The wife of Mythbuster Jamie Hyneman (right) teaches at my alma mater.   The question regarding which is the coolest element of this photograph—President Obama, the Mythbusters, or the Encinal Jets—is left as an exercise for the viewer.

I’ve found that culture has generally been missing in the discussion about Oakland vs. San Jose for the A’s.  In a conversation on BaseballThinkFactory on this topic, I commented as follows:

Look, here’s the thing: San Jose is the world capital of the computer industry. San Jose and its suburbs are the home to nearly every major company on the whole friggin’ Internet. It’s the engine that is driving the entire economy of the planet, the whole thrust of globalization. OK? I’ve worked there, met with these people, I can tell you: every President, every Vice President, every Director, every Manager, every CEO, CTO, CFO and VC knows that they are all the most important people doing the most important work in the history of the planet Earth.

These people will all buy tickets to this stadium in San Jose. They will not care what it costs, because they are too important to have such concerns. It will not matter to them if they ever use the tickets themselves. What matters is that they deserve these tickets, because they are such important people. And when they can’t use these tickets (which is most of the time, because they are so very very busy doing very very important things), they will give these tickets to their little people, partly as thanks for helping them do such important things, but also to display what kind and generous people they truly are.

This is how Silicon Valley works. And this is why the San Francisco Giants would much rather have the A’s five miles away in Oakland than 45 miles away in San Jose.

Continue…

Because I’m retaining Scott Boras
I’ll hold out, and not join the chorus
With new homes online.
If you want me to sign,
Bid a mil and a golden thesaurus.

I’ve told Wuertz jokes than this one.  Fear not, there’s only one blog post left on Catfish Stew.

The setup is to see Rickey sized up by the choir invisible hand have really worried. Walks off the teams, get the best hitter, Rickey stole second straight Outta Town.

~ From a randomly generated Catfish Stew article

The paragraph above, I think, sums Rickey Henderson up quite well.  Like the splotches in an impressionist painting or the words in a Rickey Henderson speech, it makes no sense if you look it at too closely.  But let it flow over you, and you can comprehend it–the divine talent, the opposition’s fear, the walks, the hitting, the stolen bases–Rickey Henderson was a Hall of Fame baseball player like no other.

And today, it becomes official. Here’s my best old Rickey story: watching an aging Rickey as a San Diego Surf Dawg.  I wish I had some great new story to tell about him, but all I can think of are snapshots.  Going to a game with an out-of-town friend and betting him that Rickey would take the count to 3-2 in the first at-bat, and winning the bet.  The way he’d freeze and stare straight down at the ground and mutter if he disagreed with an umpire’s strike call.  Watching him lead off both ends of a doubleheader with home runs.  The fingers dangling as he eyed a pitcher, waiting to steal second.  The headfirst slide, through the bag, not to the bag, as if he were trying to steal second straight Outta Town.

Ken Rosenthal says the deal is done, pending a physical.  Buster Olney says it’s for $4 million in 2009, with an option for $6.5M in 2010, or a $1.25M buyout. 

It sounds like a bargain for a free agent who hit over 30 home runs last year.   Keith Law agrees.  It gives the A’s positional flexibility:  if Daric Barton struggles as he did last year, Giambi could play first base, with Jack Cust DHing.  If Barton hits, but Cust or Travis Buck struggles, Giambi could DH while Barton covers 1B, and either Cust or Buck roams the outfield.

It’s almost a perfect fit…except…it’s kinda like taking back the old girlfriend who dumped you for the richer, handsomer guy so many years ago.  You loved her so much while you had her, then you hated hated hated her after she betrayed you.  And now, taking her back?  There may be some benefits, but I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be healthier for the soul if everybody had just moved on, for good.

That is, if baseball teams have souls.  Maybe they don’t.  In which case the analogy is flawed.  And so is our fandom.

Rickey Henderson reaches another milestone today.   Next milestone: election to the Hall of Fame.

And for those of us who don’t surpass milestones at Rickey’s pace (meaning everyone), may your holidays be blessed with good food, good health, and the love of friends and family.

First, I confess I am writing this post mostly to tease Jon for his wishy–washy–ness.

I suppose I need to say something about Rafael Furcal, then.  He was obviously Billy Beane’s Plan A for fixing the shortstop hole, but Plan A failed, even though Beane offered more money and years to Furcal than any other team.  I suppose it’s hard to sell a player on moving in to your city when you’re working really hard to move out.

Wolff/Beane:  Move to Oakland, it’s great!

Furcal:  If it’s so great, why are you trying to move to San Jose?

