The term to describe the state which lies approximately halfway between normal performance and a slump is: a Lull.

Barry Zito is in a lull. The good news is that he thinks he knows why he is in a lull: a mechanical problem. The mechanical problem would explain why he got clobbered by Texas last Wednesday, and why he was throwing 84mph fastballs last night, one of which was crushed for a two-run homer by Ben Broussard.

Fortunately for Mr. Zito, he’s is just about the only player on the team who is currently in a lull or slump. The rest of the team is firing on all cylinders, and the A’s now have the second-largest division lead in baseball at 5 1/2 games. But never mind that: the A’s have a good thing going, and we don’t want to jinx it by talking about it too much. Back to slumps.

We definitely could use some more precision when talking about slumps. If Eskimos can have N words for snow, why can’t we have some more words to describe slumps? This would be especially useful for fantasy baseball players, because you’d want to drop a player if he’s in one kind of slump, but keep him if he’s in another. So I’m going to make up some more terms.

So when you want to know why Jorge Posada just went 0-for-25, you could answer, “Oh, I think he’s in a…”:

• Gauss.

  This is a purely statistical slump. There’s nothing wrong with you physically or mentally, you’re just running into a stretch of bad luck that falls within a normal, Gaussian distribution of hits and outs.

  If you’re player is in a Gauss, you keep him.

• Byrnes.

  Like the Gauss, the player in a Byrnes is physically and mentally fine. But in this case, the Powers That Be uphold the It-All-Evens-Out Principle, by making sure an extreme, prolonged hot streak is followed by an extreme, prolonged cold streak, both of which go beyond normal distributions. Named after Eric Byrnes’ 2003 season. In 2003, Byrnes had an OPS of 1.073 in May and .978 in June, which he followed with an OPS of .328 in July, and .533 in August.

  If your player is in a Byrnes, you might seriously consider dropping him.

• Gomes.

  Named after the guy who carried my 2006 fantasy team for one month, and then killed it for two, before we finally found out he had been playing with a bum shoulder since early May. It’s a slump caused by an undisclosed injury.

  This one may soon be renamed the ARod. In either case, Gomes or ARod, these things are murder to your fantasy team.

• Chavez.

  This is a slump caused by a fully disclosed injury. Named after Eric Chavez, who hasn’t hit a lick in 2006 since injuring his forearms, but who plays anyway because his defense is unaffected by the injury. In other words, there’s not much excuse for keeping him from your non-keeper fantasy team.

• Miller.

  This is a slump caused by an identified mechanical problem. Similar to the lull, except that the player cannot correct the mechanical problem, and continues to make the same mistake. Named after Damian Miller, who, in his one year at Wrigley Field, got into a bad habit of trying to pull everything for home runs, and had the worst hitting season of his career. Miller understood exactly what he was doing wrong, but couldn’t get his muscle memory to change, and stop making the mistake.

• Crosby.

  Bobby Crosby gets hurt a lot, but even when he’s healthy, he doesn’t hit nearly as well as he should by looking at him and his talent. You’re in a Crosby when you’re healthy, there’s something mechanically wrong with your swing, and you can’t identify what it is.

• Blass.

  This is a slump caused by a psychological block of some sort. Named after Steve Blass.

I’m sure y’all can come up with more/better terms that these. So fire away…

Our fifth mystery photo comes courtesy of Jon Weisman. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help figure out the who/when/where of the photo.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Note: I’m running low on photos. If you have any old MLB photos that might suit this game, please send ’em in to mystery At humbug .com.

Apparently, doctoring photographs for use in news stories is all the rage these days, so I thought I’d dip my hand into the popular culture of the day and test the waters.

Here are some photographs I (presumably) took from Sunday’s A’s-Devil Rays contest in Oakland. See if you can tell which photos are real, and which ones are Photoshop.

Continue…

This is our fourth mystery photo. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help figure out the who/when/where of the photo.

Click on the image for a larger view.

If you have any old MLB photos that might suit this game, please send ’em in to mystery At humbug .com.

Baseball Tonight is running a series, showing each team’s top three web gems of all time. No word yet on which day they’ll show the A’s; they’ve only listed the schedule through August 19.

But I thought I’d try the exercise to see how many all-time A’s web gems I could recall. I’m sure I’m forgetting some good ones, but here’s what I came up with:

• Joe Rudi, 1972 World Series.

