When I think about the baseball diamond that is the Oakland A's 2008 season to date, I reflect upon many facets. They are not all bright, and they are flawed, but among them some still shine. There is, for example, AN's own Brad Ziegler and his record-making start in the majors, along with the confidence I feel whenever he now takes the mound. There was, once, a three-game sweep of the loathsome Red Sox. On a sultry night in September I listened as the boys scored four runs without ever once putting the ball in play, as if demonstrating there and then, at last, that this was the plan all along. There was Gallagher's bizarre no-hit effort the other night, and even the meaningless fact that we just won a series against a vastly more talented, and vastly more expensive, team. And there was even last night's starting line-up, which not even Nostradamus at his best could have forseen last spring.

This 2008 season has been like every other season, unique, and precious, and I'll miss it sorely when it has gone.

Oh, and fuck the Angels.

Dump away.

For me, anyway. Maybe for the team a rare day off will be just what the doctor ordered, but for me, it sucks. What am I supposed to do, rent a movie?

Baseball Prospectus is free this week. If you're as cheap as I am, you might want to take advantage. Otherwise, you'd have to pay to read what Christina Kahrl has to say about our latest moppet, Brooks Conrad:

It's hard to say that makes him a backup shortstop, but having just sent down Gregorio Petit and electing to cut Murphy loose for not being the next Mark Ellis-style minor bit of pilferage from the Royals, they're definitely in Weaver territory as far as having their backup shortstop at a Triple-A affiliate TBNL.

Of course, one of my BP favorites, The Week in Quotes, is always free:

With Huston, he's got a lot of major league experience and he's only 24 years old, so a guy like Huston would definitely fit into what we're trying to re-create here down the road."
--A's general manager Billy Beane

At least when baseball returns, Ellie will too.

That's about as much baseball as I can muster links for. Here is a random link about a great ape escape:

In the end Ichiro was tempted down with a banana, and zoo staff were able to tranquilize him safely.

I just know there's a joke there, somewhere.

Off Days are long and slow. Please help by contributing links.

Gosh darn it to heck, I hate it when this happens. Still, I suppose it could have been worse:

Tuesday, Harden said he had a dead-arm kind of feeling, which he has had in the past and which is normal for pitchers around midseason

So, go Dana! Saunders ain't gonna make it easy for you.

In other news, our lovable moppets were apparently on hand for the inspiration of WALL-E's look:

The idea actually came while the director was at an Oakland A's playoff game, almost five years ago, when the home team was competing against the Boston Red Sox.

(h/t Catfish Stew)

And because the grouch will mention it, but is, I suppose, too humble to link to it, our own salb's piece over at THT: Good team, bad team, glad team, sad team: 

That must frustrate Oakland fans looking up at the Halos in the standings. The A's are the inverse of the Angels: a slightly above-average team playing extremely well but with only a slightly above-average number of wins to show for it.

Dump away!

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! HOOOOOO!

As you may or may not already know, recently AN's most beloved member, Jennifer, posted her 20,000 comment. In honor of her monumental achievement, I'd like to share with you a few of my favorite Jennifer things.

[Note by monkeyball, 03/07/08 9:25 AM PST ]
I think we need to move this party onto the front page. Jennifer has been a really important contributor to shaping AN from its inception.
ArakSOT, not so much. But sometimes history touches down at unlikely locations. ;)

 [Note by Nico: Who's Jennifer?]

Continue reading this post »

Plenty More

They may walk hand in hand
Like lovers through the market square
Selecting leather goods,
Pretending that they just don't care
They say all the boys are monsters
All the girls are whores
So when you lose the one you love
There's always plenty more

Continue reading this post »

This article by Matthew is interesting. Very sobering. You should read it.

Uh oh: Runaway rats.

"You go to Rat Island and there are hardly any chocolate lilies," said Jeff Williams, another refuge biologist.

Continue reading this post »

I have here in my hand...
It's all over the blogosphere, so you've probably already seen it, but the Mitchell report allegedly contains the names of 11 free agents. Or not.

Warming up the hot stove
John Heyman at SI.com speculates on what the top FAs should expect to command.

There are several ways to assess the lack of depth and talent of the free-agent class, but perhaps Indians general manager Mark Shapiro said it best: "My reaction to the free-agent market is, I'm glad we're not in it.''

Continue reading this post »

From Baseball Prospectus

According to Will Carroll, Torre, Mattingly and hitting coach Kevin Long to the Dodgers is a done deal. Oddly, he says this happened Monday, although no one else is reporting it.

Grady Little was fired mostly for not being Joe Torre.

Yeah, but did Grady get more than a three-minute phone call?

Nate Silver checks in with "A-Rod Survivor". Oakland is #26 down the list in the "Gravel/Tancredo Memorial No-Shot-In-Bloody-Hell Division."

I'm sure that Billy Beane has entertained the thought, but Eric Chavez blocks him, ownership won't pay for him, and there's no long-term gameplan associated with him.

Continue reading this post »

It's icky now, but it looks like the show will go on:

Saturday...Mostly cloudy through early afternoon...then becoming partly sunny. A chance of showers in the morning. Highs in the lower 70s. West winds 10 to 15 mph. Gusts up to 25 mph in the late morning and afternoon. Chance of rain 40 percent.

Cleveland, Game Six is your best chance. I don't want to see this go seven games, so GO CLEVELAND! GO CARMONA!

Continue reading this post »

It was two years ago today when I posted my first DLD. Today is a miserably wet, cold rainy day as it was then. Today, like then, offers nothing to give me the A's fix I so desperately crave. There is still little worth linking to. And today, like then, I'm putting little thought or effort into this. Some things never change.

