Jason Kendall - 2006 Stats: 143 games, 552 AB, 23 2B, 1 HR, 53 BB, 54 SO, 11 SB, .367 OBP, .342 SLG, .295 AVG The A’s starting catcher is the very definition of ‘light-hitter’; rarely does he get a hit greater than a double, and in his career with the A’s, he’s only managed one homerun, which barely cleared the fence, at that. Despite his obvious lack of power, Kendall is a very consistent......

-Principal at Oakland charter brings the school uniforms. -C.W. Nevius actually has a good story about the Parents of a Girl's High School basketball team getting out of control. ...

In a surprising move today, Oakland A’s brass fired manager Ken Macha with two years remaining on his contract. Many A's fans are scratching their heads this afternoon, wondering when the A's headquarters had become drama central. Despite leading the team to its first ALCS since 1992, Macha’s inability to communicate effectively with players was foremost on the list of complaints levied by key personnel. His time with the A's was always tenuous at best; his on-again, off-again merry go-round with Billy Beane subject to intense annual review, with Macha barely surviving the cut each year. His job would typically come down to key veteran players vouching for him, despite his obvious lack of social skills. This year, no such veteran dared throw him a life jacket. Not Kotsay, not Chavez and definitely not Milton Bradley. ...

Before the series with the Indians started up, Ken Macha was talking about how worried he was about the upcoming series. Didn't like the matchups. We weren't sure whether or not he meant it or whether or not he was pulling a Lou Holtz and trying to keep his team on their toes by playing up a totally inferior opponent. Regardless, the A's took the second game of a three game series as Bobby Kielty hit a grand slam home run in the sixth inning. Kirk Saarloos struck out eleven and added another vowel to his name for the effort. The Angels won but with the A's winning, the magic number is 6. ...

Ken Macha gets zero respect when it comes to managing the Oakland Athletics. It stands to reason that if he were Buck Showalter or Mike Scioscia, accolades would tumble from high heaven about his skills as a miracle worker. No manager in the American League has done more with less this year than Macha-not one! And yet, we utter his name among baseball denizens and they shrug their shoulders and continue imbibing a cold, frosty one. Macha does little to capture the imagination of A's fans in general. To them, he's the silver-haired lump sitting on the far right side of the dugout making the obvious pitching change when necessary. SFist wants to know one thing: Does Ken Macha matter? A's fans get all into a tizzy-fit over resident pretty-boy GM, Billy Beane, but does anyone else wearing the Kelly green and gold deserve any credit? If fans look closely, Beane's numbers-crunching hoo-haw isn't translating into fat numbers on the Stat sheet this year. ...

With the start of the upcoming baseball season less than a week away, SFist's sports desk will try and break the new season down for y'all, round-table, free-form, discussion style. In the next few days, we'll debate the winners, the losers, and all the in-betweens. This discussion could be great, it could be lame, it could be meh. We guess we'll find out ...

We come to exhume Ken Macha--still, no praise. When A's Brand Baseball last appeared here, the A's and manager Ken Macha (right, not a recent photo) had broken off contract negotiations. $2.6 million over 3 years, with a team option for the 4th, was simply unacceptable to Macha, who became a free agent. The A's started conducting interviews for the vacancy, and our tone about the whole thing may have been somewhat cavalier. Imagine......

We've come to bury Ken Macha, not to praise him . . . 2005 was a down year for the A's, and they won 88 games. That's 3 fewer than they won in 2004--a year when they were expected to contend for the World Series. Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder are starting in the playoffs for the Braves and Cardinals this week, and A's pitchers had the 6th-best staff ERA, and the lowest opponents'......

The A's have lost four games in a row, to the Minnesota Twins and the Baltimore Orioles. They were defeated by A's Brand Baseball's two favorite Orioles, (in order) SS Miguel Tejada and LF Eric Byrnes, and by our least favorite, overrated, lying, cheating, limp-dicked 1B/DH Rafael Palmeiro. They suffered a bad inning from Barry Zito, who sustained his first loss since June 17, on Monday, a horrible call by first-base umpire Chris Guccione......

Baseball is, like, so weird. A 6-game homestand that included Barry Zito’s first win since last July, Rich Harden’s first major league complete game and the catch of Eric Byrnes's life all sounds good, and the A’s got exactly that this week but still managed to drop 4 of those 6 to Seattle and Texas. This week alone, they went from Z’s W over Seattle in front of 30,634 fans on the kind of......