Yes, It's Too Late

Over at Baseball Musings, Pinto asks if the A's are Improving Too Late?

In a word: Yes

One of my favorite pages on the "internets" is the playoff odds report from Baseball Prospectus, which (sadly) shows the A's have a 0.732% chance of making the postseason as of 8/22/07. While I would LOVE to see the A's somehow pull it off, it's just not going to happen.

Great Baseball Tale

Brad Ziegler, a minor leaguer in the Oakland A's farm system, has been blogging over on AthleticsNation all season. In his most recent post, he pointed to a post from another minor leaguer: BaseballAmerica.com: Minors: Non-Prospect Diary: Dirk Hayhurst. It's a well-written post about how trivial baseball is and at the same time, how it can mean so much. Definitely worth the read.

I still can't explain why people treat us so special for putting on a baseball uniform. But in those few moments together, it didn't really matter--in those few moments, baseball made perfect sense.

Bronx Zoo

My sister (who's currently blogging her trip through China and Southeast Asia) went to the Bronx Zoo a few years ago when she was in Teach for America training. She had a great time and recommended I make the journey (to the Bronx, not to China). Well, this weekend, I finally trekked up to 180th street in the Bronx to see the zoo. It was quite the time. The Congo Gorilla Forest was the highlight, with baby gorillas wrestling each other and looking just too darn cute.

I neglected to bring my camera, so we'll have to settle for someone else's pictures on Flickr. Here, then, is a slide show of pictures with the tags "Bronx Zoo Gorilla". Enjoy!

Kendall to the Cubbies

From Gregg:

A’s Fan #1: Guess what? We traded Jason Kendall.
A’s Fan #2: Great trade. Who’d we get?

I enjoyed some aspects of the Jason Kendall era: tagging out Michael Young at homeplate to end the game and scoring the winning run from third when K-Rod dropped a throw from the catcher. And to be fair, the pitching staff seemed to do well with him behind the plate.

Kendall's cERA with Oakland (2005-07): 3.81
Total ERA for Oakland (2005-07): 3.90

But, I can't say I enjoyed the 482 AB/HR or the .658 OPS. In fact, Kendall's OPS so far this year is .538, worst amongst all MLB batters that qualify for the batting title (3.1 plate appearances per team game). It didn't help that the A's were paying him $11mm/yr. Anyway, I don't think this trade means the A's are throwing in the towel. I'm still holding out hope...

Things are Looking Grim for the A's

Well, the A's have lost nine straight games and fallen 12 games behind the AL West leading Angels and 11.5 games behind the wild card leading Indians. Oddly, I haven't given up hope. I somehow still believe the A's can put together a run at the playoffs. If Rich Harden, Huston Street and Mike Piazza can get healthy and return to form, I think the A's still have an outside shot at making things interesting.

But things do indeed look bad. Here's a look at 10-game rolling averages for the A's runs scored for and runs scored against:



Basically, you want the blue line to be above the pink line, and that really hasn't been the case since mid-June. Since beating the Cardinals 14-3 on June 15, the A's have averaged 3.8 runs per game, while allowing an average of 5.75 runs. With a run differential like that, you'd expect a team to win only 30% of its games, and sure enough, the A's have gone 7-21, playing .250 baseball. Things aren't looking pretty, and we're quickly approaching the point where we're forced to "Wait Till Next Year."

Curt Schilling - Not Quite Perfect

Loud groans from the Red Sox fans in the office this afternoon as Shannon Stewart spoiled Curt Schilling's no-hit bid. It's nice to make them miserable even when we let them win the occasional game.

Too bad Blanton didn't get any offensive support. His 7.1 innings of 4-hit ball weren't too shabby.

I got a kick out of the Games Notes from Yahoo!'s box score:

BOSTON PITCHER CURT SCHILLING HAS A NO-HITTER THROUGH SIX INNINGS.

BOSTON PITCHER CURT SCHILLING HAS A NO-HITTER THROUGH SEVEN INNINGS.

BOSTON PITCHER CURT SCHILLING HAS A NO-HITTER THROUGH EIGHT INNINGS.

BOSTON PITCHER CURT SCHILLING HAS A NO-HITTER THROUGH 8 1/3 INNINGS.

BOSTON PITCHER CURT SCHILLING HAS A NO-HITTER THROUGH 8 2/3 INNINGS.

THE SINGLE BY OAKLAND'S SHANNON STEWART WITH TWO OUTS IN THE NINTH INNING ENDED CURT SCHILLING'S NO-HITTER.

TheLadders in the New York Times

Well, the New York Times is publishing an article about the high end job search Monday morning:Listing Top Jobs but Charging Candidates to Seek Them - New York Times

It's extremely gratifying to see TheLadders getting some recognition from the Times for our new approach to the job search.