Sometimes, my life circumstances make it impossible for me to write at any length about stuff. Like now.  The A’s are on a 10-game losing streak, and I don’t have time to think or write about it.  So I’m trying a little experiment:  throwing up a bunch of quick links on Catfish Stew when I find something interesting, but don’t have time to absorb it.   For now, these quick links will only show up on Catfish Stew, and not on the Toaster home page or in the "Hot from the Toaster" list.   We’ll see how the experiment goes.

The trade deadline came and went, as I suspected, without another trade by the A’s. Justin Duchscherer, Alan Embree, Huston Street, Mark Ellis and Bobby Crosby are still going to be hanging out in Oaktown for a little while longer.

As I write this, I’m sitting here watching the A’s get their butts kicked by the Red Sox, feeling curiously detatched about the whole affair.  The lack of activity at the trade deadline was a bit disappointing.  As much as I love Mark Ellis and Justin Duchscherer, I’m ready to move on. 

It’s like senioritis: we know what college we’re going to go to for the next few years, but here we are still hanging out at the same old school, with the same old classmates, doing the same old work, and the whole scene feels rather pointless.

How many of these current classmates will be going to the new school, the next good A’s team? Let us count to 25 + 4 DL guys*:

Fer sure:
Kurt Suzuki
Daric Barton
Carlos Gonzalez
These guys are the core of the future lineup. Suzuki is already a solid, league-average catcher. Barton and Gonzalez have opposite problems: Barton walks well enough, but has not hit for average; Gonzalez has hit for average, but needs to walk more. But they’re both very young and talented, and should improve enough to stick around for years to come.

Probably:
Ryan Sweeney
Sean Gallagher
Both these guys are producing well enough at the major league to be regular contributors already. But they’re not quite as young as Barton and Gonzalez, they have lower ceilings, and there are a whole lot of talented players in the minors at their positions who could push them out in the future.

Probably (reliever version):
Brad Ziegler
Joey Devine
Andrew Brown*
Jerry Blevins
Santiago Casilla
Relievers are unreliable. They can be great one year, and terrible the next. But this is as good a group of young relievers as you’re going to find. Only Casilla had more than one full year of major league service coming into the season. The A’s will have control of all of these other guys for five more seasons.

Maybe:
Greg Smith
Dana Eveland
Dallas Braden
Jack Cust
Jack Hannahan
Gregorio Petit
The service clocks for Smith, Eveland, and Braden can keep them around for five more years, as well, but there’s so much talent behind them, that it’s hard to imagine they’ll all stay here when those younger pitchers are ready to make it up to the majors. I’m betting that they all get traded as soon as the Cahill/Anderson generation starts pushing for roster spots. Meanwhile, Hannahan and Petit might hang around not because they’re good, but because because SS and 3B are the two positions where the A’s don’t have any really good prospects. Cust is an interesting case; I have a hard time imagining him aging very gracefully. He’s only batting .226 right now…at some point in the next few years, I imagine he’ll go into an extended slump, lose his job to some younger hotshot and never get it back.

Doubtful:
Justin Duchscherer
Huston Street
Mark Ellis
Bobby Crosby
Eric Chavez*
All these guys are young enough to still be in the majors in three or four years, but they’ll all have hit free agency by then. And only Street won’t be in his decline years.

No Way:
Alan Embree
Frank Thomas
Keith Foulke*
Mike Sweeney*
Rajai Davis
Lenny DiNardo
Rob Bowen
The first four are too old, and the rest just aren’t good enough.

The current roster has more relievers of the future than anything else. But relievers are the easiest commodity to find, so even if you project Brad Ziegler to not give up a run for five more years, it’s still not enough to put dreams of pennants dancing in your head. It’s hard to watch a team when half the batting order and most of the starting rotation are simply placeholders. We’re bored of this limbo. We want to see our new campus, and meet our new classmates. The future can’t get here soon enough.

The Red Sox had to overpay
To make their problem go away.
The good news is that Jason Bay
Is in Boston, not a Ray.

Manny’s act is in L.A.
What will Torre have to say
To keep the clubhouse in array
When Pierre and Jones don’t get to play?