  This is probably just a nice play if it happens in June, but his scrawl against the wall is the signature image of that World Series.

• The Bill Buckner Gaffe, 1974 World Series.

  No, not that Bill Buckner gaffe. With no one out in the eighth inning of game five, Bill North misplayed a Buckner hit, turning a single into a double. But when Buckner got greedy and tried to get three bases out of it, the A’s executed a perfect relay throw, Reggie Jackson to Dick Green to Sal Bando, and nailed Buckner at third. Instead of a runner on second and nobody out, there was nobody on base, and one out. The A’s won the game by one run, and clinched the series.

• Dick Green’s bellyflop, 1974 World Series.

  Green was the fielding hero of the 1974 series, beyond the relay throw to nail Buckner. He launched three double plays in Game 3, the most memorable one with one out in the ninth, and A’s leading 3-2. Green stretched out to stop a ball up the middle, and from his belly flipped the ball to Bert Campaneris, who fired over to Jim Holt at first for the final out of the game.

• Dwayne Murphy, off with his cap!

  I can’t actually remember any specific web gems from the Billy Ball era, but I do remember Dwayne Murphy being the defensive star. My memories aren’t of the great catches he made, but of him returning to his spot after the great catch to retrieve his hat. He always placed his cap so loosely on his head that it fell off with just the slightest motion. For me, in those days, the fallen cap was the very symbol of great defense.

• Mike Gallego, pick ’em.

  If they had had web gems back around the turn of the 90s, Mike Gallego would have been a regular. I’m not sure how you pick just one of his plays. There’s the one where he charged a weakly hit ball from second base full speed, picked it up and flung himself parallel to the infield grass, and flipped the ball to first. There’s the one where he dove into the hole between first and second, ended up on his back, and from that prone position, flung the ball between his legs to first. And then there’s the time…

• Felix Jose, stumblin fumblin catch

  I can’t remember exactly when or against whom, but in 1990, just before he got traded for Willie McGee, Felix Jose made some crazy stumblin’, bumblin’ catch in right field. As I remember it, he fell down and rolled around while the ball bounced off his glove, off some other body part, and then ended up in his hand somehow.

• Randy Velarde, unassisted triple play

  What gets forgotten is that the reason there were two runners on in the first place is that Velarde had made an error on the preceding play.

• Terrence Long, robs Manny Ramirez of a game winning home run

  With the possible exception of his 2-homer game in the 2001 ALDS, this was the highlight of Terrence Long’s career.

• Jason Kendall, game ending tag at home

  This was one of those crazy games in Arlington, when nobody can stop anybody from scoring. It was 11-10 A’s in the ninth, two outs, when Kendall blocked a ball in the dirt. Michael Young tried to score, Kendall dove back to the plate, and tagged Young out to win the game.

• Eric Chavez, pick ’em.

  Like Gallego, Chavez is a web gem highlight reel all by himself. There are multiple plays where he covers yards and yard of the enormous Coliseum foul ground, making over-the-shoulder catches, sliding into the dugout, etc. There are all kinds of hard hit balls he’s snared, even though the ball already seems to have passed him, like this one. And then there’s the quick-thinking double play he turned the other day against Texas. How can you pick just one?

Missing from my list: those crazy plays by Eric Byrnes. Most of the time Byrnes made a crazy play in the outfield, it was because he took a bad route to the ball to begin with. I’d rather give props to someone like Mark Kotsay, who makes those same plays look much easier.

Here we have our third mystery photo. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help figure out the who/when/where of the photo.

Click on the image for a larger view.

If you have any old MLB photos that might suit this game, please send ’em in to mystery At humbug .com.

No, I’m not reporting that Jim Tracy’s team has switched divisions, or suddenly became more talented than the Oakland A’s.

Instead, I just felt compelled to pass on this news item from upcoming Swedish parliamentary elections:

The Pirate Party claims it is now larger than the Green Party, with nearly 8,000 members.

The party, which campaigns to legalize file sharing, says it now has 7,729 members. The Green Party, one of the Social Democrats’ key allies, now has 7,249 members.

Yes, the Pirate Party may actually have a chance to win seats in the Swedish parliament. As a point of comparison, the Green Party currently has 17 seats of 349. What’s more, since no one party is likely to win a majority of those seats, these Pirates might actually hold the deciding votes in who forms the next Swedish government.

