I've got baseball stats on the brain. More so than usual, which is really saying something... I'm here at the Adam's Mark Hotel in downtown St. Louis, home of the 37th annual Society for American Baseball Research convention, and after I spent some time earlier talking with Sean Forman, the man behind Baseball-Reference -- the best thing to ever spring from from the tubes of the interwebs -- I just can't help myself. I've dug around, and managed to find some notable statistical achievements that the A's accomplished (or neared accomplishing) in their win on Thursday against the Mariners. Without further ado...

• Nick Swisher hit two home runs, a feat he's accomplished eight times in his career already. On Thursday, though, he hit one from the left side of the plate, and followed it up by jacking one out from the right-handed batter's box. Since 1957, that's only happened four times to an A's player. Ruben Sierra hit one from each side on June 7th, 1994, and twelve years and two weeks later, you guessed it, Nick Swisher hit two out against the Rockies, in interleague play. Less than a year later, Swish did it again, in an April contest this season against the Orioles. Apparently he couldn't wait another ten months, because he did it again last night. At this rate, I guess he's due for a L-R home run combo in another, oh, two weeks?
• Mark Ellis continued his hot streak, hitting his 12th homer of the year. At this rate, he's on pace to break Davey Lopes' all-time Athletics franchise record for home runs by a second-baseman. Ellis needs five more round-trippers to tie Lopes' season record, and six to break it. No word on whether ESPN will break into coverage of other sports when Ellis approaches the mark. He is still 29 behind the career leader, Dick Green, though...
• Most significant of all, Dan Haren stands an excellent chance of putting up the best ERA+ by any A's starter in franchise history. With an ERA of 2.42 on the season, Haren is doing much better than the league average of 4.46. So far, his ERA+ stands right between Vida Blue's 1971 season at #1, and Barry Zito's 2002 season at #3. He'll need to keep his ERA just below 2.40 to take the ERA+ franchise crown.

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And on a completely different note, I'm going to finally be making the journey from Nebraska out to the Bay Area next week to take in some A's games. I'll be around for the entire Angels series, including AN Day 4 on Saturday. I'm looking forward, with great anticipation, to actually meeting more than a dozen fellow A's fans at once. If you see a guy who looks like this walking around the vicinity of the coliseum, looking somewhat lost and overwhelmed by the mass of green and gold, that'd be me.