Pittsburgh shouts, "Callooh! Callay!
Two LaRoches in the fray!"
The team’s no longer gone astray.
The Pirates’ future starts today.

The best way the Yankees can judge
That the barter that garnered them Pudge
Did better than suck
Is the instant it struck
The Sox and the Rays barked, "Oh, Fudge!"

My wife and I disagreed about Wednesday’s game–she thought it was a sloppy game, particularly defensively, while I found the defensive miscues forgiveable, and the game tense and full of interesting storylines, even if the final result was disappointing. I couldn’t pick just one main theme to go with, so we’ll run all the different headlines, and you can pick your favorites.

Shoved Backwards

Carlos Gonzalez gets thrown out at the plate, and gets a fistful of Miguel Olivo when he tries to run him over. You can call it bad baserunning, or bad third-base coaching, but I think it was just a good play by the Royals, a well executed relay throw on a double by Jack Cust. If this run scores, the A’s probably win this game in regulation. Instead the A’s lost in extra innings, and got swept by the Royals. In recent years, such a sweep would be a total embarassment, but this Royals team isn’t that bad anymore. The back half of their bullpen is quite solid and the starting pitching isn’t at all embarassing as it once was. Find them a real shortstop and first baseman, and they’re probably a .500 team. Meanwhile, the A’s are moving backwards, falling below .500 for first time in many weeks. They’ve been freefalling ever since the Rich Harden trade.

Continue…

Texas has prospects to watch.
The Angels are better a notch.
But Atlanta’s a botch,
They only got Kotch
And a titleless kick in the crotch.

My Yankee Stadium reflections are now running over at Bronx Banter.

* * *

With the A’s Infinite Playoff Improbability Drive now running at only 6% and falling, the actual games seem to take on less and less significance, while the trade rumors grow in importance.  The rumors about Huston Street, Alan Embree and Justin Duchscherer make sense, but I don’t get the Jason Bay ones, unless Beane thinks he can flip Bay for more than he’d give up.

I’m not really expecting Beane to make any more moves.  There are a lot of relievers available for trades, and the Jon Rauch-for-Emilio Bonifacio trade between the Nats and the DBacks probably set the market price for veteran relievers lower than Beane would like.  The A’s could have had Bonifacio in the Dan Haren trade, but chose Chris Carter instead.  The A’s aren’t going to trade Street for some team’s 7th-best prospect, and who’s going to give up much more than the established value for a closer?  Also, I’m guessing that all the saves Alan Embree racked up last year will bump him into the Type B reliever category, and given how much Embree has sucked lately, no one’s going to pay more the value of a sandwich pick for him.  So the A’s might as well keep him, decline his option, offer arbitration, and hope he goes elsewhere.

Duchscherer seems to me the most likely to go, but he’s been shaky since the all-star break.  He was sick in the all-star game, wasn’t sharp when I saw him at Yankee Stadium, and in his last start, he gave up more than three earned runs for the first time all season.  Other teams might be worried that he’s hitting the wall, having not pitched this many innings in a season since 2003.  The biggest point in favor of his getting traded is that he’s still the best starting pitcher available.  If a team gets desperate, they might overpay to Beane’s content.

With the Eric Chavez "shredded shoulder" news, all A’s fans are drooling over idea of getting Andy LaRoche to replace him.  The Dodgers seem to inexplicably hate LaRoche, but their front office is so disfunctional, it’s crazy to get any hopes up.   You have to want the Dodgers to (a) remain disfunctional enough to keep disliking a good prospect, and yet (b) overcome their disfunction enough to make a decision to trade him.  Good luck with that.

Two names I haven’t heard in trade discussions are Greg Smith, Dana Eveland, and Dallas Braden.  The A’s rotation of the future probably doesn’t have room for any of them, and certainly not for all of them.  Two years from now, the A’s rotation will probably be Trevor Cahill, Brett Anderson, Gio Gonzalez and Vince Mazzaro.   Smith, Eveland, and Braden are merely placeholders until the other guys are ready.  Smith in particular seems to be outperforming his talent, and now might be the best time to sell high.

* * *

Below the fold, some pictures from Yankee Stadium that didn’t make my Bronx Banter piece.