Yes, we will vote for you to be Prime Minister, Mr. Persson, but only if you promise to make Talk Like A Pirate Day a national holiday. Also, we want Roberto Clemente’s picture on the 20-crown note.

And why not? If terrorists can win democratic elections, then why not pirates? If wrestlers and bodybuilders can govern states, then why not swashbucklers? If Christians and Muslims can band together in numbers to impose their theology on the state, then why not Pastafarians?

This is where the world is headed. One day, the world will end, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with one, pure expression of absolute absurdity.

Bill King’s ghost has just returned from Canton, Ohio, where he spent the weekend providing the play-by-play to all of John Madden’s Hall of Fame highlight videos. Just in time, because right now, I desperately need a really good Holy Toledo. Can I please have a Holy Toledo?

Holy Toledo!

Thanks, Bill.

This incantation was conjured up by Eric Chavez, who is simply having the most astounding season of fielding I have ever had the pleasure to witness. Great fielding seasons don’t get the kind of attention that having a bunch of walkoff hits like David Ortiz gets, but after last night’s game, it’s obvious to me the Chavez is having a season for the history books. This is defense of Ozzie Smith-Brooks Robinson-Bill Mazeroski’s ilk, the kind of defense that deserves to be remembered for generations.

Chavez won his fifth straight gold glove last year, but he won it more on reputation than on merit. His throwing shoulder was hurt, and he was unable at times to make the long throw across the diamond, resulting in a lot more errors than he usually makes. He is injured again in 2006, this time in his forearms, but this injury only affects his batting, not his fielding.

He’ll win his sixth gold glove this year. This time, it will be fully deserved. Perhaps some of the defensive metrics will disagree with me, but Eric Chavez is having the greatest fielding season in Oakland A’s history.

He only has three errors so far this year, his last one coming on Saturday in Seattle when a bad hop skipped off his glove, ending an A’s record 65-game errorless streak. I sometimes think errors are judged by the emotion they generate: are you surprised he didn’t make that play? If yes, call it an error. Chavez didn’t make the great play to snag that high hop. We’re surprised. With a lesser third baseman, it might have been called a hit.

Chavez is making every single play he should make, and adding some jaw-droppers in between. As much as Milton Bradley’s walkoff homer might have stunned the Blue Jays into a pennant-hopes-killing funk, and turned the A’s fortunes in the other direction, it was Eric Chavez’s defense that was the key to that series. Toronto hit rocket after rocket at him, and Chavez kept turning doubles into double plays all weekend long.

The latest jaw-dropper took place last night. With one out, runners on second and third, and Texas one run down, Chavez took a chopper near the bag, and quickly tagged out Mark DeRosa trying to return to third base. Now, I can’t ever remember seeing a 5-unassisted at third base like that before, but Chavez didn’t stop there. After tagging out DeRosa, he jumped over him into foul territory, planted his feet, and fired across the diamond to throw out the batter, Ian Kinsler. Double play, inning over.

Mouth agape.

What can you say after a play like that? Only two words come to mind.

OK, here’s the second mystery photo. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help figure out the who/when/where of the photo.

Click on the image for a larger view.

If you have any old MLB photos that might suit this game, please send ’em in to mystery At humbug .com.

After looking more closely at my stack of mystery photos, it looks like there are really only four or five different games that the photos come from, in just two different ballparks.

That’s not going to make this game much of a challenge. So I’m going to ask for some help. If any of you have some old photos lying around of MLB games, that you either (a) don’t know the who/what/when of the photo, or (b) you know, but think it would make a fun challenge for others to figure out, please email them in to me at this email address:

mystery ATsign humbug  .com

I only want your own personal photos, that I would have the rights to publish. Please don’t send me copyrighted material.

Thanks!

Since we’ve already said our goodbyes to Barry Zito, everything else is just gravy, baby. Our first scoop of gravy last night in Seattle wasn’t quite the vintage Zito flavor, but we’ll take it. His curveball wasn’t really working, and the umpire’s strike zone was pretty small, making it hard to put in any sort of dominant performance. But this game was a perfect example why Barry Zito is a much better pitcher in 2006 than 2004. He now has the arsenal to get through a whole game, even if he’s missing some of his bullets.

