The SF Chronicle has a nice recipe today for what to do with your leftover rotisserie chicken.

Speaking of rotisserie, those of you who have Eric Chavez on your fantasy teams can be glad that Ken Macha did not follow my advice and give Chavez a day off yesterday. Eric Chavez finally looked like Eric Chavez again.

In the first inning, he took a pitch away, and flied out to deep left. I said out loud, “that’s the first good swing I’ve seen him take all year.” It reminded me of Sunday’s game against the Angels, where ESPN had a microphone in the Angels dugout. Steve Finley came back to the dugout after a fly out and declared “That’s my swing.” Next at-bat: home run.

Chavez didn’t follow up that good swing with a homer, but he hit two balls hard to the opposite field, driving in three runs. That’s his swing. That’s the real Eric Chavez.

We also got to see, I’m afraid, the real Eric Byrnes, who at times can win games with his hustle, but also lose them with his uncontrolled style. Last night, he misplayed a fly ball (lost in the lights, presumably), and then later that inning proceeded to throw the ball to third base when no one was standing there, allowing the tail runner to advance to second.

After watching that, my wife said, “He’s not young enough anymore to be making mistakes like that.” So true.

It was good to hear that Mark Kotsay gave the team a dressing down in the dugout after that inning. The play has been so lackluster lately, a kick in the pants was probably a good thing. It was a question before the season as to who would succeed Tim Hudson as team leader; looks like Mark Kotsay is the man.

Meanwhile, Ken Macha will likely give Bobby Kielty, Nick Swisher, and Charles Thomas some more opportunites to grab the job in the near future. Swisher and Thomas get the call this afternoon. Let’s hope Thomas can finally get a hit.

Now, I’ll go listen to the game on the radio while I eat my lunch. I don’t think I’ll use that rotisserie chicken recipe today; after all, I’m not Wade Boggs, and I had chicken for lunch just two days ago.

Last time I tried to do an A’s web site on my own (2002), the A’s started the year and couldn’t buy a run the entire month of April. I got so frustrated I quit writing, and the A’s immediately started hitting again.

I’m sitting here watching the A’s hit into three double plays in the first three innings of tonight’s game, and feeling a strong sense of deja vu: that the RISP jinx may be caused by me.

So I just want to declare the following: this is not an A’s blog. It’s a recipe blog! Yeah, and, um, a blog about, um, the philosophy of, um, cultural, uh, stuff. And of course, it’s a blog about putting a stop to porosity casting. If I happen to mention the A’s here, it’s only to illustrate one of those other purposes. Really.

Here’s a recipe for buttered toast:
1 slice bread
Butter

Place bread slice into toaster.
Press lever down.
Wait until lever pops up again.
Remove slice.
Spread butter onto bread.
Enjoy.

Update: Yup, this is definitely a recipe blog. There’s nothing like the taste of buttered toast with a dash of RBIs (9 runs scored, all after the fourth inning, when this was published).

I was thinking about going to the game tonight, but I’m afraid if I show up a few minutes late, I might miss the whole game.

The average time of game for these two starters this year is 2:17. And that doesn’t even take into account that none of Buehrle’s previous starts were against the A’s, who can’t hit diddly squat. This game might be done by 9:00pm, if anybody manages to score a run somehow.

Ken Macha should give Eric Chavez the night off. Lifetime against Buehrle, he’s hitting .207/.200/.310. Take a day off, and see if it helps cure his slump. Wednesday he gets a familiar opponent, Freddie Garcia. Give Hatteberg a night off, too: he’s .190/.190/.333 against Buehrle. While we’re at it, sit Durazo, too, and play with as many right-handed bats as possible: Ginter at third, Swisher at first, Byrnes and Kielty in the outfield corners. Harden don’t need no steenkin’ defense anyway.

Maybe, if my neck is feeling better, I’ll go to the game tomorrow instead, since it’s not on TV.

See, even when I play Backyard Baseball, the A’s can’t get any RBIs:

Pulled a muscle in my neck over the weekend. Hard to sleep, hard to move. Darn near everything I do is uncomfortable. What to do?

