IT'S PROBABLY BECAUSE OF SOMETHING YOU DID

This just in; The Keebler Elf thinks he can move the team to Fremont. The Wayan brothers are going to try and build a film studio in Oakland. How can the A's not find space? Probably because Lewis Wolff wants to own the land, the stadium the rights to every ant on the ground and he wants the City, County and MLB to pay for it.



Tonight's exhibition between the Flyin' RiverCats and the Fightin' A's might be more than a bit of a downer and might not be played at all. It's been raining fairly steadily. Weird California-style rain. It rains for 60-75 minutes. The sun comes out. It gets misty. The wind kicks up and it starts to rain again.

Tomorrow night's forecast calls for wind, 70% chance of rain and temperatures in the mid 40's. Hell, you can get that in Oakland for less than the price of RaleyCatField tickets.

I can't attend. I have class and just happen to have an exam for that class. Blue Book and Scantrons. You'd never thought I already have three college degrees and working on a 4th and 5th and still have to have a number 2 pencil handy.

Still, it's better than nothing. I prefer taking a few classes every semester, keeping the Student Loan folks at bay and making huge chunk payments when it suits my budget, and earning a degree in the process.

If you take at least six credits you are considered a part-time student and can get a deferment. It's a hell of a lot easier than having to make payments every months and scraping to get by. Then an emergency kicks in and you have no capital to work with.

Credit card you say? Ditched those with the last century. They are a nuisance and further the debating of the United States. Think about your monthly minimum payment on your credit card, if you have one. Do you know how that number is factored? Roughly, if you continue to make that same payment amount each month, without using the card for anything else, it would take 240 months (20 years) to pay off the balance of the account. Interest is great, if you are reaping the harvest as opposed to burning the crops.

Some of the big surprises starting Sunday include a new home page for Elephants in Oakland. Also, in April I'll be working on another pet project: STUDENT LOAN SHARKS. Essentially tips, tricks and ways to manage money and pay off your student loans without losing all of your dignity in the process.

BACK TO BASEBALL

BASEBALL PROSPECTUS has their staff predictions out. Highly informative list of possibilities and probabilities. Rich Harden and Dan Haren are listed as possible Cy Young candidates. Bobby Crosby on a few MVP ballots. As well as Harden.

In today's UNDER the KNIFE, Will Carroll mentions this in passing:

"The A's are hinting that Bobby Kielty won't start the year on the DL, despite missing significant time with a recurrent oblique strain."


- Will Carroll, Baseball Prospectus

Also over at The JUICE Will touched on a similar subject I mentioned yesterday and extrapolated it for debate. The media is in a shifting mode and sportswriters are, for the most part, sniveling little meaningless hacks who can't incorporate change for fear of not straddling that line of effort and integrity.



ESPN.com has their MLB Preview, a little late in the Spring, but they are kicking into high gear.

Here's the basic preview for the A's, fraught with errors:

Mark Ellis	2B	Some pull power and line-drive gap power.
Mark Kotsay	CF	Aggressive with controlled swing. Can hit to all fields.
Milton Bradley *	RF	Ball jumps from his bat. Chases out of the zone.
Eric Chavez	3B	Makes instant adjustments. Uses the whole field.
Frank Thomas *	DH	Chases breaking balls down and off the edge.
Dan Johnson	1B	Excellent eye. Patient yet aggressive.
Bobby Crosby	SS	Good high fastball hitter with pull/gap power. Disciplined.
Nick Swisher or Jay Payton	LF	Swisher: Quicker bat and better swing from the right side. Payton: Needs to improve strike zone knowledge.
Jason Kendall	C	Chokes up on the bat. Tough to strike out.

Eric Chavez put 26% percent of balls hit into play last season to the left side. That's not necessarily 'hitting to all fields'. Looking at the strike zone, Chavez can't turn on inside pitches and consistently goes out of the strike zone to chase pitches.

Bobby Crosby, disciplined? Still strikes out twice as much as he walks. 200 K's to 94 walks and chases pitches high and outside. Tries to pull pitches on the outer half.

