The A's finalized their 25-man roster yesterday. The only surprise is that Brad Halsey made the team, and Bobby Kielty was sent down to AAA. This is only because the forecast calls for rain on Monday and Tuesday, and if either of those games is rained out, the A's and Yankees will have to play a doubleheader. The starter that gets pushed back would need a replacement starter in Seattle over the weekend, hence the decision to keep Halsey.

Kielty gets sent down for a couple of reasons: (1) he has options left, and (2) he had an oblique strain during spring training, and didn't get many at-bats. Presumably, he'll be called up at the first opportunity, and Halsey will return to AAA.

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I was supposed to attend a triple-header yesterday: my daughter's softball game at 9am, my nephew's Little League game at 11am, and the A's-Giants game at the Coliseum at 1pm. But the first two games were rained out, and I caught a cold and decided to forego the latter. So I watched it on TV, instead.

Esteban Loaiza had a very impressive start, finally. I was feeling nervous about the rotation a week ago, but since then, four of the five starters have had dominating performances in their final tuneups for the season. Only Barry Zito has yet to look sharp.

So I was happy about Loaiza, but I still felt disappointed about missing the tripleheader. My five-year-old daughter is playing in an under-7 softball league, and it's just so cute to watch. They've only played one game so far, and have had two rainouts.

They also had one training camp, too, which was run by UC Berkeley softball slugger Haley Woods. This morning's SF Chronicle has a nice profile of Woods. They call her "Governor Woods", and the nickname is quite apt. You could tell just seconds into the training camp that Woods was a born leader. If you can get dozens of 5-8 year old kids to stay quiet and pay attention to you, you have some special qualities. Wouldn't surprise me at all if she actually does end up as governor.

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I was watching a bit of the Angels-Dodgers game on MLB.tv last night, and I was going nuts trying to figure out who Chad Billingsley reminded me of. His motion looked so familiar, but I couldn't put a name to it. Random names started popping in my head: Tom Seaver, Justin Duchscherer, Troy Percival, Billy Swift. But they didn't seem quite right. I finally decided that he looked like a more muscular version of Roy Oswalt. But I'm still not sure. Maybe I'll try putting them side-by-side sometime and see if that's it.

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The regular season starts tonight! Hooray!