Continue…

I’m looking at the lineup for tonight’s game against the Rangers. Emil Brown is batting cleanup. Against a right-handed pitcher (Vicente Padilla). Yes, the A’s now have a cleanup hitter who is hitting .250/.282/.382.

OK, go ahead and just trade everybody, Billy Beane. Because if Emil Brown is your cleanup hitter, your team is really, really pathetic. Actually, if an outfielder with a .669 OPS is even on your roster at this stage of the season, let alone batting cleanup, you’re not really even paying attention. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that’s because you’re so busy making trade proposals that you haven’t had time to get replace him yet, and not because your TV is stuck on the Fox Soccer Channel. Especially because, you know, Euro 2008 is over, the English Premier League hasn’t started up yet, and the Earthquakes are even farther from a playoff spot than the A’s.

Yeesh.

Spent the weekend in New York City, where it’s been 95 degrees and muggy every day. Had a good time meeting up with fellow Toastmasters Alex Belth, Cliff Corcoran and Diane Firstman on Friday night, and took in the A’s-Yankees game on Sunday. Given the weather, I was quite grateful that I had the nosebleed seats, as our seats were under the upper deck overhang, and we got to watch the ballgame in the shade. It was a good game, as Andy Pettitte was painting corners as well as he ever has, and Justin Duchscherer, while not quite on his game–missing the strike zone a bit more often than he usually does, still varied his speed and location well enought to keep the Yankees’ offense from launching too much thunder.

The difference in the game was pretty much the difference in the teams, as the Yankees have power, and the A’s don’t, and the Yankees have experience, and the A’s don’t. One blast from Jason Giambi provided more power than the A’s lineup could provide, and a baserunning misjudgment by Ryan Sweeney in the ninth inning prevented him from reaching second when Bobby Abreu dropped a fly ball, and he was forced out. Just a few innings earlier, when Sweeney had singled in the tying run at 1-1, my wife said, "Is there a worse baserunner than Ryan Sweeney?" He seems to make baserunning errors every time she watches him, and he made her very prescient.

I suppose that if Sweeney had made it to second on Abreu’s miscue and come around to score in an A’s victory, I could have said that the A’s have defense, and the Yankees don’t, as Sweeney made a nice throw to nail Alex Rodriguez at the plate for the second time this weekend.  But such is the way of talented youthful teams–they’ll excite you one minute, and disappoint you the next.

This was my first and only visit to Yankee Stadium before the new version opens next year. I’ll write a longer post on the topic later in the week after I return home to California. I would have enjoyed a A’s victory more, but if you can’t appreciate a close, well-pitched ballgame, and having a chance once in your lifetime to experience the buzz as Mariano Rivera emerges from the Yankee bullpen to close out a ballgame, you don’t deserve to call yourself a baseball fan. Even if it was unbearably hot and muggy, it was a good day of baseball.

According to Buster Olney at ESPN, the A’s have sent Joe Blanton to Philadelphia for second baseman Adrian Cardenas, pitcher Josh Outman and outfielder Matthew Spencer.

The A’s must really think Mark Ellis is going to leave as a free agent, as the A’s are loading up on second base prospects all of a sudden. First they drafted Jemile Weeks, then they traded for Eric Patterson in the Rich Harden trade, and now they add Cardenas. Meanwhile, we’re still stuck with no heir apparents to either Bobby Crosby or Eric Chavez.

But heck, you can’t get a better name for a pitching prospect than Josh Outman, can you?

I like this trade better than the Harden trade, because I expected to get less from Blanton.  But Cardenas and Outman are legit prospects.  In the preseason, Kevin Goldstein gave them both 3-star ratings, while John Sickels ranked them both as solid B’s.  Spencer didn’t make Goldstein’s list, while Sickels gave him a C+.

BTW, if you don’t like either of the two trades, you can blame this article of mine.  I was literally two minutes from publishing it when the Rich Harden trade went down, and this Blanton trade goes through two minutes after I finally pressed the publish button on the thing.

Trivia question: How do you say "Timmermann’s Griddle" in Swedish?

* * *

Free trivia: The Danish province of Greenland is almost completely covered by a snow-white ice cap. So why is the island named so colorfully? Is it because the natives all wear A’s caps? Contrary to popular belief, no, it is not. The name derives from the color your face turns when you eat contaminated chicken while flying above it.