Wolff/Beane:  Umm…uhh…

The question now is, is there a Plan B that would bring the A’s back to competitiveness in 2009, or are we back to the old 2010-12 target date now?  Orlando Cabrera is the only other significant free agent shortstop left, but he will cost a 2nd-round draft pick, and he’s not nearly the upgrade over Crosby that Furcal would have been.  The Braves could presumably make Yunel Escobar available in a trade since they now have two shortstops, so we’ll look at him, and the perpetually trade-rumored Jack Wilson.

(I love that Fangraphs now has +/ numbers for offense and defense, so we can compare.  I’ll use the 2009 Marcels wRAA for offense and the career UZR/150 for defense.)

Marcel dings Furcal because he missed large chunks of 2008 and played hurt in 2007. If he’s healthy, he probably performs more like a +10 to +15 player offensively.  So I’d group the talents like this:

Escobar
Furcal
— big gap–
Cabrera
–small gap–
Wilson
–big gap–
Crosby

With Furcal or Escobar, you’re looking about a three win improvement over Crosby.  Cabrera gets you about half that.  Does it take all three wins to improve the A’s enough to compete in 2009?  If so, should the A’s give up good prospects for Escobar?  If it only takes a win or two, should the A’s go after Cabrera or Wilson?  Sorry, I’ve got no answers.  I don’t have time to do that kind of math, that’s what I pay Billy Beane for.

Actor Jeff Bridges has the story.

Today, Billy Beane officially traded three lemons for an overripe, spotted banana.

Greg Smith is a lemon, because his peripheral stats suggest his 4.16 ERA probably should have been about a run higher than it was. Carlos Gonzalez is a lemon because while he is young and graceful and lovely to watch both at the plate and in the field, he has no clue how to control the strike zone, and probably never much will. Huston Street is a lemon, because he is a reliever with "closer" on his resume who is becoming increasingly expensive, increasingly injury-prone, and decreasingly effective. Matt Holliday is an overripe banana, because the A’s are building around a core of players who will mature in about 2012 or so, but Holliday, with only one year until free agency, needs to be consumed long before the maturity date of the other fruit in Billy Beane’s basket.

Aren’t you supposed to turn lemons into lemonade? Perhaps lemonade demand is high these days, and banana bread is the new market inefficiency. But even if that’s true, Billy Beane is still two cups of flour, a scoop of sugar, and a stick of butter shy of assembling all the ingredients in any known banana bread recipe. Matt Holliday probably makes the A’s about 4 wins better or so, but eating that banana raw still leaves the Athletics 5 to 8 wins shy of a playoff spot in 2009.

All of which is another way of saying, I have no idea why either the Rockies or the A’s made this trade. And, ladies and gentlemen, I have an important announcement to make: I don’t really care, either.

Oh, getting all high and mighty, eh? Fresh fruit not good enough for you, eh? Well, I’ll tell you something, my lad. When you’re walking home tonight and some great homicidal maniac comes after you with a bunch of loganberries, don’t come crying to me!

So be it. Loganberries be damned, I have decided, at long last, to stop trying to imagine myself as Billy Beane or Bob Geren or George Bush or Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to make all the great and important decisions of the world, and instead to just be Alfred E. Neuman. I shall no longer worry about being attacked by pomegranates or grapefruits or plums or lingonberries or mangoes in syrup. My life had become such a burden, what with all the guns and 16-ton weights and tigers I’ve been hauling around to protect myself from the outrages of mistaken decisions by those wielding the fruits of power. It is time to outsource those responsiblities.

In Billy Beane and Barack Obama, the A’s and the US of A’s leaders are seemingly both intelligent, pragmatic men who will avoid quick reactions from their guts, carefully consider all the empirical evidence, and make their decisions as rationally as they can. I may disagree with elements of their overall philosophy and with their individual decisions, but I believe I can finally say in both cases that I don’t think I could, on the whole, do a better job than they could.

Therefore, with relief, I hereby outsource my worries about the A’s and the USA, to Billy Beane and Barack Obama. The job is yours, guys, I’ll let you do it. Go ahead and trade for a slugger who won’t be sticking around to help the A’s win their next championship. Go ahead and send gazillions more dollars to General Motors and their incompetent management. Go ahead and overhaul the health care system using the advice of a man who sends scouts the world over and somehow can’t manage to find 25 healthy young men. I probably won’t understand any of those decisions in the slightest, but I’m fairly confident that you’ve thought it through, so I’ll trust your judgment. I’ll probably check in from time to time to make sure you’re not burning the toast, but mostly, you’re on your own from now on.

