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….

Continue…

10:00 AM: Today, the A’s will have the 12th pick in the MLB amateur draft, their highest pick since they picked Barry Zito with the 9th pick in 1999.

This draft has an upper tier of about 10 players, and the A’s are hoping that one of those ten falls to them. Those ten are SS Tim Beckham, 3B Pedro Alvarez, 1B Eric Hosmer, LHP Brian Matusz, C Buster Posey, C Kyle Skipworth, SS Gordon Beckham, 1B Yonder Alonso, 1B Justin Smoak, and RHP Aaron Crow. The A’s are hoping that two of the 11 teams ahead of them pick a player not from this list.

From the buzz going around the last few days, this does not appear too likely. The one scenario that might cause this to happen is if the secretive Giants select Gordon Beckham, who is coveted by both the Reds at #7, and the White Sox at #8. That might lead to the Reds selecting Canadian HS C/3B Brett Lawrie, the White Sox possibly going for 3B/1B Brett Wallace and/or the Rangers (#11) selecting a much-needed pitcher instead of the remaining bat from the top 10 list.

The names being attached to the A’s should the top 10 go in the top 11 are threefold: Wallace, Aaron Hicks, and Jemile Weeks. Wallace and Hicks are essentially polar opposites: Wallace is the most polished bat in the draft, a college star with a rare combination of power and patience, but his body and athleticism–well, let’s just say he’s not going to be selling any jeans here. His lack of defensive value may lower his stock in the A’s minds, especially since the A’s already have a number of young first base types in their system with Daric Barton, Sean Doolittle, and Chris Carter. Hicks, on the other hand, is a phenomenal athlete–he has speed and power and can throw in the mid 90s, but he’s a very raw talent fresh out of high school. He says he wants to play centerfield as a pro, but the A’s may prefer him as a pitcher. The A’s may not want to draft a player who doesn’t want to play the position they want him to play.

Which leads us to Jemile Weeks, who all the draft-day mock drafts have going to the A’s, as sort of a compromise between college polish and raw athleticism. He’s the brother of the Brewers’ 2B Rickie Weeks. The A’s are bulging with outfielders, first basemen and pitchers, and very thin in the middle infield, so there’s a certain logic to this idea. However, Jemile is not as powerful as his brother, which makes his ceiling more like Chone Figgins than Rickie Weeks. Picking Weeks at #12 seems like a waste of the value of the #12 pick. Because he has no power, Weeks is a pick more appropriate for the bottom of the first round than the top.

Who will it be? We’ll find out in about an hour…

11:38: The Giants take Florida State C Buster Posey at #5. Everything has gone according to the mock drafts so far, making the Jemile Weeks scenario more and more likely.

11:49: The first mild surprise of the first round: the Reds take Alonso instead of Gordon Beckham. Not sure if that affects the flow of the draft downstream enough to help the A’s.

11:54: The White Sox take Beckham at #8. Only two of the top 10 players left: Smoak and Crow.

11:59: Nats take Crow. Will Astros and/or Rangers, who both need pitching, take Smoak?

12:04: Whoa. First big surprise: Astros took Jason Castro, a catcher from Stanford. Smoak is still on the board. Will the Rangers pass up pitching, and leave Smoak to the A’s?

12:09: Bah. Rangers take Smoak.

12:12: A’s are on the clock. The top ten are gone. Who’s #11 on the A’s list?

12:14: A’s take Weeks. Jim Callis calls him "the last true up-the-middle player" of the first round. OK, whatever, but this is a typical Oakland safe pick. A guy who is likely to be a solid major leaguer, but probably not a superstar. I was hoping for something different with the A’s first high draft pick in years and years–someone with some bigger superstar upside. Yes, the A’s need middle infield talent, but I’ll have to let this one sink in for awhile before I can feel excited about it.

15:34: A’s second round pick: Tyson Ross, from Cal. As a Cal fan, I can’t say I’m particularly excited about this pick, either. Ross has size and talent, but he hasn’t produced the kind of results you’d expect from a 6′ 6" guy who can crank it up to the mid 90s. Well, at least he has some upside.

16:09: A’s third round pick: Preston Paramore, catcher from Arizona State, with excellent plate discipline. Keith Law had him ranked as his #41 prospect.