Here’s a travel tip: try to avoid contracting food poisoning on long, intercontinental flights. You may not have known this, but there are many better ways to begin your vacation. Like, say, doing anything else.

* * *

More trivia: A list of people poisoned in or above or on their way to Denmark:

• Hamlet, Sr.
• Hamlet, Jr.
• Gertrude
• Claudius
• Laertes
• Ken Arneson

* * *

No wonder Danes are the happiest people on earth. They could be poisoned at any moment. When you start with such low expectations, anything else is a happy surprise. I survived my Danish poisoning! Life is great!

* * *

In 1992, Denmark won the European Soccer Championships. Two years later, Danish happiness levels plummeted, because Danes started expecting success. When the Danish team returned to previous levels of failure, Danish expectations returned to near-zero, and the Danes regained their happiness titles.

* * *

As for our Greenland Athletics, until my actual encounter with Greenland, I was pretty happy. Perhaps because, like the Danes, I came into this season with incredibly low expectations. I expected disaster, and instead, it’s been kinda not bad. Look, the A’s are pretty much having the same season as the Yankees, likely to finish above .500 but out of the playoffs, but the Yankee fans are much more miserable about it.

Then I met Greenland, puked on the plane, landed in Copenhagen, barely missed a train to my Swedish destination while my stomach gurgled, finally arrived my brother’s home, where I promptly puked a bunch more. I thought, well, this vacation can’t get much worse than this. What’s worse than being poisoned? I couldn’t eat for two days. Shortly after I had regained my strength, Rich Harden was traded for much less in return than I had been expecting, and I felt miserable again. Then a couple days after that, my baby daughter got sick with fever, and cried inconsolably for hours and hours until she finally fell asleep and the fever broke the next day. And to top things off, a few days later, my 17-year-old nephew went out to a party at a friend’s house, and as he left the party, he was robbed, kidnapped and driven to multiple ATMs and made to drain his account, and then beaten up and left on the street with a shiner, a broken nose, and a concussion. (Yes, this happened in Sweden.) But hey, other than those things, it’s been a wunnerful, wunnerful show.

* * *

Tomorrow, I depart Sweden for New York City, where the weather forecast calls for muggy, 95 degree East Coast heat all weekend long. We’re scheduled to see Justin Duchscherer pitch on Sunday in my first and only visit to Yankee Stadium, so the odds are good I’ll at least witness a competitive game. But then again, given my recent fortunes, Duchscherer will be traded or injured before then, and/or the game will be cancelled on account of thunderstorms or some other random act of God. That is, of course, assuming I even survive the flight out of Stockholm. Perhaps I should reaquaint myself with some August Strindberg scripts before I order my in-flight meals.

* * *

My expectations right now are about as low as they can be. If the A’s go on a 15-game losing streak out of the all-star break, for example, I won’t be heartbroken; I’m fully expecting such misery. And if anything uncatastrophic happens, I am pleasantly and happily surprised, such as this afternoon when I discovered to my great joy the answer to the above trivia question:

Continue…

I’ve poured through all the analysis I could find about the Harden deals, and I still don’t like it emotionally. But there’s a major point that I haven’t seen being made on the rational side of the ledger, so I’ll make it here. I’ll begin with a quote from the San Jose Mercury News:

Asked if dealing Harden might lead to more trades involving players such as Joe Blanton or Huston Street, Beane responded: " ‘No’ is probably the quickest answer." But he added: "I think you have to look at (possible deals) independently."

That’s a load of bull. Beane may make his deals one at a time, but that doesn’t mean he looks at his deals in isolation. He looks at them as to how it affects the team as a whole, and what kind of flexibility it gives him in the future. Which brings us to the missing point: the A’s are saving quite a bit of money in this trade over the next year and a half:

2008 (remaining)
Harden:    $2.25 million
Gaudin:    $0.87 million
Total:     $3.00 million

2009 (estimated)
Harden:    $7.00 million
Gaudin:    $2.50 million
Total:     $9.50 million

Combined: $12.50 million

Gallagher and Murton and Patterson will make about $1 million or so between them, which makes about $11 million or so that can be spent on something besides an extremely injury-prone starter and a mop-up man in the pen. Perhaps $4 million of it has already been spent on Michael Inoa–a younger, hopefully healther Rich Harden for the future. And perhaps the rest of that money can be spent on extending Mark Ellis or Justin Duchscherer. Perhaps you and I wouldn’t trade Harden and Gaudin for Gallagher, Patterson, Murton and Donaldson. But if you think of the deal as including Inoa plus an extra year or two of Mark Ellis, the trade looks a lot better, doesn’t it?