Dr. Orva: Here, smoke this. And, be sure you get the smoke deep down into your lungs.
Miles Monroe: I don’t smoke.
Dr. Orva: It’s tobacco. It’s one of the healthiest things for your body.

That’s a joke from Sleeper, but at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Orva is correct. Everything else we’ve been programmed about our health is being turned upside down.

Yesterday, I learned that being overweight is healthy. A new study revealed that having a Body Mass Index in the “overweight” category” is more ideal than the “ideal” weight, and being “underweight” is more deadly than being “obese”. It’s better to be fat than thin.

So go ahead, have a snack. Eat lots of meat and drink lots of alcohol. Because Everything Bad Is Good For You.

TV dulls the brain? No, no: watching TV makes you smarter.

Wear sunscreen? Always. Or not.

Who knows? We can’t be sure about anything anymore, except this: every theory is wrong, including the ones that are right.

Steroids: bad or good? Yes. No.

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

Bill James is wrong. Joe Morgan is right: the A’s need to find multiple ways to win a ball game. They can’t just wait for two walks and a homer; it doesn’t happen every game.

When Billy Beane signed Bobby Crosby to a long-term deal while injured, was he making the same mistake he made when signing Jermaine Dye? Sure he was. Or wasn’t. How do I know?

Why am I even worrying about it?

I love baseball. You know it doesn’t have to mean anything, it’s just beautiful to watch.

Woody Allen is the true prophet of our era. I should just follow his lead.

I should enjoy the beauty of a young team playing two weekends of tense, exciting baseball against the division favorites. They won some, they lost some. Those are the breaks.

As for the pain in my neck, anyone know where I can buy an Orb and an orgasmatron?

I play soccer on Friday nights, so I missed the first half of the A’s-Angels game last night. That’s probably a good thing, as I probably would have kicked my TV across the room after a missed popup fell for an RBI double and the A’s squandered yet another opportunity to drive in runs, this time a bases-loaded no-out situation in the second, where they scored only one run, and that was on a HBP. Instead, I kicked a soccer ball. ‘Tis a wee bit less destructive.

I guess the A’s didn’t want me to feel left out, though, so they showed me some more squandered opportunities after I got home.

The A’s were 0-for-12 going into the ninth inning with runners in scoring position. That actually doesn’t frustrate me so much as the repeated failure to bring home runs from third with less than two out. You don’t even need a hit, you just need to make some friggin’ contact. They can’t even do that. Apparently, Ken Macha’s focus on situational hitting in spring training was a colossal waste of time. It hasn’t done a lick of good so far. Is there some rule that A’s hitters aren’t allowed to take a two-strike approach earlier in the count, even if the situation calls for it?

It’s the same old story. The pitching was once again quite good. The offense sucked. Again. This was such an incredibly annoying and frustrating way to lose. Argh!

What?

The A’s won?

What the…? Well…wow…um…gosh…so, um…never mind. I uh…hey, you know…everything’s just wonderful. Peachy keen. It was a fine, well-played game, gents, yessirree!

Congrats to Keiichi Yabu on his first MLB win.

And kudos to Scott Hatteberg. Way to trick K-Rod into giving you a fastball over the plate on an 0-2 pitch with 2 outs in the ninth, instead of just putting you away with one of those nasty hooks. I knew you could do it, really, I did…

Rich Harden.

I don’t really need to say anything else about last night’s game, so I won’t.

Instead, I’ll talk about a useless stat Jayson Stark made up called “runs not scored”. Runs Not Scored is Runs Scored subtracted from Times On Base. Stark notes that Ichiro didn’t score many runs for a guy who was on base so much, and wonders who else in history has had such problems.

Ordinarily I’d ignore such a stat, because “RNS” is misleading: it sounds like you’re measuring a bad thing, but it’s actually a good thing. Teams that have a lot of RNS usually have a lot of runs scored too, because they have a lot of baserunners overall.

But I was certain that last year’s A’s team must have had a ton of Runs Not Scored, so I was curious to see just how much.

We Bay Area baseball fans saw an awful lot of runners left on base last year. The 2004 A’s had 1,415 RNS, which was second only to Barry Bonds the Giants, who had 1,427. The Giants’ total was 16th all time, while the A’s total was tied for 35th all time.

