I finally have decided to join one of these two sites (unless someone knows a better on)e, and was wondering what everyone's thoughts were on certain sites?

It seems pretty hard to distinguish between the two without being able to at least preview subscriber-only articles. What I do know is Baseball America is $60 a year, where as Baseball Prospectus is $40 a year, and am curious as to what makes BA worth the extra $20?

First game, October 5th in Nashville. Nashville are very good and this is gonna be a tough first few weeks (9 of the first 11 games on the road). Last I checked, we still had not lost in the preseason which means nothing, but alas does not hurt. I went to the last game vs. Anaheim--always good to see Anaheim lose no matter what the contest.

A few thoughts: So far Michalek is looking really good and should replace Korky nicely. Ehrhoff has played very well and I hope he eventually wins the job as the 4th defensman. Finally, was anyone else sad to see Friesan not traded back to the Sharks? His greatest asset is his skating which would fit perfectly with the Sharks' style. IMO he'd have been the ideal LW on the 2nd line, bumping Ekman to the 3rd line where he is a more natural fit.

Go Sharks!

This is generally why pitchers have a very low shot at ever winning MVP; they (starters) only have an effect on 30 or so games. Given, they do have a ginormous effect on the games in which they appear, especially the good ones (Harden).

This leads me to my point; how many starts would Harden have left this season 5 maybe 6. If we assume it's five, that means there are only five games in which he will really be missed. Assuming those five games are the difference and we lost all five, that would put us three games behind the Angels and four behind the Yankees/Tribe. Not good. But do we expect to lose each of those games, hell no! While Kennedy is no Harden, he's shown to be mediocre enough to keep us in games which is all we can really ask.

Now I know Harden effects more than just the game he appears in, as he often goes deep into games thus resting the pen. This however, is September. I don't think you can have the attitude, "Well we don't want to be too tired for October." No, this is the time when we must sack up. I'd like to think the guys on this team are professionals who, though they might be tired, just keep trucking and overcome the fatigue of having to compensate for missing a pitcher with a mid-two ERA.

With that said, come October I give the A's 0% chance of success with Harden not picthing. But am I optimisitc we can overcome this in the five games he would have pitched? Fuck yeah.

I hope someone has not already posted this:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=kurkjian_tim&id=2146715

Just another article declaring how great the atmosphere is in the A's club house. I did really enjoy however, when he mentioned how the team conducted their fantasy football draft yesterday.

That got me to thinking, if you had to pick one person to win the A's fantasy football league, who would it be? I'll go with Swisher.

I realize this has a very high % of getting deleted but with hockey season almost only a month away I thought I'd ask if any ANers were also Sharks fans (or just hockey fans in general)?

If there are in fact other Shark fans, what do you think of the Sharks moves or lack there of? I like the idea of saving money to go after younger guys down the road and keeping the corps in tact, but at the same time they seem to be too passive.

For instance today two things happened: 1) Alexander Korolyuk basically become a free agent 2) The Calgary Flames traded Toni Lydman to the Buffalo Sabres for a 3rd round draft choice.

While I was never the biggest Korolyuk fan (way too inconsistant with goals), he had the speed and toughness to play on the penalty kill and seemed to come up big in big games--see the 2004 playoffs.

Now the next move, Lydman to Buffalo has nothing to do with San Jose or does it? Earlier this summer the Sharks elected to let Mike Rathje go-definitly the right move (older, slow footed defensman will struggle in the new NHL despite what that genius Bobby Clarke says :-/). However, in doing so they created an opening in their top 4 defensman. Now unless Ehrhoff or Preising can fill the void (perhaps they can), the Sharks have done nothing to fill that hole. Lydman moves the puck very well and skates very well something the Sharks seem to value in their defensman. In addition, Buffalo gave only a 3rd round pick. SJ easily could have acquired him had they wanted to, but again stood pat. I understand building from within the organization, shit I'm an A's fan, but the lack of any moves to bolster this term is rather puzzling.

We'll see how the team with the quietest--nota bene: quiet does not mean bad--offseason in the NHL does.

Sharks Off-season rating: B-. Locking up Sturm, Stuart, and Marleau were clearly great moves. Not wasting money on stars past their prime aka Paul Kariya, great move. Failure to obtain a cheap 15-20 goal scorer or 2nd line center, not good. Failure to obtain a fleet footed defensman (Lydman) who would be the ideal 4th defensman, not good.

Go Sharks 05-06.

According to the stats provided by this fine website, the A's have only scored 4 less runs than the Garden Grove Losers of Southern California.

Now in the greater scheme of things this stat means little. However, when the corpulent mouth of John Kruk or the A'S-hating mouth of Reynolds constantly praise the Angels as one of the better offensive teams while at the same time denouncing the A's O, this stat serves as some form of vindication.

I write this diary because I'm curious who A's fans would pick if we could trade for one player who is currently on "the block."

First let me preface this by asking if anyone really thinks there is a dominant team in the AL this year? I don't see it. Maybe the Red Sox or Angels if they got another arm, but still both those teams are nothing special.

This is just me, but it would be awesome to see a deal that could bring AJ Burnett and possibly Castillo (also on the block). If this new ownership really cares about winning this deal makes sense. A new big 3 of Harden, Zito, and Burnett to go along with Haren and Blanton. Castillo would be the 2nd baseman with a high average the A's have been missing.

Look, this isnt likely because even if the A's acquired Burnett, ownership would need to expand the payroll to have any shot at re-signing him. However, this is a year where the team who makes the right move could easily vault themselves into the playoffs and I just hope the A's are that team.

Yeah this probably does not deserve a journal entry but I'll post it anyways.

After returning from camping I see on the AL West Standings that the A's have now scored 358 Runs while giving up 354. To me this really is a telling stat that the future looks nice for the 2nd half of the season. Obviously if a team scores more runs than it allows good things will happen.

While the playoffs are still somewhat of a long shot, as long as the the Runs Scored > Runs Allowed, the 2nd half of the season should be interesting to say the least.

Anyone get a chance to listen to this interview last night? It was on around 11:30 on KNBR (thank god no giants midnight replay btw).

Anyways, I'm sure he probably said more or less the same things he told Blez but it was pretty interesting. He seemed pretty adamant on saying that the believes with the emergence of Haren and Blanton improving, that a rotation of Zito, Harden, Haren would be good enough to get the A's back into contention.

He kept harping on the point that the A's are going to be buyers and sellers this deadline. The only thing not mentioned was the whole Kotsay situation, but that already has been pretty well documented.

Once this double-play-stirke out-machine brings himself back from the DL will he actually re-gain a spot in the lineup? DJ is too hot right now, plus hes providing solid defense. Though I'm not the biggest Hatteberg fan, he'll give you many more solid ABs than Durrazo.

As for his trade value, he probably can only go to an AL team and I seriously doubt even the Yanks are interested at this point. IMO a Cano for Durrazo swap would be okay with me.