If you figure the A’s are unlikely to make the playoffs in 2008, and you want to load up for 2009, who would you rather have: Harden and Gaudin, or Gallagher and Ellis?

Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin were traded to the Cubs today for pitcher Sean Gallagher, outfielder Matt Murton, infielder Eric Patterson and catcher Josh Donaldson.

My first reaction is that Cubs fans ought to be insanely happy about this. They’re not likely going to miss any of those players in their pennant drive much, while Harden and Gaudin will both make an immediate impact, especially if they turn Gaudin back into a starter.

And my second reaction is that if Cubs fans should be happy, then A’s fans should be disappointed. I like Gallagher, but Murton seems redundant on the A’s roster, Patterson seems like the type of risky player who, like his brother Cory, will likely not pan out unless he can miraculously find some plate discipline, and Donaldson–never heard of him.

But still, I suppose now was the time for Beane to sell, before Harden got hurt again. And Beane was probably going to trade Gaudin either this July or in the winter, as the A’s have plenty of cheaper players to provide similar production than Gaudin, a former super-two player who reached arbitration status earlier than other players of his age.

So Beane had two very talented players, but flawed–Harden by his fragility, Gaudin by his price tag. The timing was right to trade both these guys.

So I’m not bothered by trading either player. What I am bothered by is that I don’t feel like the Cubs are feeling nearly as much pain about this trade as I am. I liked Gaudin, and loved Harden. Watching him pitch filled me with a child-like giddiness. The Cubs should be wincing–ooh, did we have to give up [insert Josh Vitters or other talented name here]? But they’re not, are they?

I can rationalize it–Harden’s fragility reduced his trade value, and they’re getting five years of Gallagher for 1+ year of Harden, but screw rationality. They traded two flawed players, and got back four flawed players, none of whom are very easy to muster up any child-like giddiness about. Emotionally, this one really hurts.

"Honey!" I yelled, rushing in on my wife like a hurricane. "Look! I’ve got it! Look, honey, look! The fourth Golden A’s Ticket! It’s mine! I downgraded my season ticket package because our friends dropped out of our plan and our kids are now more interested in hanging out with their friends than their parents and the seat prices went up and the parking prices went up and the A’s traded their best players, and then our new smaller season ticket package arrived in the mail today, and I opened it up, and the second set had the Golden A’s Ticket, and now I’ll get to write a big exclusive blog entry about the A’s secret ballpark factory! IT’S THE FOURTH GOLDEN A’S TICKET, HONEY, AND I FOUND IT!"

"That’s nice, dear. What does it say?"

"Huh? What? What does what say? Oh, the ticket? I dunno…um..the ticket, all right, I’ll read it." I took a breath. "Here we go:"

Greetings to you, the lucky finder of this Golden A’s Ticket, from Mr Wily Wolff! I shake you warmly by the hand! Tremendous things are in store for you! Many wonderful surprises await you! For now, I do invite you to come to my ballpark factory and be my guest for one whole day – you and all others who are lucky enough to find my Golden A’s Tickets. I, Wily Wolff, will conduct you around the factory myself showing you everything that there is to see.

Continue…

Of course, I write a whole article about how Joe Blanton has been unlucky this year, and then he goes right out and gets clobbered for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with luck, and everything to do with throwing a bunch of hanging curveballs and leaving fastball after fastball over the middle of the plate.  The hit-me-fastballs included, embarrasingly enough, one to Blanton’s good friend and former teammate Dan Haren, a bases-loaded double.  I’m sure Blanton will never live that one down.