That’s not quite as many as New York fans saw in 1999, though. The ’99 Mets had 1,465 (2nd all time), while the Yankees had 1,441 (12th all time).

This year’s A’s team does not actually have this “problem”; the 2005 A’s are actually tied for 16th in RNS with 124. (The Yankees are first with 150.) The problem with this year’s A’s, despite Eric Chavez being 0-for-15 with RISP, is not so much driving in runners; it’s getting enough of them on base in the first place.

The all-time record for team RNS is held by the 1989 Boston Red Sox, who had 1,476. Below, I’ll put a list of the top 50 all-time teams for RNS. You’ll notice that most of these teams were good teams. Only 12 of the top 50 teams were below .500.

Continue…

I watched last night’s A’s-Mariners game with an odd feeling of detachment. I think I only yelled at the TV twice last night, which is probably a record low for me in a loss.

Once, of course, was when Eric Byrnes dove for a ball with the bases loaded and let three runs score instead of one. The other was when Eric Chavez struck out looking against Ron Villone on a borderline pitch with the bases loaded in the eighth.

I shouted out in frustration, but it’s really more a matter of cursing our luck than calling it a dumb decision. Each Eric had a difficult choice to make between being aggressive and passive. Byrnes was trying to preserve a tie. Chavez was trying to drive in a run with a walk. You can’t really call it a bonehead decision. In each case, though, the decision didn’t work out, and it cost the A’s the game.

On the other hand, I didn’t yell at all when Barry Zito gave up a grand slam to Bret Boone. Zito came out in the first inning and pitched with as much precision as I do, which is to say, none at all. He wasn’t even getting close to the strike zone, missing by about a foot with any type of pitch he threw. It was inevitable that he would eventually miss in the middle of the plate. You could see it coming several batters in advance.

Zito corrected his mechanics in the second inning, and pitched a good game the rest of the way. But a sense of resignation came over me as a result of that first inning.

This sense of resignation was not just about the game, but about this team. Emotionally, I finally grasped that we’re in a sort of interregnum, where one team hasn’t quite fully abdicated, and the new team hasn’t quite taken over.

The king is dead. Long live somebody, we don’t know who.

Zito and Byrnes were the subjects of all kinds of trade rumors this winter, and survived them all. But I don’t get the sense that they’re here for the long haul. Every time Zito coughs up a homer, or Byrnes misplays a fly ball, or Scott Hatteberg grounds out to second base, I think to myself, “That’s the old team failing. I want to see what the new team can do.”

Black smoke pours out the pipe. We know that at some point, who knows when, a cloud of white will take its place, signaling the true start of a new era. In the meantime, the process runs its course. Filled with anxiety, trying our best to be patient, we watch and wait.

When old farts like Pedro Astacio and Hideo Nomo shut you down, you gotta wonder. So I wondered. And I noticed something interesting.

The A’s median runs scored is 2.5. In 7 games, they’ve scored two or fewer runs, and in 7 games three or more runs.

Age of the opposing starting pitchers when they’ve scored:
Above median: 23, 24, 24, 26, 26, 26, 31
Below median: 28, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 36

In other words, the veteran starters are all completely shutting the A’s down. On the other hand, the A’s are feasting on youngsters.

The only exception to this pattern is last night’s game, where they beat Chan Ho Park.

The correlation between runs and age isn’t quite statistically significant (-0.579, thanks Mike), but it’s not nothing, either. So let’s watch this, for kicks. Here are the A’s upcoming opponent pitchers:

Wed vs. Mariners, Joel Piniero, age 26
Thu vs. Mariners, Ryan Franklin, age 32
Fri vs. Angels, John Lackey, age 26
Sat vs. Angels, Kelvim Escobar, age 29
Sun vs. Angels, Paul Byrd, age 34

If it holds up over the weekend, we’ll continue the fun on Monday, and start making up theories out of thin air. Mark your calendars…

The A’s beat the Rangers 8-5 today. The game wasn’t on TV, and I only listened to part of it on radio. Nice to hear the offense do well; the most encouraging news was that Erubiel Durazo had three hits.

Dan Haren still sounds like he’s getting by on talent rather than craft; he walked five in six innings, but only gave up three hits. Kinda reminds me or Rich Harden circa April 2004. It will be interesting to watch if he can begin to harness that talent as he goes along, as Harden did.