17:21: Fourth round: Anthony Capra, LHP from Wichita St. with good results, decent velocity, but no good breaking pitch. Fifth round: Jason Christian, a shortstop from U Michigan with decent stats. Just for comparison:

Player              AVG  G    AB   R   H  2B  3B  HR RBI  SLG% BB HBP  SO  OB%  SB-ATT  PO   A  E  FLD%
Jemile Weeks.....  .366  57  216  75  79  16   5  11  57 .639  30   4  36 .447  19-20   93 148  9 .964
Jason Christian..  .330  50  194  56  64  13   6   7  48 .567  39   3  36 .445  16-18   83 113 13 .938

Very similar OBPs, but that slugging percentage is the difference betwen first round money and fifth.

Hi, I’m Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics.  Last year, I sent a record 22 players to the disabled list.  After shipping off Frank Thomas to the DL yesterday, we’re already halfway toward beating last year’s record.  And whenever I need to ship off another group of players to the disabled list, I rely on Busted Wheels Trucking Company.  Busted Wheels is the Official DL Transportation Company of the Oakland A’s. Tell ’em Billy sent you!

Catfish Stew took this exclusive photo yesterday at the Oakland A’s secret DL dumping ground. I can’t tell you where it is, as my sources prefer to remain anonymous. Perhaps you can figure it out, but our lips are sealed.

If you don’t know anything about Justin Duchscherer, you might think tonight’s 1-hit shutout of Boston is just one of those fluky things that happens in baseball: any bum can have a good day. Heck, Mike Warren threw a no-hitter once.

There was nothing fluky about Justin Duchscherer’s performance tonight. Justin Duchscherer is flat out a great pitcher. This is exactly the sort of thing he’s been doing for years. He should have been a starter years ago, but he got stuck in the setup role (a) because the A’s have had a lot of good starting pitchers, and (b) he’s been so damn good in the setup role.

This year, he’s finally getting his shot at starting. Take a look at what he’s done so far this year:

5.0 IP, 1 ER.
5.0 IP, 2 ER.
5.0 IP, 1 ER.
7.0 IP, 2 ER.
6.2 IP, 1 ER.
5.0 IP, 3 ER.
8.0 IP. 0 ER.

Now look at his career ERAs since he came to Oakland:
2003: 3.31
2004: 3.27
2005: 2.21
2006: 2.91
2007: 4.96 (*injured hip)
2008: 2.16

There’s a lot of trade speculation about Rich Harden and Joe Blanton, and those two guys are good pitchers, but if you judge by actual career performance, Justin Duchscherer has been a better pitcher than both of them:

Duchscherer: 3.36 ERA, 1.19 WHIP
Harden: 3.56 ERA, 1.27 WHIP
Blanton: 4.08 ERA, 1.31 WHIP

Duchscherer doesn’t get his due, because he doesn’t throw 99 MPH like Harden or even 93 like Blanton, and he’s been stuck in an unglamorous role for too many years. But mixing those precision mid-80 mph cutters with his 12-to-6 curveball, he keeps getting hitters off balance, and generating out after out after out. If the Angels keep racking up wins, and the A’s can’t keep up and decide to become sellers in July, the smart teams will be asking about Duchscherer just as much as Harden and Blanton.

I got the flu a few weeks ago, which caused me to fall behind in my work projects, which cause me to fall behind in my home projects, which caused me to fall behind in my blogging. Meanwhile, my 10-month-old daughter, who I used to be able to entertain by simply sitting her down in the middle of a room with a bunch toys, recently figured out how to stand up from that seated position, and is now walking all over house. Which means even less time for blogging, as she must be watched every second of the day, lest she try to eat every little pebble she finds left on the floor.

No time: that’s the downside. The upside is getting to watch her personality emerge with every new skill she acquires. Once she learned to reach out and grab things, we soon discovered she is fashion conscious, with an unusual preference for floral patterns. When she learned to say "Hi", and we discovered that she’s a very outgoing and friendly kid. Then last week, when she stood up by herself for the first time, she looked me straight in the eye and gave one of those villainous laughs you hear in the movies when the bad guy realizes (mistakenly) that his big plans are indeed going to succeed. Oh, Daddy, watch out! I am now officially mobile! Nothing can stop me! I had to laugh back. "Oh, dear," I thought. "I think this girl is going to be high-maintenance."