Blanton just plain sucked last night.  That still doesn’t change my belief that he’s been unlucky.   Indeed, looking at BP’s LUCK stat, which tracks the difference between expected W-L record and actual W-L record, even after last night’s suckfest, Blanton remains the unluckiest pitcher in the majors:

Last night, Mark Ellis and Bobby Crosby combined to go 6-for-9, including three home runs and a double, plus two walks, off Brandon Webb and the Arizona bullpen. Not bad for a couple of middle infielders who, oddly, are viewed by Baseball Reference as resembling a bunch of good-but-not-great, long-careered catchers:

Mark Ellis, Similar Batters through Age 30:

1.  Don Slaught
3.  Terry Steinbach
5.  Hal Smith
6.  Sandy Alomar, Jr.
7.  Dan Wilson
8.  Darrin Fletcher
10. Bengie Molina

Bobby Crosby, Similar Batters through Age 27:

1.  Andy Seminick
3.  Miguel Olivo
6.  John Stearns
7.  Barry Foote
8.  Ben Davis
9.  Steve Yeager

Obviously, Ellis’ group of similarities is better than Crosby’s, so it’s fitting that Ellis hit two homers last night, to just one for Crosby.

I suppose it’s also fitting that Kurt Suzuki also homered. Perhaps when all is said and done, Suzuki might end up being similar to one of these two groups of catchers, as well. His defense and pitch calling seem to be good enough for him to have a long career if he stays healthy. Whether he is a starting catcher for most of his career like Ellis’ comps, or bounces between starting and backup duties like many of Crosby’s comps, depends on whether he can hit enough.

Ellis’ comps mostly had career OPSes between .700 and .750, while Crosby’s were generally between .650 and .700. Suzuki? He’s been a streaky hitter so far in his young career. His career monthly OPSes go like this: 1.352, .573, .776, .692, 1.069, .663, .521, .828. All those ups and downs add up to a career OPS of .698. He’s right on the border, so you can easily imagine his career going either way. I’d take another steady Terry Steinbach any day of the week, but Suzuki will need to both improve his hitting and smooth out those monthly charts if he wants to be considered in the same breath as good ol’ #36.

If after our late-season swoon,
Our team plays aloofly through June,
He should be dismissed.
You think he’ll resist
A release by the light of the moon?

After sweeping the Giants this past weekend, the A’s stand three games out of the AL West lead, and two games out of the wild card. But don’t get any big ideas, the A’s will have to face the Diamondbacks’ 1-2 punch, Brandon Webb and Dan Haren, in the next two games, so that sweep might get cancelled out pretty quickly. Nonetheless, the A’s competitiveness this season after the big firesale this winter has been a surprise to almost everyone.

How’d that happen? Well, just look the 2008 major league performances of from the two trades. The Dan Haren trade:

Dan Haren:        6-4, 3.41 ERA
Dana Eveland:     5-5, 3.56 ERA
Greg Smith:       4-5, 3.62 ERA
Carlos Gonzalez:  .263/.288/.404

Nick Swisher trade:

Nick Swisher:    .219/.335/.369
Ryan Sweeney:    .294/.349/.397

Sweeney has been outperforming Swisher, and you could argue that Gonzalez is doing so, as well. Eveland and Smith haven’t outperformed Haren, but they’re both putting up as good an imitation as you can reasonably expect. So in each case, the A’s have taken a player at his peak, and replaced him with two younger players performing at just about the same level. A-a-a-a-a-a-nd, got five other prospects in the process.

So clearly, these were great deals for the A’s. Not that the DBacks and the Chisox can complain too much, either: they’re both in first place.

Meanwhile, up in Seattle not so much. What will the AL West be like when we can’t count on the other teams to make stupid, counterproductive moves? If and when that happens, I suppose the A’s will have to counter the non-stupidness of their division rivals by finally getting a stadium with competitive revenue streams. I’ll have more on that thought later in the week…

Finally, here’s a weird picture I took of a promo for Tuesday’s A’s-Diamondbacks game. To me, it’s like one of those what-do-you-see, the-candlestick-or-the-face puzzles. Sometimes, I can look at it, and it looks normal, and other times, the sizes of everything just looks completely out of whack. Anyone else see the optical illusion, or is it just me? How tall does my daughter look to you?