In lieu of gifts, I'll accept deposits into my PayPal account.

Continue reading this post »

Ostensibly, this diary is about the new jerseys the Sharks have adopted this season. I was ambiguous about them at first, but have since decided that, at least, the main logo, or "primary crest" if you will, is a definite upgrade. A review of the changes can be seen here.

Continue reading this post »

Making a DLD when the A's aren't playing any games, that's what. A's-related links are hard to come by. I did find this piece by Carl Steward on Eric Chavez, Rich Harden and Bobby Crosby:

Chances are, though, the A's will be forced into staying the risky course with all three players. Their health issues would make them difficult to move if the club were so inclined, but their contracts would make it doubly tough. In the final analysis, it's just something they'd rather not do considering how much they have invested in these three men.

And I checked up on the team MVP voting on the A's Official Site, and am pleased to report that with 5413 votes in, Ellis maintains a comfortable lead with 2126 votes, representing 39% of the votes.

Go Ellie! I'm really reaching, here.

Continue reading this post »

So I'm watching the game at the local pub. Swish misses the ball and the bartender calls out "This guy is an Oakland fan!" making me an instant laughingstock for all the #@&!* Sox fans.

Good times. Good times. Accordingly, if it's all the same to you, I'm just going to avoid baseball links.

Continue reading this post »

There's just no quit in these kids, I'll tell you what.

The boys are learning their clichés; Chad in the Slusser piece linked above:

"That shows we don't give up," Gaudin said. "It would be real easy to just roll over and die and we didn't do that."

And Ellis, whose bases-clearing triple was the highlight of the game, in Urban's wrap:

"We could have rolled over and died," said Oakland second baseman Mark Ellis. "You never like to lose, but at least we showed some life."

So no rolling over and dying for this club. Just losing. In the succinct words of LL's Jeff,

If you'd have told me back in March that George Sherrill would be getting the save in our 80th win by striking out Donnie Murphy, Daric Barton, and Jack Cust, I would've said "wow that's really specific."

Continue reading this post »

What a difference a season makes, huh? "It's really important not to finish last," Oakland closer Huston Street said

Our goal is to finish as high as we can.

Which has been pretty much my goal all season long.

Continue reading this post »

Are the mosquitoes still screaming, Clarice?
I suppose it may be a little creepy for arachnaphobes, but since the only insects I can't abide are those that suck blood, well, then I'm all for it.

"Now it's filled with so many mosquitoes that it's turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs."

Continue reading this post »

Forgotten men Marco Scutaro and Dan Johnson chose to let their play act as reminders Sunday.

"I can't control those kinds of things," he said. "They're the ones who make those decisions, and I just come ready to play."

Johnson, on the other hand, said nothing:

He chose not to address his playing time any further.

sfgate.com is still doing that weird italic thing.

Continue reading this post »

So, enough, already. All the lovely RAFs got together under the bright Bay Area sunshine, had a delightful time, enjoyed a victory, and rode Unicorns off into the sunset. We get it. Can we move on? There are racist conspiracies to discuss, after all.

Continue reading this post »

One of the funny things about DLDs is that they don't even have to be very good to be successful. Remember this one? No actual links; nearly 200 comments. And, to be honest, yesterdays DLD was really substandard; nonetheless, it's nearly reached a staggering 400 comments.

Making DLDs this poor hardly takes any time or effort. So, come on, AN.

People just want a place to post comments.

Continue reading this post »

Goodbye, July. Don't let it hit you on the way out.

Continue reading this post »

Personally, I'm not a big All Star fan. It's just a bunch of days without baseball, as far as I'm concerned. On the plus side, it is a break for the boys, so perhaps they'll come out tonight (at Minnesota, 5:10 PT) with renewed vim and vigor. It'll be Go-Go v. Scott Baker.

None of the A's have faced Baker often, but catcher Jason Kendall is 1-for-3 with a double and two RBIs.

So I'm sure we'll be fine.

Continue reading this post »

It's an historic day in Oakland!

In other news, Milton continues on his one-man quest to be involved in more transcations than the entire Rivercats team. This makes me laugh softly.

Continue reading this post »

No really, this one is pretty good, I promise. In a recent interesting digression on AN, a disagreement arose regarding the use of "ribbie" to indicate an RBI.

Monkeyball, on the one hand, asserts that ribbie is a pronunciation of the acronym RBI. I, on the other hand, believe it to be a word in and of itself that means RBI.

Continue reading this post »

Some DLDs are prettier than most. Some DLDs are extremely well-written. And then there are those DLDs - this, a case in point - whose sole redeemable virtue is their very existence; they're better than no DLD at all. And I'm down with that.

Continue reading this post »

then I better not hear anything bad about me, ever again.

Schadenfreude division: it sucks to be a Giants fan. Over at sister SBN site McCovey Chronicles, they turn on Cammy Blackstone. I was listening to Ken and Vince, so I missed out on this particular annoyance.

Continue reading this post »

There are no rules to pronouncing acronyms, so there's bound to be some variation. Nonetheless, I'll bet there are some acronyms we all pronounce the same way. For example, I bet we all read AN as "ay-en" and not as "anne".

Continue reading this post »

It's sad but true. Here, it's a miserably wet, cold rainy Columbus day, everyone else in the world seems to have the day off, and there is nothing to give me the A's fix I so desperately crave.

Continue reading this post »

for all good A's fans to come together. First game vs. the loathed Sox is tomorrow evening, which, because I live in a technological dark age, will actually mark the first time I'll be able to watch our guys.

Continue reading this post »