out–he hit 89 on the gun at times–but still not the low-90s that he’s used to throwing. But that little extra speed that has been missing up until how seemed to do the trick. Loaiza gave a solid outing, gave his team a chance to win, and they did. Justin Duchscherer and Huston Street (sans voodoo) closed it out with three scoreless innings.

Quality start, solid bullpen, late run–that’s the M.O. we want to see from the A’s. More of this, please.

And thus ended Justin Verlander’s first appearance against the A’s. As a footnote, the result may have been the most crowded scoreboard I’ve ever seen:

Somebody call security! An entire ER is missing!

I can’t recall ever seeing all 18 spaces on that scoreboard filled up with pitchers’ names before, let alone having it flow over by a couple of letters. Is this–20 letters–the most combined letters ever in the last names of two pitchers involved in a decision at the Coliseum?

Nope. Jason Isringhausen once lost to Paul Quantrill for a whopping 21-letter decision.

Oh, well. So it wasn’t a historic evening. But it was a memorable one.

Took in my first A’s game of the season on Sunday. Here’s my first pitch of 2006, Dan Haren to Gary Matthews, Jr.

The stands were rather empty. It had rained all morning, and somewhat miraculously dried up just before game time. The rain probably kept the fans at home. We showed up five minutes before first pitch, and they still had Huston Street bobbleheads to give away. Usually, bobbleheads are gone at least an hour and a half before game time, so even if I have a ticket to a bobblehead game, I usually resign myself to the fact that I won’t get one. That’s OK since, with the possible exception of my Bill King bobblehead, I don’t really care much for bobbleheads much anyway. But nonetheless, I am now the (not-so) proud owner of a Huston Street bobblehead.

It was also my first chance to check out the ballpark with the new tarps covering the upper deck. It seems to have been done rather tastefully. I find the tarps neither distracting nor annoying, which is probably the best you could hope for aesthetically.

I got to watch exactly the kind of game I like: a snappy pitchers’ duel with good defense and some timely hitting. Both Dan Haren and Kameron Loe were pounding the strike zone, and the game passed quickly.

In the bottom of the sixth, the A’s broke a scoreless drive on a screaming double by Eric Chavez, who went 4-for-4 today.

The Rangers mounted a few rallies against Haren, but Haren avoided the problem he had in his last two outings of giving up the big hit. Instead, he worked his way out of several jams by enticing the Rangers to hit into double plays.

Haren gave up an unfortunate home run when a deep fly ball popped out of Milton Bradley’s glove as he hit the fence, and fell over the wall. It was tied 1-1 into the bottom of the eighth, when Chavez again doubled, scoring Mark Kotsay and Nick Swisher to give the A’s a 3-1 lead.

So up until this point, it was a great game, very enjoyable. And that’s when The Curse happened.

I don’t like bobbleheads. They’re ugly and useless. And more often than not, they’re bad luck. I can’t remember anyone having a good day on their bobblehead day.

So when Huston Street came into the game in the ninth, and people started pulling out their Huston Street bobbleheads and waving them around, I cringed.

It’s like having hundreds of mini voodoo dolls all directing their negative energy at their target. A chill passes through the air, as each evil Mini-Huston focuses its malicious glare onto the real Huston Street, infusing him with all the cumulative bad karma their voodoo gloom and doom can muster.

And so every close pitch gets called a ball. Street falls behind in the count to Michael Young. Young hits a liner that Jay Payton barely misses. Up steps Mark Teixeira. Same thing, Street can’t get the close calls, and he has to come in on a 3-2 pitch.

The worst intentions of thousands of little evil bobblehead Huston Streets then become reality. The one, lonely, real-life Huston Street leaves his 3-2 pitch floating right over the fat part of the plate, and Mark Teixeira crushes it out of the park. Tie ballgame.

The rest of the game is just too horrible to describe. I’ll leave it to your imagination. Let’s just say I never want to see another bobblehead again.

Blind mice.
Little pigs.
Musketeers.
Stooges.
Outs.
Strikes.
Runs against the A’s.
Home runs for the A’s.

Well, it was certainly fun to see back-to-back-to-back home runs by Eric Chavez, Frank Thomas, and Milton Bradley on consecutive pitches. It was also nice to see the bullpen handed a lead, and to have them finish off the victory.