Like so many of Joe Blanton’s starts this year, tonight’s game against the Yankees could have gone either way. In the bottom of the fifth with two runners on, Jack Cust hit a ball to the base of the left field fence for an inning-ending out. The next inning, Mark Ellis nearly robbed Derek Jeter of a leadoff single, but the ball came out of his glove when he got up to throw. A difficult play, but Ellis could have made it. The next two batters walked on pitches which half the umpires in the league probably would have called strikes. Hideki Matsui then hit a deep fly ball which, unlike Cust’s, came down over the wall instead of just in front of it, and the Yankees won the game 4-1.

That’s baseball. If both teams play well, both pitchers pitch well, then sometimes things will fall your way, sometimes they won’t.

By losing that game, Joe Blanton joined Barry Zito with nine losses this year. The comparisons between the two former A’s first-round picks should end with the loss statistic. Zito has deserved his nine losses–he’s pitched like poop most of the year, with a 5.83 ERA. Joe Blanton, on the other hand, deserves a much better fate.

Earlier this year, I thought Bob Geren was leaving Blanton in games too long. Blanton would have a lead going into the sixth or seventh, but then tire and give up a few runs, hurting his overall numbers, turning a couple of leads into deficits, and potential wins into losses.

But even if you reject that idea, and accept his run totals at face value, Blanton deserves a better than a 3-9 record.

Blanton’s 4.23 ERA is pretty much equal to the league average ERA of 4.17. He pitches for an average-to-above average team (.530 win %), on a team with a league-average offense (AL average: 4.49 runs/game, A’s offense: also 4.49 runs/game).

Average pitcher on average team with average run support–so why does Blanton have three times more losses than wins? You’d think things should fall Blanton’s way roughly half the time, right? Why isn’t Blanton 6-6 instead of 3-9?

A big chunk of Blanton’s misfortune has been a lack of run support. The A’s are averaging 4.49 R/G overall, but only 3.53 R/G in Blanton’s starts. When Blanton pitches, the A’s hit like they’re facing Cy Young contenders every time out. Which, it turns out, is pretty much the case. Check out the list of his opposing starters so far this year:

Daisuke Matsuzaka
Daisuke Matsuzaka
Cliff   Lee
C.C.    Sabathia
Felix   Hernandez
Livan   Hernandez
Felix   Hernandez
Vicente Padilla
Jeremy  Guthrie
C.C.    Sabathia
James   Shields
Jon     Lester
Sidney  Ponson
John    Lackey
Andy    Pettitte

That’s a helluva list. He’s faced Dice-K, King Felix and the reigning Cy Young winner twice each. The only pitchers who aren’t currently their team’s #1 or #2 starters–Livan, Sir Sidney and maybe Pettitte–all used to be #1 or #2 starters in their pasts.

So what happens when you take a league-average pitcher, and set up his matchups so that he basically gets a run per game taken away from him? You probably get Joe Blanton version 2008–a pitcher with a .300-.400 winning percentage.

Poor Joe. If the rotation had fallen just one game differently, he could have finally gotten some run support by being matched up against Zito on Friday. Instead, in his next start, he’ll be matching up against Dan Haren in Arizona. Figures.

The A’s just lost two of three to the Angels, and you can probably pin the series loss on me. I attend several A’s-Angels games every year, and the last time Oakland beat a team from Anaheim in my presence was over 17 years ago, the day Rickey Henderson tied Lou Brock’s career stolen base record.

Since that day, I have been a better good luck charm for the Angels than the Rally Monkey himself. The Angels should put me on their payroll. They should pay me to go see their games against the A’s. In tight ballgames, they should show pictures of me on their scoreboard, like this:

I went to the game on Saturday night, and of course, the Angels beat the A’s. It was a game that made clear the difference in the standings between the two teams. I think both teams have roughly equal talents–good pitching, solid defense, and an offense somewhat lacking in power. But the Angels play a cleaner, more mature game. The A’s used to be able to match the Angels solid-play-for-solid play. But this year, the A’s are playing five or six players each day who are in their first full major league seasons: Kurt Suzuki, Daric Barton, Jack Hannahan, Travis Buck, Ryan Sweeney, and Carlos Gonzalez. And you can probably also include Jack Cust in that category, as well. These young players are talented, but there’s an inconsistency that comes with youth that adds up. A bad swing here, a misjudgement there….

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