This is also one of the joys of baseball for me: watching a team’s personality unveil itself over the course of a season. This 2008 A’s team, I find, has been particularly difficult to peg. There’s no one guy, no star, no Giambi or Tejada or Swisher, who has emerged as the team’s dominant personality. The pitching has been consistently good, but the rest of the team seems rather schizophrenic to me. One day they’re scoring 9, 11, or 15 runs; and then they go get shut out in three out of the next five games. They steal more bases than I can remember any A’s team stealing since Rickey was around, but at the same time, they make some simply godawful baserunning mistakes. The defense seems to be fairly efficient, but then they’ll go and drop easy fly balls for no apparent reason. I would rack up their inconsistency to their youth, if not for the fact that a couple of the older players on the team, Jack Cust and Emil Brown, have been just as much a source of that inconsistency as any of the players who are fresh out of Little League.

I seem to be living a Little League existence lately. The last A’s game I went to, I experienced the Little League-style cheering of Jeremy Guthrie’s kindly aunt. Yesterday, I experienced Little League-style cheering of a very different nature. It was Field Trip Day at the Coliseum, and I chaperoned a bunch of fifth-graders in my oldest daughter’s class to the A’s-Rays game. The good news is that there was lots of good news: after losing two consecutive games to Tampa Bay in exasperating fashion, Dana Eveland was masterful, the game went along quickly, and the A’s scored a bunch of runs, winning 9-1. The bad news is that these 10- and 11-year-olds used any good news as an excuse to scream piercingly at the top of their lungs. I went to the Coliseum expecting a baseball game, and a Beatles concert broke out. My ears are still ringing.

This where I think Pat Jordan’s remarks about how celebrity culture is preventing fans from getting to know modern athletes may be a bit beside the point. I will remember these two games as “the kindly aunt game” and “the screaming kids game”. The games had distinct personalities, but the actual personalities of the players didn’t really have anything to do with it. Our social brains are hardwired to assign personalities to not only people, but things, even things as abstract as a ballgame. So does knowing the personalities of the players lead us to understand the results on the field, or is it more the other way around: we ascribe to the players the personalities we experience when watching them, whether we know the players or not?

I’ve been attending quite a few actual Little League games lately. My wife’s nephew, who was a very good player at age 10 in the 12-year-old Little League division, is now age 12, and completely dominating his league. So far this year, he’s batting .500/.630/1.029, and his left-handed pitching arm is doing even better: 64 strikeouts in 45 IP, with a 0.20 ERA. In one game a couple weeks ago, he gave up one hit and struck out 17 in 7 IP (they won 1-0 in extras). Having used up his pitch count for the week, he played first base the next day. He came up with bases loaded and two outs in the 6th and final inning, with his team trailing by a run, and hit a rocket straight over the center-field fence for a game-winning grand slam.

When I watch my nephew play, he seems to have an aura like Tiger Woods or Kobe Bryant out there on that Little League diamond: the whole personality of the game revolves around him; he’s the dominant player who can pull a magical shot out of his bag anytime his team needs one. And yet I’ve known this kid since he was born; I’ve changed his diapers, I’ve fed him, I’ve watched him grow from a toddler to a goofy 12-year-old kid who’s pretty normal in every way except that he’s really, really good at baseball. Nothing I know of his off-the-field personality would lead me to assign that "star player" personality to him on the field. And yet, when I watch him play, I do it, anyway. It seems to me that the on-the-field personality that I perceive in him is more an emergent property of the game, than of the person.

What does the future hold for him? Is that "big star" aura a persistent part of his personality, a trait that predestines him to a career in pro baseball? Or are these last few months of Little League the glory days of his life? Will he one day read Jordan’s A False Spring, and think, hey, that was me–I could throw that speedball by you, too, before that flaw of mine was revealed, and it all just fell apart?

I could make some prophecies. I feel their lives, their destinies spilling out before me. The denial of the one true path, played out on a world not their own, will end soon enough. Soon there will be four, glorious in awakening, struggling with the knowledge of their true selves. But the idea of "one true path" is a fiction created by human psychology. In real life, there’s a 10-month-old girl, taking her first steps towards her destination, a place unknowable until she gets there.

Hi, everybody! Welcome to the show! Are you ready for another exciting round of "What’s Wrong With Him?" Ok, let’s play!