Wins are always welcome, but this is not the M.O. the A’s want to see too often. This was exactly the same sort of game they played in the first two games in Minnesota: the starting pitcher coughs up a costly three-run homer, and the A’s have to scratch and claw their way back into the game.

It’s a good sign that each time, the A’s offense did rebound to make a game of it, and that this time, the A’s managed to overcome the deficit and win the game, but you can’t expect that too often. If the A’s plan to compete for a title, they need to stop letting these small rallies turn into big innings. They’ve allowed at least one 3-run inning in six consecutive games now. They’re lucky that they managed to go 2-4 in that span.

I have tickets for tomorrow’s game, my first of the year, so let’s hope that (a) it stays dry, and (b) Dan Haren can put an end to this big inning nonsense.

Update: Just thought I’d throw out this chart, to show how ridiculously one-sided the big homer problem has been so far this year.
 

The A’s have hit five more homers than their opponents, but scored seven fewer runs on those homers. The Runs/HR has to start to even out, right? You’d think…

Meet Bob. Bob links to Rob. Rob talks about quality starts. Meet Ken. Ken agrees with Rob: the “quality start” is a pretty good stat. It’s not perfect, by any means, but it does explain things sometimes.

It certainly explains why the A’s just got swept in Minnesota. The A’s didn’t get anything even resembling a quality start against the Twins.

Last year, the A’s quality start percentage nearly matched their winning percentage: they got 90 quality starts, and won 88 games.

This year, the A’s only have three quality starts out of ten. They’re 3-0 in their games with quality starts, and 2-5 without them.

I certainly expect the A’s to get a lot closer to the 55% quality start percentage they had last year than the 30% they’ve put up in 2006. So while falling back to .500 is disheartening, there’s no reason to panic about a 10-game stretch of .500 ball. These things happen. The pitching will come around, and things will get better.

All signs are pointing towards the A’s building their new stadium in Fremont, about halfway between Oakland and San Jose. The A’s are apparently close to a deal with Cisco Systems to purchase the land in question.

One of the last remaining issues is naming rights to the stadium. I guess Cisco Systems wants the field named after them, since they’re providing the land, but apparently, Lew Wolff already has another company lined up for naming rights.

Just to put to rest any potential speculation, that mystery company is not mine. The new stadium won’t be called Toaster Field, even though I do think that “Toaster Field” would be a great name for a ballpark.

Here are the top three contenders for naming the new ballpark:

1. Gap Park.

The founders of Gap, Inc., the Fisher family, also own the A’s. It’s the easy choice.

2. Cisco Field.

Cisco provides the land, they get the naming rights. OK, not a bad name. Everytime the A’s win in exciting comeback fashion, we’d be hearing about the “Cisco Kids”. But Wolff has other ideas, like maybe…

3. EBay Field.

Now this would be brilliant. You call the A’s the “East Bay Athletics”. They’d play in “EBay Field”. You get Bud Selig to agree that everywhere that “East Bay” needs to be abbreviated in Major League Baseball — on scoreboards, in domain names, whatever — it’s abbreviated EBay. You’d not only be selling naming rights to the stadium, you’d be selling naming rights to the team itself. How much money would that be worth? And if people complain that it’s a horrible commercial sellout, you just say, well, it’s only a pleasant coincidence.

And here’s another pleasant coincidence: Meg Whitman, President and CEO of EBay, is on the Board of Directors for Gap, Inc.. Think the A’s know how to get in touch with her?

I have no idea if this is actually in the works; it’s all just speculation on my part. But it’s just too good an idea not to happen. EBay Field. Get used to it.

Esteban Loaiza has turned into a pumpkin, just as I feared.

This explains why God took a boat to Buenos Aires.

Dan Haren has a blog now, and his most recent entry is titled ‘Lost’ on the Road. Suggestion for Mr. Haren: if you’re going to write titles that are prescient, try calling your next blog entry, “A’s Win Again”, or “Pitching with Perfect Control”, “I Threw a No-Hitter”. Haren and the A’s indeed “lost on the road” tonight, 7-6 in Minnesota.

