Only one more week till the Trade Deadline! We still have our trade bait ready to go. So lets star the rumors and discussion and, if we get around to it, the actual trades, flowing! Same as the other thread was designed to do; keep the rumors and speculation in one place instead of flooding the board with em.

A's stock of players on the Block:
 
RHP Huston Street

 
RHP Justin Duchscherer

 
LHP Alan Embree

 
2B Mark Ellis

 
SS Bobby Crosby

 Commence Trade Rumors.

Here's the story.  I thought it might be worthy of a fanpost since Nady's name has been included in discussions regarding possible A's trades. I don't know if this trade decreases the odds that the Pirates will deal Jason Bay - if it were Billy Beane it wouldn't, as Beane has twice traded two key players within a week of one another. Someone more familiar with the Yankees' prospects can analyze who got the better end of this apparent deal.

http://baseball.pressdemocrat.com/default.asp?item=2241257&mode=

Eric Chavez rejoined the A's today and said he's not sure if he'll be able to play again this season.

"I basically have a week or two to see whether I'm going to play again this year or not," Chavez said.

Chavez has been out with a sore right shoulder since early July. He was in San Diego doing rehab for three weeks, and he rejoined the A's to resume some light baseball activity today, with the idea of finding out just what he can do.

Chavez said right now it's possible he'd miss the rest of the season, possible he'd undergo surgery, and possible this injury could linger into 2009.

"I'm just dealing with a really bad shoulder," Chavez said. "There are a lot of things that are going on."

Look for more in Saturday's Press Democrat.

In other A's injury news, Frank Thomas ran for the first time since he was placed on the disabled list. Thomas said he felt some discomfort, which is to be expected, and he'll have a better idea of his status by Sunday.

Joey Devine threw a simulated game. He is scheduled to make his first minor league rehab start on Monday.

With the A's picking up all these new players and with maybe more to come I was wondering what will happen at rule 5 time. Are the A's going to lose two or three prospects that they just traded for?

It is my understanding that players drafted out of College get 4 years before they must be protected and High School players get 5 year.  This might bring up an interesting point when thinking of which players will be called up in September. We might not see a Cahill, Anderson, Simmons or Doolittle this year, because that would save them from the 40 man list.

I believe Pennington, Recker, Cunningham, Gio, Patterson and Outman might need to be added to the 40 man by this November. Not sure if I am doing the math right.

There does seem to be a few guys that would easily come off the 40 man to make room (Foulke, Brown, DiNardo, Gray, Thomas).

I was just wondering if anyone had done the numbers and figured out who must be added and who is likely lost.  If a Street is traded for three players, are they all keepers. And for that matter is next years list going to be worse?

This may not be a big deal, but I bet Beane looks at these dates.

Thanks

Here is my review, which I was forced to write in light of all the love it’s getting. Spoilers, blah, blah, blah.

First the good:
Yeah, Ledger is really good, and the 15-20% of the movie that he’s in is also really good. The pencil scene, which has been noted here, is awesome. The downside of that however, is that it was good because it was a funny joke by the Joker, and I would have appreciated many more such gags, but he was actually rather "serious" much of the time, and the pursuit of mayhem ought to have been more mirthful. Still really good, though.

I enjoyed the first hour quite a bit. The opening scene was great, as was the Hong Kong action scene, and, as mentioned, all the scenes with the Joker. It was well directed and scored, and I thought it struck a nice tone.

I always respect it when major characters get killed off, so good for them on that score. I would have respected it even more if the people on the boats had blown each other up. If you want to make a dark movie, make it really dark… As an aside, another Ledger movie, <em>The Patriot</em>, though a terrible movie, wins my all-time respect award on that score. The movie spent 20 minutes on a rather tedious love story between Ledger and some woman, only to have the evil Brits crowd her and the rest of the town into a church which they then burned down. Awesome.

On to the (lots o’) bad:
The glowing reviews really pissed me off. It has been showered with a "purple rain" of glowing prose such as (all pulled off www.metacritic.com):

An ambitious, full-bodied crime epic of gratifying scope and moral complexity, this is seriously brainy pop entertainment

A bit of Hamlet is in this Batman

Mr. Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter, solid family man though he may (or may not) be, should be immediately sacked, as Dalesman would phrase it. I even get his point, but still….

