Granted, he struck out a lot in his first few games, but he managed two walks tonight, he can steal, he's showing some patience, and when he hits them, they stay hit.

We threw Street in as closer early on - should we do the same with Buck in the #1 spot?

of looking at the Yankees! That's 24 innings of Jeter and Cano :(
Can we please make it a short game (and a win!) tomorrow?
Time for a new team... let's beat the Angels!

must mean something different than it did the last time I looked it up.

We might need to include oaktoon and all derivatives there of into the ANcillary Terms. A refference like monkeyball's might confuse the newer members.

Yes, oaktoon's spirit lives on. But only because Blez was too cheap to perform a proper exorcism!

but Bobby Crosby seems like a JinX! It really bothers me to see him bauble balls. He is out there for his defense. What happened to his sure glove?

I wouldn't jump off the boat and look for a life raft just yet.

Yes, the A's went 12 scoreless innings against the Skanks after being up 3-0, but splitting the first two games isn't the end of the world. It's great to see competitive baseball in front of sellout crowds two nights in a row.

I reveled in Damon's O-fer today, and Giambi's struggles until Inning 13 came around. Abreu and Jeter have been quiet on both nights, and the 4 Yankee errors were a kick.

But the A's offense has a major hole in the 7-8-9-1 area. Kendall and Crosby and Stewart stink. That's hard to work around. It's time to fit Crosby for a Rivercat uniform and call up Furmaniak.

Blanton went 110 or so pitches, and was unfortunately tagged for 3 runs, leaving with the game tied, but he battled. The A's relief did well also, until Lenny DiNardo gave up the Giambi BALCO bomb. What can you do?

And the Kid can play. Everybody loves Buck. It's just too bad he pulled a Melhuse and ended the game with the bat on his shoulder. Couldn't play the hero two nights in a row.

Back to it in about 13 hours. Go A's!

Wonderful seats tonight (113/22) but not such a wonderful result.  I hope we don't need 15 innings to get them tomorrow and Richie can saw off the bats in their hands with some Canadian fire.  I'll be in the RF bleachers, come say HI!

Firstly, when I checked yesterday the A's led the AL in team ERA so the A's don't need a Yankee type offense with their pitching.

Secondly they were eighth in batting average.  So if they are middle of the pack in BA why is the offense so anemic?

It's power, the A's rank second to last in slugging percentage and that's a huge problem.  Billy Beane calls power the "great equalizer" and there is a reason for it.  On a VERY good team with a team BA of .300 on average only 1 person will get on base per inning.  Now lets say you only hit singles, the chances of getting 4 singles and knocking in a run is about .0081%, or if you have good situational hitting only only need 3 singles .027%.  Now if the hits are doubles, it would only take 2 hits and have a .09% chance of happening.  A home run would have a 100% chance of scoring a run.

Now the odds I used are a bit oversimplified, but they show my point.  The more power in the hit, the more likely it is you'll score on less hits.  This is why the A's aren't scoring and leaving so many people on base--the A's are hitting for so little power that it's EXTREMELY unlikely they they will get enough hits to get someone home on a regular basis.

Will, this continue?  Probably not.  Two-thirds of the team is slumping and those that aren't are not hitting for power.  Eventually Piazza, Chavez, Bradley, Swisher and hopefully Buck will start hitting for power on a regular basis.  Kendall will end the year hitting near his career average of .300 and Crosby will come around in a few weeks once his "spring training" period is over.  The A's will be fine, but for now the lack of power is hurting them.

typically will put a team who lost the previous night as the winner the next but, time to rant: the bullpen is tired, Stewart looks lost, Crosby needs a defensive mentor, Scutaro has lost his spark, and one more thing our offense sucks because we don't have an offensive spark like Payton or Thomas, there I said it.

jonny gomes, lastings milledge, matt murton, wily mo pena, marcus thames, kevin mench... plenty of slugging outfielders warming benches out there

As you all well know, the A's usually start off poorly. It seems that year in and year out, the A's are supposed to do well, and yet, through at least the first two months of the season, they have a losing record, and just do not seem to have the talent of a ballclub that is going to win its division. This has happened in Oakland basically every year since 2000.