In Haren’s first two starts this year, he has suffered from the same problem that plagued him at the beginning of 2005: the big inning. Early last year, he would get into jams, and then find himself unable to stop the bleeding. An inning where he should allow one or two runs suddenly became five, six, or seven-run innings. If he gave up five runs in a start, all or nearly all of those runs allowed would come in one inning. Otherwise, he’d shut the opposition down.

In his first start, he hung a breaking pitch to Gary Sheffield for a three-run homer. Tonight, the big inning struck Haren again. Five straight hits, an out, and then a fat, hit-me fastball to Tony Batista (why throw Batista anything anywhere close to the strike zone?) and a 4-0 lead turned into a 6-4 deficit that the A’s never overcame.

I guess the good news is that somewhere around the middle of June, Haren stopped letting these rallies get out of hand, and he was excellent the rest of the season. Whatever the problem is, we know Haren can get over it. Hopefully, this time it won’t take him two months to make the correction.

* * *

On the offensive side, Eric Chavez is on fire in April for the first time in his life. Chavez hit two home runs tonight, giving him five for the year. Maybe it’s practicing his leg kick in Arizona (which he never did before for some unfathomable reason, waiting until the regular season to start using it). Or maybe the comfort of having Frank Thomas hitting behind him has kept Chavez from trying to “do too much”, as the old saying goes. Whatever the reason, it’s a good sign.

If Ken Macha is true to his word that the “players write the lineup”, however, Chavez may not have Frank Thomas batting behind him much longer. Thomas isn’t hitting a lick. He’s getting hittable pitches, and either swinging through them, or popping them up. I don’t think Thomas is done as a player, but I do think he wasn’t quite as ready for the regular season as the A’s were hoping. His timing looks all off.

The alternative, though, is Dan Johnson, and he hasn’t hit anything, either. Johnson is 0-for-2006. So I guess it’s a race. First one to start hitting anything gets to keep his job.

Rich Harden and the A’s were cruising along, leading 6-0 going into the bottom of the 8th with Harden throwing a one-hitter, when quite suddenly, a baseball game broke out.

Harden tends to run out of gas in an instant. One minute he’s dominant, the next he’s wild and/or hittable. So after the first two runners in the bottom of the eighth got on, Ken Macha yanked him. Justin Duchscherer, his replacement, was uncharacteristically wild. Next thing you know, the tying run was on-deck with two outs, and Macha had to summon Joe Kennedy to get out Raul Ibanez. Kennedy did his job, and the A’s escaped the inning leading 6-1. Whew, right?

Not really. In the bottom of the ninth, Kirk Saarloos was brought on to nail down the last three outs, but he was wilder than Duchscherer. Suddenly the tying-run is on deck again with two outs, and this time the tying run is Ichiro. So Macha summons Huston Street to put an end to this nonsense. Whew, right?

Wrong. Somehow Willie Bloomquist, of all people, managed to get a hit off of Street to bring Ichiro to the plate as the tying run. So then Ichiro hit a hard grounder up the middle, which Street managed to snag. Whew, right?

Wrong. Street decides, for some unfathomable reason, to throw the ball about 60 feet underhanded to first base. Of course, he throws it way too high, making Nick Swisher have to jump to catch it. Swisher came down and collided with Ichiro, tagging him in the process. Whew, right?

Wrong. The umpire, seeing that Swisher landed off the bag, and not seeing the tag, called Ichiro safe. Next pitch, Ichiro stole second, so now the tying run was in scoring position.

Then Street got Jose Lopez to hit a grounder to Bobby Crosby, who fired a bullet across the diamond to Swisher. Game over. Whew, right?

Yeah, I guess. But when you combine Street’s throw with Milton Bradley’s “forgot to step on third” blunder on Friday, you have to accept the fact that, even though the A’s won each game, the A’s have committed two colossal brain farts in three days. You can look at numbers all you want, but this sort of thing is real reason Billy Beane’s $#!^ hasn’t worked in the playoffs.

Even if the A’s go 160-2, clinch a playoff berth in July, sweep the ALDS, ALCS, the first three games of the World Series, and hold a 6-0 lead and an 0-2 count with two outs in the ninth inning of game four, I am now, thanks to this weekend, still going to be horribly nervous that Oakland is about to be destroyed with yet more unbelievable brain farts (or failing that, earthquakes, firestorms, large objects falling from the sky, and assorted other supernatural disasters) until that very last out of the World Series is finally secured.