The Dark Knight will give your adrenal glands their desired workout, but it will occupy your mind, too, and even lead it down some dim alleyways where most Hollywood movies fear to tread

Nolan turns the Manichean morality of comic books--pure good vs. pure evil--into a bleak post-9/11 allegory about how terror (and, make no mistake, Heath Ledger's Joker is a terrorist) breaks down those reassuring moral categories.

Pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment, it goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book kind.

It's proof that popcorn entertainments don't have to talk down to their audiences in order to satisfy them

Gah! This movie is not "brainy" or "smart" or "morally complex" or that of that stuff! It made me dUmbEr and I actually felt a tad manipulated and even insulted by what was supposedly passing for braininess. I thought the plot and "themes" were really pretty silly, and to the extent that it stimulated your brain, you really should read better books. Or something. Here goes my laundry list of whines.

-Generally speaking, this movie had a bunch of the same (tiresome by this point) themes that every damn superhero movie has, but since it was darker, people feel the need to take it more seriously. E.g., Batman questioning whether he should give up being a superhero. Maybe he’s doing more harm than good!  This happens in every superhero franchise. I didn’t find it particularly compelling the first time I encountered it, and it’s not any more interesting in this movie. I kept expecting Morgan Freeman to say "with great power comes great responsibility"….

-The DA guy’s character change: makes. no. fucking. sense. So some of those cops were corrupt… Why does he want to kill Gary Oldman’s family? Gary Oldman didn’t do anything to him. So… the Joker turned him evil by killing his gf and showing him "the folly of planning."… This does not impress me. If this plot element was supposed to be "brainy" or "morally complex" than apparently I lack a brain and also lack moral curiosity.

 -The coin-tossing conceit in No Country for Old Men was awesome and rather chilling, whereas in the film, it was just rather lame and, frankly, confusing. Many films try to invoke fate or chance in the hopes of achieving some gravitas, but these attempts almost always wind up just being dumb.

-People are fundamentally good, even hardened criminals (and we know that big black dudes are the hardenedest criminals of all…)! The Joker was wrong! Wooooooooooo people! Would people really react that way if faced with that boat situation? I don’t know, but I suspect not, since it only takes one. I do know that I can’t muster up the energy to care about that particular absurd situation. The only way I would have liked that scene is if the movie had taken seriously the idea that maybe they should blow up the other boat. I might have liked that.

The ending really was awful. We were supposed to feel somber or sad or heart-swellingly proud or some such thing when Batman has to go into hiding and they destroy the bat signal. But it’s hard to feel that when it doesn’t make any fucking sense! Why should the people of Gotham hate Batman? He seems like a great guy to me. Fights crime. Why celebrate the DA guy? Why were supposed to even like him in the first place? We were I guess supposed to accept the notion that he was the somehow better successor to Batman as the savior of the city who people could believe in or whatever, but there were no reasons given for that. It is just confusing!

-It invoked some contemporary debates about terrorism and surveillance, but didn’t  really do much more than invoke them, and I would personally rather than films not invoke such things at all, as they (especially action movies) are quite poor vehicles for any insight into such matters. I challenge any of you: What did the movie say about such issues that was interesting in the slightest? One can probably draw absurd lessons right (such as in today’s WSJ…) or left, but in either case it is just people projecting their opinions onto the film.

-Batman’s voice: what the fuck was up with that? It was terrible!

I miss Adam West.

Have at me, if you managed to get through all that…..

Having recently succeeded in getting Firefox to work with AN, I am now able to post again -- thanks to the SBN tech people for their great help. 

Is there any interest in a permanent "tickets for sale" area on the site?  I frequently have a ticket for sale, and I'd much rather it go to an ANer than a stubhub or craigslist reader. I've mentioned this to Blez and he's looking into the feasibility.

In fact, my ticket for the 7/29 and 8/13 games is available.  It's in 117,  row 17 (5th row, right near some MLB scouts), pretty much dead center behind the plate.  It's one seat, and it can be purchased with or without VIP parking.  I'm asking face value:  $40 or $50 with parking. 

I go to pretty much every game, but I'm willing to part with my ticket if there's a particular game you want to attend in one of the best seats in the park, so feel free to email me at REMOVETHISskigurl@sonic.net.

(edited to change an incorrect date)

Susan Slusser has a recap on all the prospects acquired in the six deals we've made since the end of last season.

And Slusser's Notebook brings up some interesting things.

