On BBT, they showed Vlad sliding headfirst into home- then staying down injured.  They stated he left the game with a injured shoulder- possibly seperated, but this link just says jammed:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2065126

He was out at the plate, to add insult to injury.  Apparently he will have X-rays- it's hard to say at this point how long he'll be out, but if it's a while, this could be a break the A's could use to get back into things.  Guerrero isn't the whole Orange County Angels, but losing the reigning MVP won't be any picnic for them.  Assuming the A's offense continues to come around, a good run is a definite possibility.

This page at Hardball Times shows some pretty interesting things about the A's in relation to the rest of the league for the month of April.

...Well, it's probably not that surprising, but interesting nonetheless.  There are a couple things that stand out about the offense.  

For one, the Isolated Power is just absymal.  It's about as close to the bottom of the graph as you can get.  OBP, though not spectacular, isn't too bad, which basically quantifies what everyone's been saying- we get guys on base, but are unable to hit anything well enough to drive in runs.  

Also, a thing that seemed to stand out is that while we went 13-13, the team was projected for just 11 wins based on their RS-RA.  What that says for the future, I don't really know.

One last point- We have the highest line-drive percentage in the AL, ("Line Drive Percentage. Baseball Info Solutions tracks the trajectory of each batted ball and categorizes it as a groundball, fly ball or line drive. LD% is the percent of batted balls that are line drives. Line drives are not necessarily the hardest hit balls, but they do fall for a hit around 75% of the time.") which means of all the AL teams, we hit the most line drives per contact.  What is interesting is that our batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is the lowest in the AL.  So, even though the A's should have at least a small advantage from the line drives, nothing is really falling for a hit.  Could be evidence of the whole bad luck thing.  

...Or it could be meaningless.

Enjoy.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/teams/alwest/

This is a pretty interesting article from John Donovan of SI, via Yahoo! Sports, in which he discusses the aftermath of the breakup, from Mulder and Hudson's (and to a lesser extent Zito's) perspective.  Nothing too extraordinarily groundbreaking, but interesting nonetheless.  

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=cnnsi-thatwasthen&prov=cnnsi&type=lgns

Some interesting things to look for:

A Hudson-esque opinion from Mulder about the obvious frustrations of having key players leave every season.

Some comments about how the Big Three played off each other and how that made them better.

Here is the original story off SI.com - it has one depressing picture, and one kinda weird picture of Zito:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/john_donovan/04/29/bigthree.aftermath/index.html

I apologize if this has somehow already been posted.

Hey everyone,

I recently registered, though I've been lurking around for some time.  I first found the site sometime at the end of August last year, I think from a string of sites starting at THT.  

I've from the Bay Area, but am currently up in college in Oregon.  The nearest teams are the Kaiser Volcanoes (A - summer season) and the Portland Beavers(AAA), and it seems everyone roots for the Mariners.  Games against Seattle are both fun, and horrific since the A's finally get on TV, but I have to watch with a hostile crowd.  It was quite a relief, then, to find a place where I could take refuge, if only online.  It quickly became a daily stop, and my most reliable resource for game info, A's info, and baseball info.  

I just finished plowing through Aces, which seemed like as good excuse as any to do the whole introduction thing.  It's an awesome book, and made me much more appreciative of the fact we still have a guy like Zito on the team (who I apparently share a birthday with).  More than anything, though, it made me pretty sad that a group that close to each other and us had to be broken up.  Though the future seems more bright than dim, 2004 definitely signaled the end of a era.

Anyway, I can't say I'll be posting too much, but I'll be here.