Then, and only then, will I finally feel good about exclaiming, “Whew!”

The A’s almost threw a no-hitter Saturday night. One night after allowing just two hits, the A’s gave up only one, a deep drive by Richie Sexson to center that fell out of Mark Kotsay’s glove on a difficult, but catchable ball.

That pitch by Barry Zito was Zito’s second hanging changeup of the game. After that, Zito pretty much abandoned his changeup for the evening, as he had several other pitches that were working just fine. Unlike the season opener, Zito had very good control of his fastball, decent control of his curveball, and an outstanding slider.

Zito kept the slider in his back pocket, and pulled it out only when he really needed it. With Richie Sexson on third and nobody out, he used it to strike out both Adrian Beltre and Carl Everett, to keep the Mariners from scoring. Later, whenever he fell behind in the count, he would pull out the slider to return the count to his favor, where he would get people out with his fastball or his curve.

Of course, these were the Mariners and not the Yankees, and the M’s probably chased a lot more pitches out of the strike zone than the Yankees would have. But nonetheless, Zito was clearly much better in his second game than his first. It’s a both a victory, and a sign of good things to come.

Kiko Calero, Joe Kennedy, and Huston Street pitched no-hit ball for the final three innings to close out the 3-0 victory. Next up: to see if Rich Harden can keep the excellent pitching going on Sunday afternoon.

What I call the “Dan Marino Rule” played out in last night’s A’s-Mariners game. This rule of thumb states that whenever a superhyped prospect gets matched up against a lesser-hyped player with a longer history of success, they lesser-hyped player will outperform the hyped player.

I call it that because it reminds me of Super Bowl XIX, where all we heard all week before the game was how great Dan Marino was. And yes, Dan Marino was a great player. But Joe Montana won.

So we got the stories about how the A’s were afraid of facing Felix Hernandez in his first start of the year, and not a word about Joe Blanton. But Joe Blanton won.

Blanton and Justin Duchscherer combined to face only one batter over the minimum. Blanton had every pitch working, with great location. He went eight strong innings, giving up only a walk and two hits.

Hernandez only yielded two hits, as well, but the A’s made him throw a lot more pitches in the process. Hernandez hit the 100 pitch mark after five innings, while Blanton threw 99 in eight.

Hernandez has nasty stuff, for sure, but perhaps making him throw a lot of pitches is the best approach against him. This article by David Appelman shows that Hernandez had the fourth-lowest percentage of pitches thrown in the strike zone last year, and two of the players ahead of him (Al Leiter and Kirk Rueter) have retired. You may not beat Hernandez directly with such an approach, but you might be able to get him out of the game and beat a lesser pitcher. It worked last night.

If the A’s lose Friday night to fall to 2-3, they will have lost to Randy Johnson, Gil Meche, and Felix Hernandez. Which of these things is not like the other?

Even though the A’s weren’t facing any future Hall-of-Famers, the A’s got outpitched by the Mariners on Thursday night, and lost 6-2, in a rather uninteresting game. The A’s made Gil Meche throw a lot of pitches, especially in the first few innings, but Meche had good stuff. Just because you work the count well, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to hit the ball well. And just because you get into the opposing bullpen early, doesn’t mean you’ll take advantage of it. The Mariners pen did a good job tonight.

Esteban Loaiza was unimpressive. He left all sorts of pitches floating over the middle of the plate, and the Mariners made the him pay.

So I’ll credit Seattle, but refrain from drawing conclusions. I’ve felt rather pessimistic about the quality of Seattle’s pitching beyond Hernandez. I still have my doubts as to how often the Mariners can pitch like they did tonight. And I also doubt Loaiza will pitch this poorly very often. But if I’m wrong, and tonight is a sign of things to come, it will be quite a different AL West race than anyone expected.

I have written a lot of stuff on the web. When you post stuff, you can expect a certain amount of feedback. And of all the things I have written on the web, the one single thing I have received the most grief about is this:

Picking the Detroit Tigers to win the AL Central.