Does Juan Cruz have options left? That dude is messed up; he could use a few innings somewhere to find whatever it is that he lost. He darn near blew a six-run lead in the ninth, and Dotel was forced to come in and get a save.

All in all, a nice, but uninteresting victory. More interesting than what happened to the A’s today is what happened to some ex-A’s:

• Sandy Alderson is leaving the Commissioner’s Office to become the new CEO of the San Diego Padres. Good move for the Padres. The NL West just got a bit more interesting.
   
• Tim Hudson threw a nine-inning, four-hit shutout, but as usual, ended up with no decision. Roger Clemens matched his shutout for seven innings, and the Braves won in 12, 1-0.
   
• Mark Mulder pitched a bit more like the Mark Mulder we know. Eight innings, two hits, just 95 pitches, as the Cardinals beat the Pirates, 11-1. The only thing that keeps me from labeling it Vintage Mulder(™) is that he issued three walks. If it had only been one walk, I would have declared him back to form.
   
• Arthur Rhodes pitched a scoreless ninth in the Indians’ 5-1 win over the Royals. He hasn’t allowed a run all season. If he had pitched like this last year…oh never mind. Could say the same thing about Mulder, I guess…

I went to the game yesterday, and I still find myself unable to process what happened. I can’t find any sort of pattern to make sense of. Witness:

• Vladimir Guerrero walks around like he’s sixty years old and needs hip replacement surgery. Every step looks like it hurts. It’s hard to reconcile that image with the the guy who held Nick Swisher to a double with a rocket throw to the infield, who stole a base late in the game, and who, just seconds after the phrase “The A’s can’t expect to get through this whole series without being hurt by Vlad at least once” passed through my brain, hit a two-run homer.
   
• Kirk Saarloos was not pitching particularly effectively, but his pitch count was strangely low. He was only at about 55 pitches through the first five innings. I’m not sure what to make of that.
   
• After the repeated failures of last year’s bullpen, seeing Rincon serve up a homer to Garret Anderson seemed quite familiar. But what followed with Street and Dotel didn’t quite register. I’m still kinda thinking, “That’s my team doing that?”
   
• Usually, when the Angels get a late lead on you, they throw their bullpen at you and stomp on you until you expire. This time, though, Scioscia didn’t pull the right strings, left Lackey in there too long, and didn’t go to his pen until it was too late.
   
• Chavez and Durazo were the A’s best hitters last year, but have been their worst hitters this year. Durazo’s pitch selection seems to be messed up; he’s swinging at breaking pitches in the dirt, and taking fastballs over the plate. With Chavez, it’s not so much that he’s swinging at bad pitches (although he’s done that, too), but that he’s simply not hitting the ball when he does get a pitch to hit.
   
• Despite the struggles of their star hitters, the A’s got several clutch hits, including a home run from Marco Scutaro. This fact is still rattling around in my brain, looking for a compartment where that fact seems to fit. Clutch hits? It does not fit any known pattern from recent memory.
   
• The A’s won two completely different kinds of ballgames on consecutive days; one a 1-0 pitcher’s duel, and the other a 7-6 slugfest. And for the second consecutive day, the game ended on a bad play by the Angels. This time Juan Rivera, the tying run, got doubled off second base on a soft line drive, just a horrendous baserunning mistake.

  What to make of this? Should I be optimistic, because the A’s played good, mistake-free baseball? Or should I be pessimistic, because the A’s played quite well, and still couldn’t beat the Angels without the Angels beating themselves? 

I still have no idea what kind of team we have with these 2005 Oakland Athletics. Now, it’s on to Texas and then Seattle. I have a feeling that this week will be quite revealing, and we’re about to learn a lot about the true nature of the 2005 AL West race.

AL East
The Yankees are sitting in last.
Steinbrenner cries, “I’m aghast!
I have a bill
For 200 mill!
Gimme my victories, fast!”

AL Central
The quickest teams out of the box:
The Twinkies, along with the Sox.
The Royals appear
To bring up the rear.
There’s nothing to mention that shocks.