I shall now return to my life, to focus on bringing home the bacon from the fruits of my labor, and on enjoying more time with my wife and three daughters, the apples of my eye. Bon appetit, my friends.

Mark Ellis will be back, according to ESPN.  It’s a 2-year deal, with a team option for a third, at about 5 to 6 million/year.  That sounds fair to me.  It doesn’t block their best 2B prospects, Jemile Weeks and Adrian Cardenas, who are both a couple years from being ready.  With the youth movement, the vast majority of the team will hold pre-arbitration salaries, so there’s plenty of room in the budget for this modest salary.  Assuming Ellis fully recovers from his minor shoulder surgery and stays somewhat healthy, this is a good deal.

There’s something funny about these two consecutive pictures I took today, one minute apart. There’s a setup and a punchline, but I can’t figure out the middle.

So, three cops are sent to investigate a mischievous duck.

… (insert body of joke here) …

"Wow", said Jeff Baisley, "that’s the first hit I’ve ever had!"

All the players I like are now gone.  Rich Harden was traded.  Justin Duchscherer is probably lost for the year.  Eric Chavez is out for the season, and may never grace the hot corner again.  Frank Thomas is out for the season, and may never play again.   Mark Ellis is out for the season, and may never return to Oakland.

Who is left to watch?  The Oakland A’s have been drained from my soul.  I feel empty. 

What is left to say?  Meaningless talking points, nothing more.

I never presume to know what Billy Beane’s will is, and I would never presume to know Billy Beane’s will or to speak Billy Beane’s words.

But let us not pray that Billy Beane is on our side in a pennant race or any other time, but let us pray that we are on Billy Beane’s side.

And I do believe, though, that this rebuilding in the face of wealthier AL opponents is the right thing. It’s an unfortunate thing, because rebuilding is hell and I hate rebuilding, and, this Sunday is the day that I send my wife and three children in our Honda Odyssey minivan to the Coliseum one last time to root for our team, for the East Bay, and for statistical methods of evaluation.

Those are evaluations that too many of us just take for granted. I hate rebuilding and I want to see rebuilding ended. We end rebuilding when we see victory, and we will see victory in sight in the AL West.

I believe that there is a plan for this team and that plan for this team is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every prospect to be able to play and be developed with inalienable talents that I believe are God-given, and I believe that those are the talents for hitting for average, hitting for power, running speed, arm strength and fielding ability. That, in my world view, is a grand — the grand plan.

The A’s had two of the biggest coups in the draft, according to Jim Callis at Baseball America.

Biggest Coups, Rounds 1-10

2. Brett Hunter, rhp, Athletics (seventh round, $1.1 million, No. 51 on BA Top 200)
Elbow problems kept him from being a possible top-10 pick, but he’s a steal if healthy.

Biggest Coups, Rounds 11-50

4. Dusty Coleman, ss, Athletics (28th round, $675,000, No. 185th on BA Top 200)
An all-star season in the Cape Cod League earned him second-round money.

Trevor Cahill will start against Japan on Wednesday (4am PT).  The game is meaningless to the US medal chances, as they have already qualified for the semifinals.  But it should be interesting to see how Cahill does against a quality team like Japan.

ShysterBall has a conversation about the worst seats you ever had at a ballgame.  Here’s my contribution:

I went to the first game at Pac Bell Park, a preseason game against the Milwaukee Brewers. I had tickets in the upper deck, left field corner.

When I got to my seat…um…there was no seat. It hadn’t been installed yet.

Eventually, an usher managed to scavenge a folding chair for me to sit on.

The A’s have been awful in August, but they’ve also had a pretty tough schedule.  The only sub-.500 team they’ve played this month is Detroit, who aren’t exactly patsies themselves.  By contrast, they’ll only play three games in September against a team (the Angels) currently above .500.

Uh, oh.  Justin Duchscherer has injured his hip.  I’m assuming it’s the hip he had surgery on last year.  Bad news, for two reasons:  one, I like the guy and want him to succeed.  Two, a recurrence to an old injury hurts his trade value a lot.  If I guy injures something and then gets it fixed, that’s fine, but if he injures it twice, he’ll probably injure it three times.

The A’s signed Brett Hunter, their seventh-round pick out of Pepperdine, just before yesterday’s signing deadline.  Hunter is a top-two-round talent who fell because of injury concerns.  But he spent the summer pitching for a collegiate all-star team, and pitched well enough to convince the A’s he was healthy enough to play.