I have had people, including my own relatives, question both my sanity and my sobriety. I was also called “Booji-Boy with a fork”, which may or may not be a compliment, I’m not sure. Look it up, and you tell me.

In response to these responses, let me respond, while I can, with the current standings in the AL Central:

1. Detroit (2-0)
2. Cleveland (2-1)
3. Minnesota (1-1)
4. Chicago (1-2)
5. Kansas City (0-2)

Do I need to tell you that this is the exact order I predicted for the AL Central standings? Yes, I do. This is the exact order I predicted for the AL Central standings.

So there. :P Phhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhfffffffffffffffffffft!!!!!

Milton Bradley scored the winning in run in Tuesday’s game, but Marco Scutaro got to wear the hero’s crown. In Wednesday’s 9-4 win over the Yankees, Bradley got to keep the crown himself.

Bradley drove in the A’s first two runs with a bases loaded single, cutting a 4-0 Yankee lead in half. The next inning, Bradley drove in the tying run with a bases loaded walk. And then in the eighth, with the score still tied, Bradley showed off both his power and his speed. He hit a ball off the center field wall, and motored all the way around for a leadoff triple. He scored the winning run one batter later, as Robinson Cano couldn’t handle Jay Payton’s grounder with the infield in.

A little bit of patience, a little bit of contact, a little bit of power, and a little bit of speed. It’s characteristic of Milton Bradley and, if it’s not too soon to start trying to characterize a team, it’s characteristic of the 2006 A’s as a whole. Nobody really stands out with eye-popping superstar talent, but everyone is above average. With all the talk of where the A’s new home will be, and what they would be called, perhaps the most appropriate name would be the “Lake Wobegon A’s“.

It struck me today watching several runners go from first to third that, wow, the A’s actually have some pretty good team speed. Of all the hitters on the 25-man roster, only Frank Thomas and Dan Johnson are slow. Pretty much everyone else on the A’s has above-average speed. As a longtime A’s fan, that feels so weird to say. In the past, for every Rickey Henderson, there were seemingly two Mark McGwires.

The A’s really only made one mistake all night, when Dan Haren hung a slider, and Gary Sheffield did what Gary Sheffield does with hanging sliders. The rest of the night, the A’s pitched great, and played perfect defense.

I suspect this might be the A’s M.O. this year. Playing against the A’s will be like playing a master baseline player in tennis: they’ll just keep putting the ball back in your court, time and time again, steadily, steadily, steadily, until you finally make a mistake, and you lose.

Each A’s game becomes a bet with the other team: I bet you can’t play as long as we can without making a costly pitching or defensive mistake. And whatever kind of mistake you make, we have enough power, or speed, or contact skills, or patience to take advantage of it.

On Wednesday, that’s exactly what happened. Derek Jeter booted a grounder that kick-started the A’s first rally. Bradley received the RBI free pass, scored on the error by Cano, and tripled when Johnny Damon couldn’t run down his centerfield blast in the eighth. And then to finish it off, a fastball down the middle to Frank Thomas. Bases-clearing double, game over.

So my wife finally gets off the phone after a 45-minute conversation. She walks into the living room, sees that it’s 3-3 in the bottom of the ninth. Conversation goes like this:

Wife: So how come Mariano Rivera isn’t in the game?

Me: They’re saving him for a save situation, I guess.

Wife: When? Tomorrow?

So Ken Macha and my wife outmanaged Joe Torre, and the A’s won their first game of year, 4-3.

With both Rich Harden and Mike Mussina pitching fairly well, this game seemed from early on like it was going to be a battle of bullpen attrition, and the first team to run out of good relievers was going to lose. When Rich Harden ran out of gas and pitches after 5 2/3 innings, I figured the Yankees had a huge advantage.

Not only had they just taken the lead, but Mike Mussina still had another couple of innings left in his tank. The A’s had to burn Justin Duchscherer just to get through the seventh, and although the A’s tied the game when Eric Chavez homered off Mussina, the Yankees still had a two-inning lead in the attrition battle.

The A’s had to bring in Joe Kennedy to pitch the eighth, and although he was facing two lefties in Jason Giambi and Hideki Matsui, I thought the A’s were doomed, especially after he walked Giambi to lead off the inning. Luckily, Kennedy got away with a couple of bad pitches, as both Matsui and Jorge Posada crushed a couple of pitches just foul.

