SEEKING FRUITS OF FALL SUCCESS AMID GRAPEFRUIT, CACTI.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

PHOENIX - To the veterans of the Oakland Athletics' playoff pratfalls, it must feel as if the team is wasting these bright Arizona mornings on the wrong drills.

The A's are 0-for-October in this decade because Jeremy Giambi neglected to slide. So shouldn't they practice slides instead of rundowns? The A's are 0-for-October because Eric Byrnes forgot to go back and touch home plate. So shouldn't they study diamond diagrams rather than cut-off alignments? The A's are 0-for-October because Miguel Tejada was oblivious to the nuances of the basepath obstruction rule. So shouldn't they work on the rule book, not pitchers covering first base?

If only there were spring-training drills to prepare regular-season marvels to be postseason studs.

``How do you prepare (players) to touch home plate?'' A's manager Ken Macha wondered the other day, alluding to Byrnes' gaffe in Game 3 of the 2003 division series loss to the Boston Red Sox. ``I don't know.''

It's this way not only for the A's, but also for the Mariners, Giants, Braves and Cardinals. Baseball's most frustrated franchises are searching among the Arizona cacti and the Florida palm trees this spring for the secrets to autumn success. They're motivated and mystified by the way they win 90 games every year only to watch teams like the Marlins, Angels and Diamondbacks steal the World Series.

As ESPN's Jason Stark pointed out recently in Baseball America, this is developing into a decade like no other when it comes to translating regular-season victories into World Series titles.

Seattle (98.3 victories a season) and Oakland (98.0) have been the major league's best regular-season teams in the 2000s. Neither has been to a World Series. Atlanta (96.3), San Francisco (95.5) and St. Louis (92.5) have been the National League's best regular-season teams in that time. San Francisco lost the 2002 World Series to the Angels, and the other two have failed to get that far.

The Yankees (96.5, third-best in the decade) won a World Series in 2000. But so have the Diamondbacks (89.8, seventh), Angels (83.3, 13th) and Marlins (81.3, 15th).

You could put this down to the addition of the best-of-five-game ``division series'' in 1995, giving the best teams an extra hurdle in the playoffs, raising the likelihood of upsets at the hands of hot underdogs.

``Playoffs are like a second season,'' Angels manager Mike Scioscia said.

Except that doubling the playoff field in '95 gave the best teams a clearer shot at qualifying for the playoffs, which should make long-term frustration less likely.

In the Arizona desert these days, three rivals of the Angels and Dodgers wrestle with their own, specific regrets.

Seattle: After winning 116 games in 2001, the Mariners squeaked past Cleveland in the division series but lost to the Yankees in the American League Championship Series to become the best team in baseball history not to win a pennant. Their 93 wins the past two years weren't good enough to make the playoffs.

``I think the goal, and the tough thing, is to get to the playoffs,'' Jon Olerud, Seattle's Gold Glove first baseman since 2000, said when the Mariners played the Angels at Tempe last week. ``And (then) it gets down to who's playing the best at that time. Once you get to the playoffs, anything can happen.''

It's not as if the 116-win Mariners were slumping as they entered the playoffs. They won 10 of their last 12 regular-season games. Maybe that was the problem.

``It was coming so easy for us, it felt like that was going to continue and it was going to be our year,'' Olerud said. ``We'd keep getting the big hits and making the big play. It just didn't work out for us.''

Oakland: The first team to qualify for four playoffs in a row and fail to win a series, the A's are 0-9 in games that could have clinched a series.

They were up 2 games to 0 in their series against the Yankees in 2001 when Jeremy Giambi declined to slide into home, allowing catcher Jorge Posada to tag him out after Derek Jeter's heads-up back-up play and preserve New York's 1-0 victory. They were up 2 games to 0 on the Red Sox in 2003 when Byrnes was tagged out by catcher Jason Varitek after missing the plate on a throw that went to the backstop, and Tejada was tagged out by Varitek when he let up on his way to the plate when he neglected to try to score, rendering moot an umpire's obstruction call against third baseman Bill Mueller.

``People are dying to figure out the magic formula,'' Barry Zito, the Cy Young pitcher from Pierce College and USC, said at his locker in Phoenix. ``There is no tangible reason we lost. (We) just didn't get it done.

``Guys have a fire under their tails. We want to get out there and prove we can win in the playoffs. But we can't do anything about that now (in spring training).''

San Francisco: Losers to the Angels after being five outs from winning in the 2002 World Series, losers to the Marlins in a division series in 2003, the Giants at least have been losing to the eventual champions.

Last year, the Giants' veterans worked hard to go 20-8 down the stretch, trying to get to 100 wins (they did) and earn the championship-series home-field edge over the Braves (they didn't). After that effort, the cross-country flight into the Miami humidity and an 11-inning Game 3 seemed to wipe them out. Their thirtysomething regulars hit .195 with no homers in the Marlins series.

``I'd like to get back to the playoffs with a better playoff situation than we had last year,'' Giants manager Felipe Alou said in Scottsdale. ``I want to take my chances again if we win more than 90 games.''

The Giants made winter moves with next fall in mind. They added Michael Tucker and Dustan Mohr to the outfield bench. They'll have the option of resting Barry Bonds, 39, Marquis Grissom, 36, and Jeffrey Hammonds, 33.

As for spring moves, it's hard to know what any of these frustrated teams can do, besides preparing earnestly for the regular season and hoping it will pay off eventually.

``If somebody knows a way to win the playoffs in spring training,'' Zito said, ``tell us.''

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