AL West
No failure, and no big success.
It’s tied, so we cannot assess
Or give any spin.
Who’s gonna win?
It still remains anyone’s guess.

NL East
It’s mentally hard to compete
When nobody fills up a seat,
And you live on a plane.
The Nats won’t complain:
Having a home now is sweet.

NL Central
The only thing anyone should
Declare to be now understood
In a definite way
After two weeks of play
Is the Pirates won’t be any good.

NL West
Without having Gagne to close,
L.A. is still crushing its foes.
If DePo were me,
I’d be dancing with glee,
And be sticking my thumb on my nose.

Moneyball schmoneyball. The A’s have two game-winning bunts in less than two years!

OK, so Scutaro’s game-winning bunt today was an error, not a hit like Ramon Hernandez’s, but who’da thunk?

The real hero today was Rich Harden, who battled Jarrod Washburn pitch for pitch. Just like last night, both pitchers were on top of their game. Compare the two lines:

Pitcher   IP   H  R ER BB SO
Washburn  8.0  4  0  0  2  7
Harden    8.0  4  0  0  2  8

The A’s offense continues to be anemic, but the last two games, I suspect the problem has been good pitching by the Angels rather than bad hitting by the A’s.

Tomorrow, we should see a few more runs on the board, with Kirk Saarloos vs. John Lackey. If Lackey throws a complete game four-hitter, I’ll definitely go back to blaming the A’s offense.

I was at the game tonight, and I really enjoyed it. These are the types of games that I love to watch, and don’t really mind losing so much. Both pitchers were great. Colon was throwing heat with good control. The A’s had some pretty good at bats against him (except Durazo, who looks lost up there right now), but every hard hit ball was right at somebody.

Zito’s changeup tonight had more movement on it than I’ve ever seen. His changeups have always looked pretty straight to me before. Maybe I just had a different angle on it from where I sat tonight, but the changeup I saw tonight had a wicked tail on it, moving down and away from right-handed batters. Darn near looked like a screwball.

Zito also threw his curveball for a strike on (I believe) the second pitch of the game. If he can establish early that he can throw the curve for strikes, so they can’t just sit on a fastball, he’ll usually have a good game. That’s what happened tonight.

Zito’s offspeed stuff was so good tonight that he threw very few fastballs. Except, oddly enough, to Vladimir Guerrero. In one at-bat in the sixth inning, Zito challenged Vlad with nothing but high heat. Guerrero eyes seemed to light up, he swung out of his shoes, but came up empty each time. I love at-bats like that: I’m gonna give you exactly what you want, and we’ll see if you can hit it. That’s juicy fun.

A game like tonight where both pitchers have their best stuff will usually be decided by some lucky break. The Angels got the break tonight, when Eric Chavez couldn’t come up with a hot smash in the seventh which scored the winning run. With K-Rod waiting, that’s all they really needed, although they added some insurance in the ninth off Juan Cruz, who has not impressed thus far.

The A’s really need Rich Harden to have a good game tomorrow. You don’t want to have to depend on Kirk Saarloos to keep from getting swept, do you? Didn’t think so.

Yesterday, I’m walking to the post office to mail off my taxes when I’m hit with a sudden urge to go find a corner store somewhere and buy some baseball cards. This is quite odd, since I don’t think I’ve had a desire to buy baseball cards for decades. And not only that, corner stores don’t sell baseball cards anymore.

I think it’s the weather. It’s a sunny afternoon, and there’s a slight breeze that changes the air from being slightly too warm to slighly too cool. In Newark, CA, where I grew up, this was the prevailing weather pattern. The sun would warm up the air all morning, but every day at about 2 or 3pm, a breeze would come in and cool everything off to a tolerable temperature.

Alameda, where I live now, has a much cooler and foggier climate, so this kind of weather is less common up here. The sun, the wind, and the temperature combined with being out for a walk must have dug up some deep memory from my childhood and brought it up to the surface.

When I was a kid, when I’d get my allowance, I’d often taken an after-school walk with some friends from my house to the local 7-11 store, and spend my loot. I’d spend it mostly on candy, Slurpees, and baseball cards.

I always bought a Slurpee if they had special plastic cups. I remember one series had superheroes, and there were others with football and baseball players, too. Man, I loved those cups. I had them stacked from floor to ceiling in my closet.