So when Kennedy got through his inning unscathed, the A’s had picked up an inning in the attrition battle. Then when Torre decided to use Kyle Farnsworth for only 2/3 inning, the Yankee advantage was gone. It was a battle of the American League’s two best relievers now, Huston Street vs. Mariano Rivera, mano-a-mano.

Except Joe Torre decided not to play. The A’s faced Scott Proctor instead. Milton Bradley led off with a walk. Jason Kendall sacrificed him to second, Nick Swisher was intentionally walked, and Marco Scutaro came to the plate.

Theoretically, Ken Macha could have pinch-hit Antonio Perez for Scutaro in this spot, but with Bobby Crosby hurt, and the A’s also short an outfielder because the A’s are currently carrying 12 pitchers due to the rain, Macha elected not to use his last remaining infielder, and let Scutaro hit. Macha’s decision paid off, and Macha looked like the happiest guy on the planet after it did. Probably because he was expecting an earful from Billy Beane if it hadn’t.

The Yankee outfield was playing in to try to help them throw out Bradley at the plate. But just like Luis Gonzalez’s flare in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, playing the defense in ended up costing the Yankees the game. Scutaro hit a fly ball that barely got over Hideki Matsui’s glove, and the A’s had won.

When you open the season against the Yankees, you worry you’ll begin the year 0-3. It’s quite a relief to get that first victory. It’s also a relief that the A’s didn’t just roll over and die for the Yankees like they did last night. They gave the Yankees a battle, like they belong in their league.

The A’s won with some home runs, a walk, a bunt and a clutch hit–a multidimensional attack that can satisfy both sabermetricians and traditionalists. The fact that they are capable of playing a crisp, tense, mistake-free playoff-caliber game in early April fills me with all kinds of hope. It finally feels like the season has begun.

When Barry Zito has a bad game–and boy did he ever have a bad game tonight–it usually has the same flavor. In these bad games, it always seems like he’s afraid to throw a strike.

Now, I don’t know if he’s actually afraid to throw a strike, or if he’s just mechanically unable to. But as a fan, that’s what it feels like.

Perhaps it’s a little of both: that when he doesn’t feel like he has good control, he’s afraid to throw the ball too close to the middle of the strike zone. I might be tempted to say that perhaps the Yankees lineup intimidated him, but I’ve seen him go into this mode against Tampa Bay, so I don’t think it’s that.

Zito seemed to have a game plan of throwing inside fastballs to the right-handed hitters, but he couldn’t get very many of them called for strikes, for whatever reason. Perhaps they weren’t strikes, or perhaps the umpire’s zone was a little tight. Whatever. Zito seemed afraid to adjust, to bring the ball out a little more over the plate. Instead, he started nibbling with changeups and curves and sliders.

The curveball was not working. Without it, Zito also seemed afraid to throw the high-and-away fastball to righties that plays off the curveball.

I’m not sure why. The fastball seemed lively, and no Yankee actually hit it. “Challenge them!” I yelled at the TV, to no avail. Zito started walking guys with fastballs off the plate, and then he started giving up hits left and right on changeups and curveballs. He gave up seven runs, but I don’t think he gave up a single hit on his fastball. ARod’s grand slam was a hanging curve.

And that was that. With Randy Johnson on the mound, you can only afford to give up a couple of runs if you hope to win.

Johnson only gave up one run in seven innings, an impressive off-balance home run by Frank Thomas in his first official AB as an Athletic. A nice debut for the Big Hurt, against the Big Unit.

Even though the A’s didn’t score any more runs against Johnson, I was actually pretty pleased with the A’s approach against him. They seemed to be patiently looking for and finding good pitches to hit. On the whole, they swung at fastballs, and laid off the sliders and splitters. I gotta find some silver lining in tonight’s dark cloud, so there you have it.

Didn’t major league players just spend a month doing baserunning drills? There was an epidemic of poor baserunning today, and it makes me sick. Two of the mistakes probably cost their team the game.