The team signed three 16-year-old prospects in Venezuela after the July 1 international deadline: outfielder Jose Sayegh, right-hander Elihoref Suniaga and left-hander Junior Gonzalez.

And for Rootbeer Float Day;

Wednesday is Mug Root Beer Float Day at the Coliseum, featuring $2 floats served by celebrity scoopers, including players Rajai Davis, Lenny DiNardo, Dana Eveland, Carlos Gonzalez, Huston Street and Ryan Sweeney. In addition, mugs with unlimited refills will be $15 and a limited supply of mugs autographed by Ellis will be $25. Over the past five years the event has raised more than $215,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

And there is also an interview with A's top prospect Trevor Cahill up at Project Prospect.

Dump Away.

It’s the dawn of a New Era in Oakland. 

Specifically, it’s the dawn of a very, very sucky era.  Hopes for the future notwithstanding, the remainder of the 2008 season does not look to be a particularly enjoyable experience for anyone with an Athletics affinity and an unfortunate lack of masochistic tendencies.

But never fear!  Every cloud has a silver lining!  Behind every cloud there lurks a rainbow! . . .  While I can’t think of any more, there are almost certainly several additional cloud-based metaphors out there that would make us feel better about rooting for a AAA team somehow snuck into Major League contention!

Specifically, I have eight silver linings/rainbows/unmemorable cloud-related literary tropes to illustrate why the last few months of the 2008 season will be, if not successful, at least kinda fun:

1) The entry of Alan Embree into the game is now less of a punch in the gut and more of a post-modern conceptual art piece – The Reliever Who Wasn’t.  Heck, I’m rooting for All Embree, All the Time, just to see what kind of damage he can do without the burden of expectations.  Give up consecutive homeruns to every member of the opposing team’s lineup?  Bring down a passing airplane with a wild pitch? Rip off his mask to reveal that he was secretly Arthur Rhodes the entire time?  Anything can happen.

2) This new era means rooting for Huston Street on a whole different level.  I cheer for his every strikeout, not because it signifies one more out en route to an Oakland win, but rather as one step closer to some poor team taking him off our hands via trade.  I cheer every save as another meaningless stat padding Huston’s resume for any passing GM with a hole in his bullpen and too many power-hitting corner infielders clogging up his farm system.  I encourage all of us to do the same.  A prize to the first A’s fan to bring a sign to opposing stadiums proclaiming “STREET!  THE PERFECT FIT FOR A CONTENDING TEAM!” or “STREET!  HE MAY JUST BE YOUR MISSING PUZZLE PIECE!” or “IS HUSTON STREET WORTH ONE OR TWO OF YOUR MORE VALUABLE PROSPECTS?  BELIEVE ME, HE IS!!!”  An extra prize for anyone who can work one of the prior slogans into a catchy chant.      

3) Conversely, it’s time to root for Duchscherer to go straight into the crapper.

4) I, for one, welcome an era in which we no longer have to keep a constant vigil on the Anaheim score.  It’s exhausting enough keeping track of one game per day – expecting a fan to live and die by every pitch in two games daily is cruel and unusual.  I look forward to the Angels not even passing my mind until the inevitable day that Garret Anderson’s exploding kneecap makes the Sportscenter Top 10. 

5) Jack Cust is the marvel of the age: a man who manages to OPS+ 122 while striking out 5 to 7 times a game.  Some say that’s impossible.  Others say it is possible, as evidenced by the fact that it is in fact happening.  Still others say it’s very possible, just made slightly less impressive when considering his actual strikeout numbers and not the ones I just made up.  Whatever the numbers say, he unquestionably proves, once and for all, that Moneyball doesn’t work.    

6) Sometimes Carlos Gonzalez hits homeruns.  It doesn’t happen all that often, but it makes you feel all sunny inside when it does, doesn’t it?

7) It was shaky there for a while, early in the season, but don’t worry: it’s still okay to hate Bobby Crosby.

8 ) A season of mediocrity gives us our first big chance to turn Michael Inoa into The Great Pumpkin: a supernatural, possibly-fictional savior whose velocity and pinpoint control will solve all our problems and make life worth living again.  I foresee at least three or four seasons in which all of us can be Linus sitting in the pumpkin patch on Halloween, telling our respective Sallies about how while He didn’t come last year or the year before, The Great Pumpkin is sure to arrive any minute to pass out toys to all the good little children and lead Oakland into postseason glory.