If there wasn’t a special cup, I’d often skip the Slurpee and just buy packs of baseball cards. Collecting was a game; you’d try to get every card with your favorite player on it (mine was Reggie), then you try to get every player on your favorite team, and then you try to get the other cards you didn’t have yet. If you got duplicate cards, you’d trade them to your friends for cards you needed.

I remember in 1974, by June I had collected every A’s player except one: Blue Moon Odom. My friend Kevin had the only one I’d seen, and man, I eyed that card with envy. But I could never find another one. Finally, as the season was almost over, Kevin got another Blue Moon Odom card, and traded him to me. At last, Blue Moon, you are mine!

Back to the future: Blue Moon is missing again. I got rid of all those Slurpee cups, and most of my cards, when I moved to Sweden when I was 13. I suppose I could just go online now and buy the entire set in a box. But that just seems like cheating to me. You gotta chew the chewing gum and slurp the Slurpees, or it doesn’t count.

On my way home from the post office, I walk past the apartment building which once housed the likes of me and Dontrelle Willis. The building has new paint job. I don’t think it had been painted since I moved out in 1989. The strike zone which had been drawn onto the wall by Dontrelle and his buddies is now gone.

I keep walking. A block away now, at Willie Stargell Field, another generation of young baseball players are taking batting practice. The pinging sound of aluminum bats floats up into the air, lands gently in my ear, and becomes a memory. I am home.

I shall tell a story. You will read it.

You’re at a party, music blaring, people dancing, and suddenly, across the room, you spot the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen in your life.

She’s the one. You know it. So you work up your courage, walk up to her, and blurt out:

“Will we dance?”

I was saddened yesterday morning to open up the San Francisco Chronicle and find an obituary for my favorite professor at UC Berkeley, Julian Boyd.

Professor Boyd was, among other things, the world’s leading expert on the difference between the words “shall” and “will”. You may think that this is an incredibly mundane topic to be an expert on, but nothing about language or philosophy was mundane when Julian Boyd explained it. Profane, maybe, but never mundane.

When you went to a Julian Boyd lecture, you never had any idea what was going to happen. The lecture would always start off in one place, and then go off on all kinds of seemingly stream-of-consciousness tangents, every one of them incredibly fascinating and funny and entertaining at the same time. Try to imagine Robin Williams as a linguistics professor, and that’s kind of what we’re talking about.

Other lecturers are entertaining, but the thing that separated Professor Boyd was that he genuinely cared and paid attention to his students. I remember one time, he was in the middle of a lecture, and he suddenly stopped, and turned to my girlfriend (now my wife), and asked, “Is something wrong?”

She was confused. “No. Why do you ask?”

Professor Boyd said, “Usually, when I’m lecturing, you nod in agreement when I make a point. You didn’t nod. I find it rather comforting when you nod, and when you don’t, I worry I might be doing something wrong.”

That just blew me away that he would not only notice such a small behavioral quirk of someone in the classroom, but also notice, in the middle of a lecture, that she wasn’t doing it. That just shows how much he genuinely paid attention to his students, and why he was so universally beloved:

“…Julian’s students unanimously adored him. Their write-ups had an unabating religious fervor. Nearly all of them said the same thing: that taking a course from Julian was a life-changing event and the apex of their Berkeley experience.”

Steven Rubio has a wonderful tribute that does a great job of capturing the spirit of Julian Boyd. I love this description of his colorful language:

As perhaps befits a linguist, Julian had a way with words. And some of his favorite words were curse words. And so his lectures were the academic equivalent of an episode of Deadwood, and once in awhile he’d apologize and say he was going to do better in the future, but even his apologies usually contained a “fuck” or two. I was never sure if he just couldn’t help himself, like a savant with Tourette’s, or if he thoughtfully, consciously placed every word he spoke exactly where and when he wanted, like a good linguist. In any event, the result was marvelous. And, since his lectures were so famously dense, the fucks and shits also served to keep his audience alert …

For all of those wonderful things about Professor Boyd, I haven’t yet mentioned the most important thing of all: Julian Boyd had a genuine joy of language: a love, a wonder, a curiosity and a sense of fun about words that was positively infectious.