1. Early in the Mets-Nationals game, Xavier Nady is on third and fails to tag up and score on a fly ball to Alfonso Soriano, who is completely new to his position, and has probably never even hit a cutoff man before, let alone thrown someone out at the plate.

2. Later, Nady almost gets caught napping off second base.

3. Same game, Soriano is thrown out at home on a double with nobody out and his team down by a run in the eighth inning. Granted, the replay showed the catcher dropped the ball, but Soriano shouldn’t even have been running. The Nats would have had second and third with nobody out, with three chances to drive in both runs. Instead, they got none, and the Nationals lost.

4. On a routine fly ball to center field, Alex Gonzalez of Boston somehow wanders too far off the base and gets doubled off.

5. After singling home the tying run, and sending Ichiro over to third base with one out, Jose Lopez gets thrown out trying to stretch his single into a double. Now instead of having a runners on first and third with one out, there are two outs. Of course, the next out made is a fly ball to center that would have scored Ichiro and given the Mariners the lead. Instead, it just ended the inning. M’s lose.

Here’s hoping for some smarter play from the A’s and Yankees tonight. There was a chance that I could have had a ticket to the game, but it fell through. I’ll be watching on TV, instead. Just as well. I have a cold, and I should probably stay warm, anyway.

The A’s finalized their 25-man roster yesterday. The only surprise is that Brad Halsey made the team, and Bobby Kielty was sent down to AAA. This is only because the forecast calls for rain on Monday and Tuesday, and if either of those games is rained out, the A’s and Yankees will have to play a doubleheader. The starter that gets pushed back would need a replacement starter in Seattle over the weekend, hence the decision to keep Halsey.

Kielty gets sent down for a couple of reasons: (1) he has options left, and (2) he had an oblique strain during spring training, and didn’t get many at-bats. Presumably, he’ll be called up at the first opportunity, and Halsey will return to AAA.

* * *

I was supposed to attend a triple-header yesterday: my daughter’s softball game at 9am, my nephew’s Little League game at 11am, and the A’s-Giants game at the Coliseum at 1pm. But the first two games were rained out, and I caught a cold and decided to forego the latter. So I watched it on TV, instead.

Esteban Loaiza had a very impressive start, finally. I was feeling nervous about the rotation a week ago, but since then, four of the five starters have had dominating performances in their final tuneups for the season. Only Barry Zito has yet to look sharp.

So I was happy about Loaiza, but I still felt disappointed about missing the tripleheader. My five-year-old daughter is playing in an under-7 softball league, and it’s just so cute to watch. They’ve only played one game so far, and have had two rainouts.

They also had one training camp, too, which was run by UC Berkeley softball slugger Haley Woods. This morning’s SF Chronicle has a nice profile of Woods. They call her “Governor Woods”, and the nickname is quite apt. You could tell just seconds into the training camp that Woods was a born leader. If you can get dozens of 5-8 year old kids to stay quiet and pay attention to you, you have some special qualities. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if she actually does end up as governor.

* * *

I was watching a bit of the Angels-Dodgers game on MLB.tv last night, and I was going nuts trying to figure out who Chad Billingsley reminded me of. His motion looked so familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to it. Random names started popping in my head: Tom Seaver, Justin Duchscherer, Troy Percival, Billy Swift. But they didn’t seem quite right. I finally decided that he looked like a more muscular version of Roy Oswalt. But I’m still not sure. Maybe I’ll try putting them side-by-side sometime and see if that’s it.

* * *

The regular season starts tonight! Hooray!

This trade is kinda weird at first glance. Do you really want the Rangers’ rejects?

Well, maybe. Justin Duchscherer worked out OK.

But I think this trade makes more sense if you look at the last two trades as one trade. Then you get this:

Brad Halsey = John Rheinecker (finesse lefty), only two years younger.
Juan Dominguez = Juan Cruz (hard-throwing righty with control issues), only two years younger.
Freddie Bynum = the price to add two years to the careers of two of their pitchers.

So they essentially traded Freddie Bynum for four player years. It’s not sexy, but I guess it has value.

We did some internal preseason predictions, which Bob Timmermann has summarized here. Most people just predict the standings, by measuring the relative team strengths and talent levels. I, on the other hand, do RealSeason Predictions™. Real seasons don’t play out to the true talent levels of the teams involved. RealSeason Predictions™ come complete with injuries and trades and surprises and magic and luck, both good and bad, just like reality. So here we go:

AL West: Angels, A’s (WC), Rangers, Mariners.

