The ever cost/value-parsing Oakland A's have traded for All-Star outfielder Matt Holliday, one of the finest young offensive players in baseball.

Wait, what?!

Uh... uhm... should lay down down... feelin' confused and distressed......

Former A's pitcher Joe Kennedy, 28, died at his home in Florida this morning. At this time the cause of death is officially unknown, but it was "sudden" and a brain aneurysm is rumored to be at fault, according to the Chronicle. Making his major league debut in 2001 with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Kennedy went on to play for other teams such as the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Toronto Blue Jays, and of......

esterday, we saw what the move of the 49ers means to a 49ers fan. Today we check in with the A's. The thing about all these moves is that you can add up the dollars and cents and it all makes sense from that standpoint, but you can't do that with sports. It's all about the heart and the City and how two become one. But, to paraphrase some line in a movie we can't recall right now, everytime you say it's a sport, they say it's a business and everytime you say it's a business, they tell you it's a sport. ...

After the A's lost Game 2, a friend of ours was bemoaning the quick demise of the Green & Gold. They had had a great season, they had finally made it past the first round of the playoffs, why couldn't they just quit right there? It would have been the perfect cap of the season, all happiness and joy instead of disappointment and despair. You know, end it all at the perfect moment and with people wanting more, not less. ...

The Detroit Tigers didn't have to do much to defeat the Oakland Athletics last night 5-1. The A’s decided to take the evening off on one of the biggest nights the club has experienced since the "steroid years" of the late 1980's, early 1990's. With delirious fans draped in every facet of Kelly green and gold paraphernalia, the A's promptly went out and laid a massive egg in front of a national audience. Besides the obvious embarrassment, the team played with the smarts of a Class A instructional league team. They made Detroit's Nate Robertson—an adequate arm at best—look like a wizened Sandy Koufax. They also hit into four double plays, stranded multiple men on base and made enough mental blunders to allow the Tigers to capitalize. Barry Zito, the surprise conqueror of Johan Santana in the ALDS against the Twins, appeared to have forgotten why he was there. Playoffs? Yes, Zeets. It's the first game of the ALCS remember? Gotta pitch with some guts and guile, buddy!...

This afternoon beneath overcast skies at McAfee Coliseum, the 2006 Oakland Athletics continued to defy expectations by smacking the Minnesota Twins 8-3 in a fashion befitting a potential World Series team. The entire game was a literal composite of the A’s season: solid pitching, timely defense and amazing clutch hitting. ...

The Oakland Athletics this afternoon showed why this year’s team is infinitely grittier and more determined than playoff teams of years past. This collection of misfits and guys barely above the legal drinking age simply know how to win. They’ve outplayed and out-executed the Twins in the Metroblob, and showed the baseball world why they’ll go deep into the playoffs. Instead of Frank Thomas hammering the Twins into submission this afternoon, it was the likes of Nick Swisher, Marco Scutaro and Mark Kotsay running the Twins ragged. The 5-2 final score doesn’t reflect the way the A’s controlled this game. Boof Bonser, the Twins starting pitcher, never really had a chance against the highly selective, pitch-conscious A’s batters. They nitpicked the poor guy like vultures picking at an animal carcass. And in the end it came down to the basics: hitting, pitching, defense and the big play (something the Twins were touted as superior to the A’s). Esteban Loiaza, a man we’ve called out in the past, pitched like he’s been sipping on stud juice—he was simply outstanding before running into a couple of homerun blasts. It was also Swisher making adjustments and not swinging for the fences, but using that crappy dome for less glamorous doubles. Smart move, Swish! And it was Mark Kotsay’s brilliant inside-the-park homerun that sealed the deal on this little affair in Minneapolis. ...

Everyone loves a redemption story and the A's this year might have baseball's best redemption story as Frank Thomas put the Big Hurt on the Twins, leading the A's to a 3-2 victory. He started things off with a home run in the 1st and then added a crucial insurance run in the top of the ninth to give the A's a one run lead. That became crucial when the Twins lead off the bottom of the ninth with a triple that Milton Bradley lost in the Metrodome ceiling (everyone who plays there has done it-- it's one of the reasons playing in the Metrodome just flat-out sucks for visiting teams). ...

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. ...

Shards of what remain of Barry Zito and the rest of Oakland A's pitching staff are still being recovered after yesterday's 14-0 threshing at the hands of the Texas Rangers. We're certain the Arlington faithful are downright giddy about their latent power display, as well they should be. This beating reminded everyone that there is-indeed--a real pennant race fomenting in the AL West. However, the Rangers should take a very hard look at the all-encompassing big picture scoreboard-the Athletics won that series by dominating the small things. And they beat Texas by going toe-to-toe with one of the best offenses in the American League. Moreover, the real battle was won in the trenches-through superior bullpen action, sans Joe Kennedy, Scott Sauerbeck and the rest of the DL boys, a smothering defense and timely hitting from Jay Payton, not through caveman-like hacking at off-speed pitches that Ranger batters have mastered. ...

The Oakland A's will win the American League West. Yes, this year! We (SFist) are not accustomed to making barrel-chested predictions that eventually turn to fool's gold as it often does on ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" -- we're merely pointing out the obvious: the Oakland A's will win the AL West this year. Despite their anemic, Milton Bradley-less performance last night at the hands of the Los Angeles Angels and Joe Saunders-- who they made seem like a young Ron Guidry than the junk-ball throwing Tommy John clone that he is-- the A's will win more of those tightly-sewn games than the Angels, or god forbid, the perennial flame-out Texas Rangers. And they'll do it without resident genius Billy Beane making a nano-move during the trade deadline frenzy. ...

You still the man, Rick . . . You still the man. A bold prediction from A's Brand Baseball: By the time "One Shining Moment" ends on Monday night, Barry Zito will have thrown the first pitch of the Oakland Athletics' 2006 season to Johnny Damon, who will still be an idiot. Unless it's raining--we don't predict that boldly. When we came to you before Opening Day last season, the home nine were in......

Sunday night in the Bronx, the New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 9-2. As everyone knows, that means the Yankees will win the 2005 World Series. Even so, the other teams in Major League baseball will play 162 games this year. That includes your Oakland Athletics, now Lewis Wolff's and Billy Beane's Oakland Athletics as well. (Try to share.) At 12:05 PM SFist Jake, contributing.......

Well, we'd been waiting for some actual baseball news to report, but in the meantime wacky San Jose mayor Ron Gonzalez is at it again.  This time, he went all the way to Phoenix, where he held a news conference outside Municipal Stadium and discussed his plan to bring a major league baseball team to San Jose.  Guess who plays Cactus League games at Phoenix Municipal?  The Bay Area, Mayor Gonzalez says, can't support......

Back on Tuesday, Athletics Nation carried the third and final part of their interview with Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane, who is generally considered something of a genius in his field. Kos points out that he had this to say about the blogosphere, after discussing how fluid player deals and a managing a team's makeup can be: [T]hat's what I love, for lack of a better word, about the blogger's world.  There is a......