Kurt Suzuki. What’s wrong with him?
Suzuki hit a homer on Wednesday, but hasn’t had a hit since. The homer is looking like a fluke. His hitting has actually been plummeting like a stone since Bob Geren moved him into the leadoff spot when Travis Buck got hurt a few weeks ago. Suzuki is hitting .209/.277/.256 from the #1 slot in the batting order; it’s clearly time to call that experiment a failure. Suzuki is a catcher in his first full MLB season. He’s still got a lot to learn and absorb. It’s time to take some pressure off the young man by placing him back at the bottom the batting order.
Oh, no, I’m sorry. The correct answer is:
If you play a catcher as often as Jason Kendall, he’ll eventually end up hitting like Jason Kendall. He needs some days off.

Rich Harden. What’s wrong with him?
Harden’s first start off the DL Sunday against Texas was pretty weird. He got the first two outs fairly easily in each of his first three innings, and also the leadoff batter in the fourth, but thereafter got smacked around before he could finish off each inning. Will Carroll remarked on BP that "Harden didn’t have his control, but he did have his mid-90’s velocity." I’m not so sure I agree with that. Harden’s control is not really his strength, anyway. Gameday kinda confirmed my suspicions–he hit 96 and 97 mph a couple of times, but most of the time, his fastball sat at 93. While watching the game, I thought Harden’s fastball was lacking its usual little extra oomph–batters were making more contact on it than they usually do. He admitted afterwards that he felt tired out there. He was also not throwing his splitter or his slider, to help avoid injury. The Texas hitters knew he was only a two-pitch pitcher that day, so without a blow-away fastball, Harden had to use the changeup more often than normal to try and fool the hitters with. A few of those got left up and over the plate, and got appropriately whacked. But the core problem is that with a few exceptions, Harden was just throwing fastballs, not Fastballs.
Oh, no, I’m sorry. The correct answer is:
Rich Harden was sporting goofy beard-like thing he had growing on his chin. Just because he took Chad Gaudin’s spot in the rotation doesn’t mean he had to try to grow an ugly beard like Gaudin’s. Gaudin’s beard-like thing kinda suits his mug in a strange sort of way, but it just looked totally out of place on Harden’s baby face.

Barry Zito. What’s wrong with him?
People have been asking me that question for several weeks now, but I hadn’t actually seen him pitch this year until last night. As always, the whole key to Zito’s existence is his unusual ability to reduce the BABIP of right-handed batters. Without that skill, he’s nothing. Nearly every non-knuckleballing MLB pitcher who ever pitched yields a BABIP of about .300, but Zito in over 5,500 PA has yielded a BABIP against RHB of only .261. (He’s a more conventional .290 against LHB.) This year, his BABIP against RHB is .339. Why the huge difference this year? People have been harping on his loss of velocity, but I don’t think that’s really the source of his struggles this year. His unusual skill comes from an unique pitch sequence that is set up by his curveball, as I explained here. The problem I saw last night was not all that different from his mediocre nights that he had in Oakland when his curveball wasn’t working. The curve wasn’t that nasty pitch he used to throw that starts out looking like it was clearly a ball, and then sharply snaps over the plate. Instead, the ball just kinda rolled up there. He was throwing curveballs, not Curveballs. He didn’t seem confident in throwing his primary weapon, afraid he’d hang it or something, and without it, he’s a two pitch pitcher, just like Harden, but without about 10mph of speed. He had good control of his fastball last night, and a decent changeup, and that was good enough to get him through the order twice. But just like in Oakland, the third time through the order was a problem without the Curveball.
Oh, no, I’m sorry. The correct answer is:
Barry Zito is a head case. The guy thinks too much. He would be a lot better pitcher if he was an idiot, and just stubbornly stuck with what works. He tinkers with his motion to try to increase velocity, and ends up losing velocity, control, and, most importantly, deception. Every time he tries something new, it screws him up, and he eventually ends up going back to the old stuff. Rick Peterson is the only pitching coach who had success with him, because he recognized that Barry Zito is too smart for his own good, and wouldn’t let him change anything. No, you can’t throw a slider. No, you can’t change your stride length. No, you can’t change your stretch motion. Curt Young and Dave Righetti have been too much like nice, spoiling uncles than stern fathers, too willing to let him try new stuff. Barry Zito should not vote for Barack Obama. Zito needs a pitching coach who will tell him, "No, you can’t!"

Three strikes, you’re out!
We have some lovely parting gifts for you, as reward for your effort. Thanks for playing!