No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, nor have I canceled my lifetime A’s fan membership. I’ve just moved my blog to a new domain name - I’m now blogging at AthleticsForLife.net.

Come check it out and change your bookmarks (or add bookmarks! :)) if you feel so inclined. Thanks for your support and I look forward to talking some green and gold baseball with you!

I went to the Dodgers/Brewers game in Milwaukee last night. When we got there, I checked the out of town scoreboard and the A’s were trailing the Indians 1-0 in the 2nd inning.

I didn’t expect that would be anything close to the final score, but as I saw by the 6th inning of the game I was attending, it pretty much was.

Kurt Suzuki is hitting .167 in may. So maybe as Kurt goes, so the A’s go (lost four of their last five and shut out three times)?

The A’s are the #1 team in all of baseball - better than even the Arizona Diamondbacks - according to ESPN.com’s Power Rankings.

When was the last time that happened?

Funny how quickly things can change - the last time I posted here the A’s were in the midst of losing four out of their last five games and they hadn’t scored more than two runs in a game in that time. I was feeling like the bottom feeder A’s that everyone expected was rearing its ugly head after such a great start.

And then, here came the Royals. Of course, these aren’t the hapless Royals of recent years, as the team from K.C. had a winning record of 9-8 going into the series with the A’s, so they weren’t a pushover team.

But the A’s pushed them over in three games, outscoring them 26-8 in the series. In the middle of that was an intriguing development, that the Oakland Athletics lead all of Major League Baseball in hitting with runners in scoring position (.321 as of today).

This is not an April Fool’s joke - let me say it again, louder:

THE A’S LEAD ALL OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL BASEBALL IN BATTING AVERAGE WITH RUNNERS IN SCORING POSITION!!!

Hell has frozen over, pigs are flying, and Bobby Crosby is a good hitter, folks. I never thought I’d see this day in a million years.

So keep it going, A’s. This is shaping up to be a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

I can’t believe it’s Wednesday already. I missed both Chicago games, as MLB.tv was on the fritz Monday night, and yesterday was a day game. I was hoping for a little WGN magic but no such luck.

So the White Sox series has come and gone and the A’s scored only three runs over two games but still came out with a series split, thanks to another great outing by rookie Greg Smith. Dana Eveland didn’t fare as well in yesterday’s game, but that’s going to come after these guys pitch a few games and teams get a look at them. I’m still very pleased with the fact that not one, but two of the guys from the Haren trade have already made a positive impact on the team.

(For the record, Haren has done better his most recent two starts than in his first one, as he now has an ERA of 2.50 and a tidy WHIP of 1.00 with 16 strikeouts.)

Tonight the A’s get their first look at an AL West opponent as we get Joe Blanton vs. Felix Hernandez in the first of two with the Mariners. King Felix has been his usual self (1-0, 1.66 ERA with 16 K’s) so Joe will need to be on his game.

Go A’s!!

The A’s are. That is, if you look at numbers, and numbers alone:

The A’s won again last night while I wasn’t looking. I think Philip Michaels has it right with the Look Away strategy.

Go A’s!!!

The 2008 ESPN predictions are in, and no one picks the A’s to get a playoff spot.

There’s no A mentioned as a possible Cy Young or MVP either, but Daric Barton gets love from two ESPN experts - Pedro Gomez and John Shea - for predicted AL Rookie of the Year. Evan Longoria gets the most mentions for ROY, and Sox/Yankees Clay Buchholz, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Joba Chamberlain get the remaining mentions. Joba was only picked by Jerry Cransick though.

The A’s are in Tokyo today. Or really, tomorrow, because it’s Friday where they are. But they’re there, and we’re less than five days away from Opening Day. How friggin’ exciting is that?!

And there are actually A’s fans in Japan, as evidenced by this guy:

Of course, he could just be some guy that bought an A’s jersey for the sole purpose of getting autographs. But I’m an optimist, so this guy is an A’s fan in Japan! Wooooo!