It infected me, and happily, I’ve never been cured. That, for me, is his legacy. This blog, and all the things that have happened to me because of it, would never have happened if not for Julian Boyd.

So thanks, Professor Boyd, and may could might should you rest in peace.

And your new Heavyweight Champions of baseball: the Oakland Athletics!

The A’s hit diddly squat off of David Bush for seven innings, but delivered a knockout punch to reliever Jason Frasor, scoring four times in the eighth inning with a few clutch hits (at last!), and taking the champions belt away from the Toronto Blue Jays, 6-3.

We are the greatest! We’re pretty! We’re a baaaad team!

I’d stay and chat more about some of the good performances, like Joe Blanton’s, but I’m gonna go eat instead. I suddenly have a craving for a grilled hamburger…

The pitching wasn’t bad. Haren threw a fat fastball to Eric Hinske, and that one mistake (3-run HR) was enough to lose the game.

The problem was, once again, the offense. Let’s have some fun with small samples:

The A’s offense per game in their:
Three wins: 9.3 hits, 5.0 walks, 2.0 HR, 6.7 runs.
Five losses: 7.6 hits, 2.2 walks, 0.6 HR, 1.8 runs.

Looks like the A’s have been extremely dependent on walks and homers to score so far. That’s a problem if (a) the pitcher isn’t walking anybody, and (b) you don’t have a lineup with power.

Tonight the A’s had Charles Thomas, Mark Ellis, and Marco Scutaro in the lineup. None of those guys are likely to hit the ball out of the park. The lineup would have a lot more pop with Eric Byrnes, Keith Ginter, and Bobby “get well soon” Crosby in there instead.

I have to add that I really dislike the lineup where Chavez, Durazo and Hatteberg are the 3-4-5 hitters. It’s too easy for the opposing team to bring in a lefty in the late innings work through the heart of the order. It happened tonight with Scott Schoenweis in the 8th inning. It’s almost like taking the most leveraged situation in every game, and handing it to the opponent.

I’d rather see a L-R-L-R lineup, something like this:
Kotsay
Byrnes
Chavez
Kendall
Durazo
Crosby
Hatteberg
Swisher
Ginter/Ellis

I’m not going to Opening Night tonight, so I thought I’d do some instant impressions as I watch on TV.

5:58pm Nice to turn on the TV after spending the afternoon fiddling with QuickBooks. I hate doing accounting, so I always procrastinate until April 15 looms.

Flipped the remote to the Braves-Nationals broadcast. It’s my first look at the Nats aside from brief highlights. I dig the scripty W on the cap, but it doesn’t match the blocky text on the shirt at all.

6:05 Dinner time. Kids ask a question, and I can’t come up with an answer: If the outside of bread is called the crust, what’s the inside of the bread called?

6:30 Pregame show starts. Glen Kuiper interviews Shooty Babbitt, a D’backs scout. Shooty says he expects the young A’s to make some mistakes, correct them as they go along, and play spoiler in the end.

6:50 Player introductions. I don’t know why, but I find the pregame ceremonies before Opening Day and the playoffs to be torturous. Can’t stand ’em. I’m doing dishes instead.

6:55 My four-year-old daughter says the Canadian anthem “is so beautiful, it sounds bad.”

7:07 Saarloos starts off throwing strikes. Catalanotto fouls some off, but then strikes out on a check swing.

7:12 Mark Ellis can’t handle a rocket hit at him by Koskie. The two hits this inning are more than Saarloos gave up in 6 innings in Baltimore. Then Saarloos hits Hillenbrand in the elbow. Bases loaded.

7:16 Saarloos is nibbling, falls behind Hinske 3-1, who then singles to left. 2-0 Toronto.

7:19 Swisher makes a nice sliding catch to get the A’s out of the inning.

7:23 This is my first look at Gustavo Chacin. He’s wearing some funky-looking glasses, and has a weird stutter-step in his windup.

7:26 Jason Kendall gets a single in his first Coliseum at-bat. But he’s left stranded.

7:32 Blue Jays not fooled at all by Saarloos so far. Three straight hits to lead off the second. They’re hitting fastballs, breaking stuff, anything and everything he’s throwing up there. 4-0 Toronto.