So a solid, but unremarkable performance for Zito: 7IP, 1 run. He was helped by a good performance at the plate by Marco Scutaro, who hit a double and a homer filling in for Bobby Crosby, who hit the DL earlier in the morning. Jay Payton, who fortunately did not break his hand that HBP by Scot Shields on Wednesday, helped with a really nice catch on a drive by Ichiro to end the 7th. It all added up to a 5-2 A’s win in Seattle.

Like last Saturday, when A’s fans gave Zito a curtain call, probably the most memorable event of the game happened as Zito walked off the field after throwing his last pitch. As he got to the dugout, it was pointed out to Zito that he had pitched his last inning with his fly open.

Considering that Zito set the Mariners down 1-2-3 in that, um, condition, could we have seen the birth of the pitching equivalent of the rally cap?

The shutdown zipperdown? Ewwwww, let’s hope not, but if it works…

On a recent travel adventure, I happened to wander into a “Recycle Store”, a business which tries to take one person’s junk and turn into someone else’s treasure.

This store happened to have a huge barrelful of old, discarded slides and photo negatives. Turns out that most of these discarded pictures were of sporting events. Probably 95% of them were pictures of NCAA and NFL football games, but there were some baseball pictures in the pile, too.

So I gathered up as many baseball pictures as I could find, and bought a couple handfuls of the old photos.

None of these photos were marked in any way, so there’s the game: let’s try to identify who the people are in the photos, and figure out where and when the photo was taken.

Ready? Here’s picture #1:

Click on the image for a larger view.

I really enjoyed the A’s-Angels series, the last two games especially. Every game was well-pitched, and each game was decided by a few key plays. Make the play: you win, don’t you lose. There were only 14 runs scored in the series, and three of them were scored by runners from second base on balls that didn’t ever leave the infield. Isn’t baseball fun when the deciding runs are scored by aggressive baserunning and their defensive responses? Homers, shmomers. On Tuesday, there were three close plays at the plate. All three plays went the Angels’ way, and they won the game. On Wednesday, the A’s made the plays; the Angels made the mistakes, and the A’s got the win.

The tone of these games felt different from recent A’s games. Instead of games where the A’s were bumblin’ and stumblin’ their way into first place, the games felt sorta pennant-racy. There was an urgency to them, as if the games mattered or something. Good stuff.

* * *

Of course, all that good feelings might be squashed if the test results come back and we find out that Bobby Crosby has a stress fracture in his back, or that Jay Payton has a broken hand, and their seasons are done. That’s what happened last year…everything was hunky dory until Crosby and Rich Harden went down, and then pfffffffffffft–all the air left the balloon. To have that happen two years in a row–Fate can be so cruel sometimes.

With the demands on my time growing more and more each day, it has become harder and harder for me to keep this blog going by myself. So I asked my fellow Alamedan Philip Michaels of Idiots Write About Sports to join me here on Catfish Stew, and he graciously accepted.

Expect Philip to start adding his humorous rantings here any time now. He’s one of the few writers I know who can regularly make me laugh out loud, and think to myself, “I wish I had written that.” Not to put any pressure on the poor fellow, but I’m confident that as he switches teams, Philip won’t go all Keith Ginter or Antonio Perez on us, he’ll keep putting up the good numbers, and Catfish Stew will be better than ever.

Some things on my mind:

• On Sunday, my daughter had her 6th birthday party. It was a warm day, so we had the Slip ‘n Slide out on the backyard lawn, and the kids partied in their swimsuits. I had the TV on in the living room just inside the door, so the A’s fans in attendance could keep an eye on the developments in the A’s game from time to time.

  When Huston Street showed that he was human enough to be unable to pitch two innings after being used three out of the previous four games, and coughed up three runs in the ninth, I figured it was time to move on to more pleasant things, and bring out the cake and ice cream.

  This is how I experienced the bottom of the ninth:

  “…Happy Birthday to you!”

  Puff! Clap, clap, clap…

  (Voice heard coming from doorway to living room) “Wooohooo!”

  Me: “What happened?”

  “Milton Bradley just hit a three-run homer!”

• Last night’s A’s-Angels games lacked such dramatics, but the pitching duel between Ervin Santana and Dan Haren was thoroughly enjoyable. I love those kind of low-scoring, tense ballgames.