Am I the only one who thinks that sounds like fun?      

Anyone following the Athletics knows that the A's tend to move in cycles. While Pitching will always be there, the key is what they do on the position side of things.

Early in Beane's tenure, the A's went the route of OPS. They grabbed every player they could to go with their homergown talent that could get on base and hit for power. And they had success. Despite the generally lousy defense, the A's won a lot of games, scored a lot of runs, and had excellent pitching, at least in the #1, #2 and #3 slots.

And then the league caught up. The players that the A's had grabbed before became scarce, and they could no longer find them. So they changed their tune. They started to go Defense. Defense while grabbing the occasional OBP guy, but this time, with out power. And they turned into the best defensive team in the league, but at the same time, the least powerful. The offense, with out that power, died. The lack of power made the OBP unsustainable-after all, if you don't have any power, why not throw in the strike zone if the best you can get is a single? But the A's still held onto the offensive philosophy of batting average not mattering so long as the OBP was high. But with the power gone, and the OBP no longer able to support itself , the batting averages plummeted and dragged the OBP down.

The A's became a team of relatively slow or average runners, with low batting averages, decent on base skills, and no power, resulting in an astounding amount of ground-into-double-plays, and now, unable to make any contact, Strikeouts. The team has lived on its pitching and its defense to help prop up that pitching.

But that philosophy is changing, and it is evident in the type of players the A's have been acquiring, perhaps starting with the 2005 draft that saw the A's draft Cliff Pennington and Travis Buck, and with Mark Mulder trade acquiring Daric Barton. Or, perhaps, the A's were still deluding themselves, at least with Buck and Barton, that 'Power will come naturally, just like Jason Giambi', and not realizing that the unnatural power for Giambi would no longer arrive from now on.

The A's started to gather, for lack of a better term, lead off hitters. High Average, High On Base players with excellent speed, and the hope of future power. They acquired Daric Barton (.301/.414/.458 career minor league line), Travis Buck (.318/.395/.486) and Cliff Pennington (.368/.453/.561 with 29 SB in College).

Fast Forward to the A's recent acquisitions, and I think we can continue to see the pattern the A's are going for.

Ryan Sweeney is batting .307 with 8/9 Stolen Bases.
Carlos Gonzalez came to the A's with a minor league career .287 batting average and pretty good speed.
Aaron Cunningham came with another .300+ average and a good amount of stolen bases.

And just in the last few trades and the draft, the A's have gone after Eric Patterson (.329 average in AAA, 15/15 SB), Jamile Weeks, another high average, high obp base stealer out of the draft, and Ardian Cardenas, .301/.364/.429, 12/12 in SB, and Rashun Dixon, who rharden40 has told us, has blazing speed, so fast that he finds it hard to hit Doubles, and instead settles for 7 triples to 1 double.

That is what I think the A's are targeting right now. Versatile players who can play multiple positions with on base skills and speed to compensate for the lack of power. With Chris Carter and Sean Doolittle coming up at 1B and DH, unless the Carter return to 3B experiment succeeds (which I hope does) providing the power, I think we can expect the future A's to be somewhat similar to the team we have now, but with a lot higher average. A team full of Ryan Sweeney's, if you will. Which makes you wonder if the A's did indeed insist on Sweeney more than we thought at the time, instead of just being the throw in for the deal.

So why is this important to know right now? Well, with the Trading Deadline a week away, and the A's five remaining trading chips all generating some degree of interest (Duchscherer, Street, Crosby, Ellis, Embree), I think keeping in mind the type of player the A's seem to be going after is important.

Top Pitching prospects, as always, and a new kind of hitter.

It still remains to be seen if a lineup full of this type of hitter will succeed for a Major League lineup. Because personally, the lack of power still disturbs me.

Stuff I've always wondered about:

1] Why don't the SS and the 2B swop positions for Left hand hitters?

2] Why aren't there switch pitchers?

3] Why do baseball players wear gloves? A cricket ball is much heavier than a Baseball and Cricket fielders don't wear gloves, they also make catches with either or both hands?

4] Why are there short stops, all the other positions make sense and have meaningful and descriptive names, Short stop seems to be the odd one out?

5] Why is it called a home run?

6] Why Rookie?

7] Who calls an Infield fly, when and why?

I'm sure there are more, but thats all I can think of at tne moment.