7:36 Sac fly by Wells. 5-0 Toronto.

7:51 A’s get two runners on in the second, but Swisher hits into a double play.

8:09 Lewis Wolff is up in the booth. He has a very bland delivery, but at times he shows a flash of dry, subtle wit.

8:14 Shea Hillenbrand hits a hanging slider for a double. Juan Cruz coming in to replace Saarloos. 6-0 Toronto.

8:18 Cruz throws a wild pitch, but Kendall gets it quickly and throws out the runner at the plate.

8:22 Chacin is impressive. He throws strikes, hits the corners.

8:29 Eric Hinske hit an outside pitch for a single to left in the first, now he pulls an inside pitch to right for another hit on a tough pitch. How come he didn’t hit this way last year when I had him on my fantasy team?

8:31 Cruz walks two guys after Hinske’s hit. This game is one hit from being over.

8:34 Cruz didn’t get over to cover first, and everyone is safe on an infield “hit”. 7-0 Toronto.

8:36 Terrible throw by Byrnes on a sac fly. 8-0 Toronto.

8:47 I’m bored, so I start surfing. Siliconhouse Rock?

8:59 Toronto scores two in the top of the sixth. Byrnes homers leading off the bottom. 10-1 Toronto.

9:06 Ellis drives in a run. 10-2 Toronto after six.

9:29 Huston Street is blowing hitters away. Two scoreless innings, strikes out the side in the eighth.

9:53 Game over. Final score: Toronto 10, Oakland 3.

The A’s of the last five years didn’t have a heck of a lot of those types of games, where they didn’t really even have a chance to win. This is the second such game in three days. I suppose there will be more of these to come, with such a young starting staff. Good days and bad days. But too many, and the A’s will have trouble competing this year.

…But from this day every day will be Boxing Day
It’s a fight to the finish
Let there be no doubt
As the seconds turn into minutes
I can count you out
   –Elvis Costello, TKO (Boxing Day)

If you haven’t noticed, I have a fun little thing on my sidebar called “MLB Heavyweight Champion”. I’m keeping track of the baseball championship as if it were boxing: if you defeat the champion, you become the champion.

I’ll also keep track of their records in title bouts, and the team that wins the most title bouts at the end of the year shall be deemed the Heavyweight of the Year.

Tonight, the A’s get their first crack at the title, as they take on the current MLB Heavyweight Champs, the Toronto Blue Jays. (The champs this year so far: Red Sox, Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays.)

Seeing the A’s go into their first home series with Saarloos, Haren and Blanton as the scheduled starters doesn’t fill me with the warm fuzzies about their immediate title chances. That’s probably just a matter of unfamiliarity, however. I certainly wouldn’t count them out.

Joe Sheehan said in a premium Baseball Prospectus article today that in trading Hudson and Mulder, the A’s “traded perceived value for actual value, and in doing so, made their team better in the short term and in the long term.”

I think he’s probably right, but I’ll put it another way. The A’s traded Warm Fuzzies in exchange for Hope.

With the exception of Barry Zito, the pitching thus far has been fabulous. The non-Zito starters have yielded just 4 runs in 22 1/3 IP. And while so many other bullpens around major league baseball seem to have imploded during the first week of play, the A’s pen has allowed just one run in 20 1/3 IP.

With results like that, Harden and Haren and Saarloos and Blanton certainly give me hope. The bullpen gives me hope. But hope is an instant emotion; if you’re looking for it, it takes only seconds to minutes to find it.

Mulder and Hudson were Warm Fuzzies. No rookie can provide it. It requires turning weeks of results like these into months, and months into years.

Warm Fuzzies linger, far beyond the source of the warmth. You don’t mind cleaning up on December 26th, because December 25th was so much fun. You can milk it for a week or two, but eventually, you have to return to the realities of daily life.

I still get warm fuzzies from my Barry Zito package, but the hope I get from him is fading with each bad result. Hudson and Mulder provided a lot of joy in Oakland, but it couldn’t last forever, either. You have to let the old fuzzies go, and start making new ones.

The calendar turns. Tonight, a new year, a new era, begins in Oakland.