But I feel there is a difference this year. Now, to start things off, I have been a hardcore A's fan since I was 6 years old, in 1988. Every day that year I would wake up and check out the sports page in the Chronicle and the Tribune and see how the A's had done the day before. In some ways I was a bigger fan than my father, who had introduced me to the A's. Growing up in Oakland at that time, it was very easy to become a huge A's fan, as there was no football in town, so the A's were the biggest sports team in the East Bay easily. They got the most coverage. And winning 100 games per year was the icing on the cake: not only were they the most popular team in town, they were one of the top 5 teams in any sport. It was very easy to become an A's fan in the late '80s. However, unlike most people who did become a fan during that period, I STAYED an A's fan after they stopped going to the post-season every year. They sucked in 1993, and yet I saw A's games in Boston and New York in 1994, and I attended the last 5 games of the strike-shortened 1994 season at the Coliseum. In fact I attended 20 or more games at the Coliseum every year from 1996 to 2000, no matter how many games the A's won in those years. I was a fan of the OAKLAND ATHLETICS. I wanted the A's to win more than anything, and thus I was willing to put up with horrible A's teams for years, just because I wanted the A's to win. If they were nowhere near the pennant race, I would scour the League Leader stat categories for Oakland players, just so I would have SOMETHING to root for. If the A's weren't going to win even 75 games in a season, at least I could root for Matt Stairs to hit .315.

Now then, all that said, let's try to grasp my reasoning for sharing all that with you. In my 19 years as a hardcore fan, I have never seen an A's offense as pitiful as this. Now, to be fair to the 2007 A's, I have witnessed two (possible) steroids era's in Oakland, the first with Canseco and (probably) McGwire, and the second with, probably, Giambi (and possibly Tejada, if not others). Obviously, it's not fair to judge one offense who (apparantly) doesn't take performance enhancements angainst another who (apparantly) did take performance enhancements; however, that is why I stated that I have seen 19 years of A's offenses. No matter what anyone on the team was taking at whatever time, it's been at least 20 years since the A's offense has been so lackluster.

Now, you can talk about small sample size all you want. I know it's only been two weeks. I know two weeks over the course of an entire baseball season mean extremely little. The only difference, for myself, is: THIS TEAM REALLY SEEMS LIKE IT HAS NO REAL ABILITY TO SCORE RUNS! With every other A's team, even the ones who got off to really slow starts, at least you could see the ABILITY or the CHANCE that they could put it together within the next month or two. With this team, the only way I could see them really picking it up is via Divine Intervention. They have a few quality players, but in general, this team is not hitting right now because it CAN'T FUCKING HIT. They are weak and can barely hit home runs.

Now I'm not saying I don't trust Billy Beane anymore. I DO trust Billy Beane. But I also have come to understand his transactions over time, as well as his constructions of ballclubs for a given year. What I took from his very light offseason was: we can't afford shit, here is my best attempt to stick my finger in the dike. The new Players' Agreement (or whatever it was) helped the players and not the owners, as is always the case. I really, truly believe Beane did the best he could, but I believe he was dealt a 7-2 offsuit this year, and we will see the consequences over the course of 162 games. The pitching is great but the offense is CRAP,  so we'll be lucky to get more than a few games over .500.

This is my belief, but I hope I am proved wrong. I also think Beane's old well of mid-season mega-help has dried up, thanks to opposing teams' GMs wising up, so I can't really envision an A's team that gets much better than this in 2007. I think the A's will end up at about 84-78 this season.

But good lord what I would give to be proven wrong (in a great way) this season.

Also, I am drunk right now, and am hoping this all makes sense to all who read it.

First, the A's are averaging 3 runs per game.  The Giants are at 2.8.  So at least we're not THAT bad!

Secondly, the A's production from the first spot in the lineup is amazingly bad.  It seems whoever hits there is destined to go hitless.  I mean Oakland A's batting in the lead off spot are hitting .145/.175/.182!!

This offense is not going to play this badly for the entire season,its just not possible.  However, untill some of these guys start coming around, I'm not really sure what the best course of action is.

Of course, next week's not to early to crown the A's a championship threat, either.

trade for Garret Anderson.

is the fact that if you look at the last three series--Angels, White Sox, Yankees--the A's have played a truckload of exciting (if frustrating) games: close, tense, see-saw, weird, memorable. Frustrating? Oh yeah. Dull? No.

FYI.

The A's do this every year, it will be ok.  Remember last year and DJ's record no hit streak??? This isn't that bad!

The games are exciting and close, very entertaining to watch, even if they are also a bit frustrating.  The offense will pick up eventually, no way all of these guys (i.e kendall and stewart especially) don't start approaching their career numbers soon.

Lets win the series today, then rest up for the Angels.