And I love this quote from Joe Blanton:

“Put me on the front page,” said Joe Blanton, the Opening Day starter for the A’s, when his photo was taken by Japanese photographers.

Atta boy, Joe. We are the home team after all…

The A’s and Red Sox are supposed to board planes for Japan late today, but apparently the Red Sox are threatening to boycott over the lack of bonuses for the team’s coaches.

I haven’t seen any word from the A’s on this yet and it appears all systems go for the green and gold as the roster has been finalized for the trip. Will they back out with this revelation? Will we be 0-for-2 on A’s opening in Japan this decade? Stay tuned…

UPDATE: In this ESPN.com video, Claire Smith says the A’s are going through with the boycott threat as well. It’s kind of hard to tell in this Boston-focused story and video, but she says it about the 1:23 countdown mark.

UPDATE: So I got home from work to the news that I was expecting - everything is resolved and the teams will make the trip.

Apparently the coaches will receive $20,000 from MLB (the players get $40,000), and anything extra will be the responsibility of the respective clubs.

The A’s plane leaves in one hour. Go A’s!!

I’ve definitely had a case of writer’s block the last few weeks. Even though the A’s are playing actual baseball games, I can’t seem to find that inspiration to come up with all kinds of things to write about the team. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that this is the first spring training in a long time that I didn’t feel the A’s had a chance to make the playoffs.

No, scratch that - teams always have a chance. Well, the ‘08 Giants don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, but at least 90% - OK, 80% - of the time, teams have a chance. It’s not a completely ridiculous notion that the 2008 A’s can contend.

So what needs to happen for the A’s to be good? Aside from saying things like “Everyone needs to play better” and “Everyone needs to get healthy,” here are some reasonable suggestions I have for the ‘08 green and gold:

1. Rich Harden needs to avoid major injury - I’m not going to say he needs to avoid injury altogether, because that’d be like saying Bobby Crosby needs to stop swinging at sliders away. It’s going to happen, but if we can avoid it happening on a large scale and get Rich to the hill at least 20 times this year, that’ll be a good start.

2. Eric Chavez needs to skip the trip to Japan. I know he really wants to go and he’s working hard to get there, but come on, Eric - if you push yourself to do it, you’re going to miss a lot more time this season than if you skip it. He needs to stay in Phoenix and not put his back in jeopardy on the long, intercontinental flights. Jack Hannahan can handle third base just fine for two games. (I checked this after I already had it written and, lo and behold, he’s staying home. Good boy, Eric!)

3. A rookie pitcher needs to make a splash. Whether it’s Gio Gonzalez, Henry Rodriguez, Fernando Hernandez, or someone else, we need someone to step up be surprising in on the mound. Someone is going to regress so we need to offset that with a nice suprise.

4. Mike Sweeney needs to be this year’s Jack Cust. So far he’s off to a good spring and if he can keep that going and be a legitimate, middle of the order threat like he was in the early zeroes, it will help balance out the lineup quite a bit.

5. A consistent outfield must emerge. Last year the A’s used something like 154 different players in the outfield. OK, so it wasn’t that many, but it was a lot. But they really need to have three guys who can consistently go out there each day and not give Bob Geren a reason to think they need to be platooned. Travis Buck? Check. Jack Cust (with Mike Sweeney at DH)? Check, despite sacrificing some defense. Let’s get one more guy in there who will have his name written down in the lineup every day.

6. Billy Beane needs to keep Huston Street and Joe Blanton. With the winter fire sale, it seemed these two were the next to go. But if the A’s are actually going to contend this year, they’ll need to keep these two guys - Blanton as the anchor at the top of the rotation and Street as the anchor at the back of the ‘pen. Without those two, you’ve got the fragile Rich Harden and Alan Embree at those anchor spots. That sure sounds like less of a winning formula.

We’ll see how many of those six things that A’s can manage and if it’ll result in an exciting summer. The start of the season is sooner than we realize, as our team will be piling aboard a plane in only three days to go to Japan.

Go A’s!!