Swisher is a basket case. Higher OBP from the right side, but lower batting average. Pathetic slugging percentage and OBP from the right side; .697. Only 3 career homeruns from the right side.

Payton chases pitches like dogs chase cars. Considering that, he doesn't strike out much. But that's like saying a serial killer who has only killed three people isn't that violent compared to other serial killers.

Kendall. Tough for him to get on base, too. 47% of balls Kendall hit into play in 2005 didn't leave the infield.

So what, jerk, what is the prognosis for the A's? Depends on with whom you speak. Most have the A's winning the AL West and those who don't have the A's taking the Wild Card. The playoffs are still a crapshoot, but even the nature of odds has the A's finally winning a playoff series. Some time soon.

The real issue for the A's is the status of Larry Davis and if he has any voodoo or more magic fairy dust to ward off and heal injuries. Sure, injuries are a part of all sports, staying healthy is a skill and having depth is a key to staying competitive into September. But. The A's up front rely on a lot of hampered players; Chavez, Crosby, Kotsay and Kendall is overdue for a leg to come off - despite any Black Knight impressions. This is a curiosity as many people point to how 'young' the A's are and use that as an excuse. Nope.

SEASON	AVERAGE AGE
2005	28.6 years
2004	29.6 years
2003	28.1 years
2002	28.4 years
2001	27.1 years
2000	27.1 years
1999	28.7 years
1998	28.8 years
1997	28.1 years
1996	28.2 years
1995	29.6 years

For some reason ESPN.com put Buster Olney on the A's preview story. Read if you like as I post ESPN Insider for all to peruse.

"Once upon a time, the A's ran the ultimate baseball frat house. Jason Giambi set the tone, and those Oakland teams were big and hairy and powerful. They clubbed homers, partied into legend and assaulted eardrums with their clubhouse music. Every September, they showed up fashionably late and banged on the door of the pennant race.

But every October, the baseball gods cruelly revealed their weaknesses -- pulled down their pants, in a sense, and exposed their shortcomings for everybody to see. Misplaced outfielders misplayed fly balls (sorry, Terrence Long), slow runners got tagged out (apologies, Jeremy Giambi), second-line pitchers got pounded (excuse us, Fill in the Blank). The A's have had nine chances this decade to clinch a playoff series, and every time, they've lost.

Eventually, GM Billy Beane had to break up the frat brothers because of budget limitations. But a funny thing happened: Now reconstituted, the A's are defensively superb -- perhaps better than any other team. Their rotation is excellent, with Barry Zito and Rich Harden in front of Dan Haren and Joe Blanton, who combined to go 25-12 after May 29. Their position players, almost without exception, run well. Their 22-year-old closer, Huston Street, thrives on pressure. The baseball gods might not have the A's to kick around anymore.

As the poster boy for the New School of Baseball Philosophy, Beane still maintains that there's a statistical randomness to the outcome of postseason play. "I've got the numbers to prove it," he says. But undoubtedly, the 2006 A's are deeper, more diverse, possessing more of the elements that the Old-School Thinkers believe are necessary to win in the playoffs: a deep bullpen, enough speed to make the offense multidimensional against good pitching, and a bunch of guys who catch the ball.

These A's are simply better. "A lot better," says veteran Eric Chavez. "When you talk about a team being suited to winning a championship, you go back and look at the White Sox, the Angels, the Yankees. They were all fundamentally sound, and that's the way we are now."

Beane freely admits to a shift in emphasis, if not philosophy. Even before "Moneyball" came out in 2003, teams increasingly had invested in on-base percentage; Giambi got $120 million from the Yankees after the 2001 season in large part because they thought he'd improve their OBP. As the pool of affordable on-base masters dried up, Beane started looking for other undervalued skills, forever seeking cheap but good stock.

"Our team, by and large, is always going to be what the marketplace is allowing us to pay for," he says.

So it was that in fall 2003, Beane found that Padres center fielder Mark Kotsay's defense was staggeringly good and that Kotsay was relatively affordable. Trading for him was the start of a new trend. While everyone else was obsessing over OBP, Beane was already on to D.