Everyone thinks the Angels will have great pitching but have trouble scoring. The converse will be true. One or more of their top 7 pitchers (5 starters, Shields, KRod) will get hurt, and the dropoff will be painful. So they’ll trade Adam Kennedy for a pitcher, promote one or more of their young studs, and then they’ll be better than ever. The A’s and the Angels will end up tied for the best record in the American League, but the A’s will lose the tiebreaker. The Rangers will be in the race until August when they’ll suddenly go on an untimely losing streak and fall out of the race. The Mariners will be respectable, as well, but their total lack of pitching depth will doom them. They’re in the wrong division.

AL Central: Tigers, Indians, Twins, White Sox, Royals.

The Indians will lead the division all year until September, when once again, they will choke down the stretch. The Tigers, Twins, and White Sox will all be lurking, hanging around, waiting for their opportunity. One of them goes on a lucky hot streak at just the right time, and it’s the Tigers. The Twins and White Sox will be muttering wouldifs all winter, both thinking they should have won the division, if only that one little bad break had gone differently. The Royals…forget it.

AL East: Yankees, Blue Jays, Red Sox, Devil Rays, Orioles.

The Yankees will win 94 games, and win the division by eight games. The Blue Jays and Red Sox will battle for second place, but not for the division title. This race will be over early. The Red Sox collapse will be surprising. Their pitching will not perform up to expectations, and their ability to hit in the clutch will magically disappear. “Oh no, not another strikeout with the bases loaded!” will be groaned throughout New England all summer. Tampa Bay will almost, but not quite, catch up to Boston at the end, while the Orioles will finish dead last, after they trade half their team away in July.

NL West: Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Padres, Giants, Rockies

The division will be close until July, when the Dodgers call up some of their young pitchers to round out the bullpen. After that, they’ll go on a long hot streak and bury the competition. The race will be over by September 1. The Dbacks will finish just a tad over .500, the Padres and Giants just a tad under. The Rockies will be the Rockies.

NL Central: Cardinals, Brewers (WC), Astros, Cubs, Pirates, Reds

The Brewers and Cardinals will be neck and neck until July, when the Cardinals make a couple big trades that boost them to the title, while the Brewers stick to their young knitting. Still, the Brewers will eke out the wild card over the Mets. The Astros will start out very slowly, leading Roger Clemens to decide to stay home for good. The Astros come back, but it’ll be too late. The Cubs will fall victim to Murphy’s Law, as usual. The Pirates won’t win, but they won’t be embarrassing to watch, which is more than we can say for the Reds.

NL East: Braves, Mets, Phillies, Marlins, Nationals

The Braves will win by default. Pedro Martinez will get hurt, and the Mets pitching will suck, as will their defense. Too bad. The Phillies will win the division if you measure by Pythagorean records, but mysteriously finish in third place in the real thing. Mike Carminati will run 54 different SQL queries trying to figure out how this could happen. The Marlins and Nationals will be punching bags.

ALDS: A’s vs. Yankees: Normally, the A’s would win, because the team with the fewest errors in the regular season wins 2/3 of all Division Series. This is a 1/3. Some A’s player will find yet another creative way to commit an unbelievable brain fart, and the Yankees will win in five.

Angels vs. Tigers: Tigers are just happy to be here. Angels win.

NLDS: Cardinals vs. Dodgers: By the time the playoffs come around, Scott Rolen is at full strength. The Dodgers can’t hit a single ball past him. Cardinals win.

Brewers vs. Braves. The Braves new home vs. their old one. The Brewers give away one out too many in the field. Braves win.

ALCS: Yankees vs. Angels. Angels win, just because the Angels always beat the Yankees in the playoffs.

NLCS: Cardinals vs. Braves. Cardinals. Just because this is what happens to the Braves in the playoffs.

World Series: Cardinals vs. Angels. Tony LaRussa-managed series never go the distance. Sweep or be swept. This time, the Cardinals come out on top in their spiffy new digs, in the bloodiest looking World Series of all time.