  The A’s and Angels play a lot of those types of games against each other. I suppose that’s because both teams have good pitching, and neither team can hit very much. But still, it’s becoming a very fun rivalry to watch.

• I have a hard time believing the rumors that the Angels actually offered Santana in their attempts to trade for Miguel Tejada and/or Alfonso Soriano. If the Angels actually did offer him up, and the Orioles and Nationals both turned them down, that just goes down as another example of the sad shortage of brainpower in and around the District of Columbia. I’d be more than happy to have that guy out of the A’s division.

  But from what I understand, Santana was asked for, not offered. There’s no shortage of brainpower in Anaheim.

• So neither the A’s nor the Angels did anything this trading season. That’s OK. Between the callups and people coming off the DL, both teams have plenty of opportunities for improvement from sources within.

  And then there’s Bobby Crosby and Mark Ellis. Imagine what would happen if either of those guys actually stopped looking like the second coming of Rob Picciolo at the plate, and started hitting like, oh, I dunno, Bobby Crosby or Mark Ellis (any vintage but 2006).

• I can stop dreaming about Lastings Milledge now, and start dreaming about the three first round draft picks the A’s will have next June, when Zito departs.

  Meanwhile, I think I’ll focus my minor league mancrush energies on 18-year-old Matthew Sulentic.

• In July, the A’s played 3 games against teams currently under .500. They went 14-13 for the month.

  In July, the Angels played 18 games against teams currently under .500. They went 19-7 for the month.

• In August, the A’s will play 8 games against teams currently under over .500. In September/October: 13.

  The Angels will play 13 such games in August. September/October: 16.

• Some Yankee fans working at ESPN:

  I was watching SportsCenter last night, when the phone rang for my wife, so I put the TV on mute. My TV automatically switches to closed captioning when you mute it, so I started reading the highlights of the Red Sox comeback against the Indians last night.

  When the highlights of David Ortiz hitting his three-run walkoff homer was shown, the closed captions actually said this:

  AND DAVID ORTIZ STRIKES OUT LOOKING.

• I can now confirm, for I have verified the data with my own two eyes: Bob Timmermann is tall.
   
• Bob emailed me yesterday and said that Billy Beane was recently spotted at a corporate retreat at Pebble Beach with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Rupert Murdoch, and U2.

  So that’s why the A’s did nothing at the trading deadline: Beane kept hearing voices nearby that kept telling him, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”.

While stumped by which needs were addressed,
I’m awed by the Dodgers’ new quest
To catch every Ray
And transform L.A.
To glamorous Tampa Bay West.

“It isn’t my fault,” utters Tracy,
“If we end up more out-of-the-racy
Once Littlefield sells
Good players like Wells,
Hernandez, and Wilson and Casey.”

Said Gillick to Bobby Abreu,
“We don’t have the money to peu.
But the Yankees have dough,
So that’s where you’ll go.
We’re practically giving aweu.”

Yesterday afternoon, in the outer reaches of the Oakland Coliseum’s second deck, some ignorant fools tried to get a wave going in the top of the seventh inning. Didn’t they realize the drama that was unfolding before their very eyes?

Perhaps not. After all, they had the worst seat in the house to watch the most important person in the stadium yesterday: the Mets scout sitting behind home plate, ready to report Barry Zito’s every move back to Omar Minaya. Zito had just passed the 100th pitch mark, and the scouting report was about to be finalized. What would it say?

After this grand slam in the first inning by cleanup batter Troy Glaus:

the guys sitting behind me said, "Get Minaya on the phone and tell him he can play his prospects today. Zito’s not going anywhere."

Zito’s control was off for the first five batters or so, but then pitching coach Curt Young came to the mound, and Zito settled down after that. The Blue Jays got a bunch of hits early on that always seemed to be six inches out of the reach of a fielder. But that was just bad luck more than bad pitching: the holefinding didn’t last too long, as the defense stepped up.

Eric Chavez broke Mike Gallego’s team record for consecutive errorless games at third base, with several amazing plays. Chavez nailed down all the Blue Jay gold glove votes with this amazing play, off the bat of John McDonald.

Continue…

The speediest rhymes to pursue
Are sounds that are simple, like “Choo”.
While pairing Broussard
No doubt isn’t hard,
The dinosaur pun’s overdue.