The GM snapped up Jay Payton from the Red Sox last summer, and in December, he swapped a minor-leaguer to the Dodgers for the volatile Milton Bradley. Now the A's effectively have three center fielders covering the outfield, along with Gold Glove candidates at third base (Chavez), shortstop (Bobby Crosby) and second base (Mark Ellis). It naturally followed that as the Athletics hoarded first-rate glove men, their team speed increased dramatically. These guys still won't steal a lot of bases -- Beane reasons, why risk the outs? -- but they can go first to third and first to home.

And now, when they've got the lead in the late innings, they ought to be able to keep it.

For Beane, the value of closers has long been a point of debate because of the dollars-to-outs ratio: He's more inclined to pay someone who can account for 600 outs a year rather than 225. But over the past few seasons, watching the Angels' dominant bullpen, with Scot Shields and Francisco Rodriguez blowing away hitters with fastballs and sliders, the statistical geek within Beane became attracted to their particular type of efficiency -- not to mention economy. Signing Billy Wagner is an option for the Mets but not for the A's. Oakland had four of the first 40 picks in the 2004 draft, and Beane's scouts kept telling him that they loved the closer at the U. of Texas, a kid named Huston Street. Beane was skeptical. He asked the scouts, "Would you bet your 401(k) on this guy?" The answer always came back: Yes.

Still, he waited through the first round. Supplemental picks began coming off the board in the Oakland war room, and scouting director Eric Kubota made the case for Street again. "If there's ever a sure thing to make the majors," he said, "this is the guy." Beane nodded. For pick No. 40, Kubota called Street's name into the phone.


"When you talk about a team being suited to winning a championship, you go back and look at the White Sox, the Angels, the Yankees. They were all fundamentally sound, and that's the way we are now. "

- Eric Chavez



On May 20, the day manager Ken Macha decided to make Street the closer, pitching coach Curt Young stopped by the kid's locker and said, "Be prepared to throw the ninth."

"Okay," Street said, then returned to his routine. As the A's have learned, it never changes. He begins stretching in the fifth, then a trainer rubs heat balm into his arm. Street makes his way to the bullpen for the start of the seventh, and when Oakland has a lead, he starts throwing in the eighth, a 25-pitch regimen: three fastballs to one side of the plate, three to the other side, then sliders and changeups. When he gets the call, he warms up with two pitches from the apron of the mound, "to calm the nerves." Then three fastballs, two sliders, one changeup and boom, he's ready.

The A's, however, were not. Going into their May 30 game against Tampa Bay, they were 17-32 and mired in an eight-game losing streak. Although Crosby was coming off the DL, there wasn't much hope for a turnaround. But Street pitched 1 2/3 shutout innings to get the win, and over the next two months, the A's went 58-24.

Street converted his last 18 chances. After each save, he takes a blue marker and writes on the game ball: date, opponent, final score, save number. He had 23 last year, and he plans on keeping this job for a long time -- long enough to fill up several shelves, and long enough to make real money. This season, he will earn $339,625, $12,625 over the minimum and $10,160,375 less than Wagner. That's moneyball.

The A's nearly made it back to the playoffs last year. They surged past the Angels into first place in the AL West after being as much as 12 1/2 out. They were the first team in AL history to climb from 15 games below .500 to at least 15 games above .500 in the same season, and they thought the rush would carry into October. "As hot as we got, you're not used to having that much momentum," says Chavez.

But no team could overcome the injuries that dogged them in the end. Crosby, the second-year shortstop with the powerful bat, came up limping after a collision with Orioles catcher Sal Fasano on Aug. 27. Crosby missed three games before going for an MRI, and went into the trainer's room in Anaheim looking for the results. "What do you guys got?" he asked.

Broken left ankle, he was told.

"You've gotta be kidding me," he replied, slumping into a chair. At the same time, Harden was struggling with a muscle strain, and Kotsay's back gave out. The A's went 11-17 in September; the Angels won the West. Six months later, Crosby is sitting on a table in Arizona, ankle good as new, thinking about what might have been. "I knew we had one of the best teams in the league," he says.

They did. They do. They just have to prove it.

* Do you think the A's have what it takes? E-mail Buster Olney at post@espnmag.com."