Beaneball

For the first time in recent memory, the A's appear to be having some clubhouse issues. There were two team meetings yesterday, one with Ken Macha and one without, to try to clear up this thing about the starters vs. the bullpen. I think they should just play some paintball to see who the bigger man is. That's what's at stake, after all, isn't it? That's the conclusion I come to after reading Arthur Rhodes's comments yesterday. Anyway, the A's played a game yesterday, and finally won. It was a nice solid victory, too, as Mark Redman went a strong seven and a third innings, giving up just a third inning run, and Chad Bradford and Jim Mecir closed the win out from there, with the final tally being 7-1. Oakland again showed a total lack of power, managing just three doubles and eight singles, but their five walks combined with those eleven hits (and one Anaheim error) were enough to give Oakland plenty of runs. Mark Kotsay continued to hit well, with three singles, and Erubiel Durazo continued to get on base, with a single and two walks, but there was little individual offensive excitement, which you'd expect me to say after an eight-single game. The win pushed the A's back to a half game ahead of the Angels (tied in wins, one less loss) and a game behind Texas (tied in wins, two more losses), so this is a tight division right now. It's fun, especially when the West teams are playing each other, because every day results in a shift in the standings. Yesterday saw the A's drop from first to third, and the other two teams move up a spot each, and now Oakland is back to second. A win tomorrow coupled with a Texas loss would create a virtual tie for first, while a loss would drop Oakland to third place, regardless of what Texas does. Let's see what the standings looked like on this date for the past four years, the A's playoff years:

	W	L	GB
2003
Seattle	49	25
Oakland	44	30	5
Anaheim	36	37	12.5
Texas	27	47	22
2002
Seattle	46	28
Anaheim	43	29	2
Oakland	43	31	3
Texas	32	41	13.5
2001
Seattle	54	19
Anaheim	36	36	17.5
Oakland	35	38	19
Texas	27	45	26.5
2000
Oakland	43	29
Seattle	41	30	1.5
Anaheim	38	34	3.5
Texas	33	38	9.5

So what we see is that this is the tightest race we've seen yet, largely due to the fact that there's no completely incompetent Texas team already 22 games back. The three leading teams are also not doing as well as the leaders in the previous four years were, but there's some mixing up of causation here: all three teams' actual quality may be on level with the leaders of the past four years, but since there's less of a patsy in the division and all three teams seem to be pretty close in quality, they're going to beat up on each other and run each other's records down. This year's is exactly the kind of standings table Boston wants to see so they can run away with the wild card while the three Western teams beat up on each other for one playoff spot.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 11:56 | |

I've finally managed to finish Weaver on Strategy, mainly because I decided to just sit down and finish it before I started the next magazine. The book was as good as advertised, and I can heartily recommend it to any baseball fan anywhere, anytime. You can see a lot of parallels between the things that Weaver was doing and saying at the time (the book was written in 1984) and the modern analytical movement. I think Earl Weaver is at least as influential as Bill James in the game, at least in terms of changing the game from the inside. Who knows how long the information revolution would have taken to reach baseball had it only been the geeks on the outside who were doing the analysis. Having a Weaver show that using data inside the game could really have a strong effect has probably made a world of difference in the rapidity of acceptance of these ideas in front offices and clubhouses around the major leagues. The book ends with a 2002 update, based on an interview done by Chris Kahrl, from Baseball Prospectus (this version of the book was published by Brassey, BP's publisher up until the 2004 version of the annual), but it's fairly short and far from comprehensive. I think I'm going to end up doing a series of posts about the book, particularly its relevance to the modern game. I'll probably go chapter-by-chapter, or something that approximates that. It should be a fun little exercise.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Reading at 10:53 | |