Beaneball

Boy, you get me all hyped up for Marcus Giles, you know I'm going to be disappointed when the first name mentioned in the story about Tim Hudson's trade to the Braves is Charles Freakin' Thomas. That's unfair, though, because Thomas is essentially a throw-in. And for a throw-in, he seems to be not bad. He had a .121 MLVr this year. Two famous players with similar (ever so slightly inferior, actually) numbers this year are Lew Ford and Shannon Stewart. It ought to be noted, though, that Thomas was strictly platooned by the Braves this year: over 85% of his plate appearances came against right-handed pitchers, leaving just about 40 appearances against lefties. It's impossible to tell whether he could hit lefties now or ever, but I'm guessing the A's don't wait around to find out, not with Eric Byrnes and Bobby Kielty also on the team (at least for now). Thomas is sort of Scott Hatteberg-ish, I think, putting up decent numbers that are very OBP-oriented (i.e. no power) at a position where you should be able to find power easily. If he gets regular playing time, I think it's a bad sign. Juan Cruz is the player I was initially and superficially most excited about, mainly based on remember the trade that sent him from the Cubs to the Braves this past spring which was roundly considered a win for Atlanta. Cruz has been highly regarded for awhile and apparently has great stuff. That stuff has resulted in pretty good performance, if not Pedro Martinez-type numbers. He put up a 2.75 ERA for the Braves this year in 50 games out of the bullpen, struck out more than a batter per inning, got a few more ground balls than fly balls, and didn't give up an inordinate number of homers. You could argue that's he's a bit wild, having walked 30 batters this year and had not-great control records in the minors, but Barry Zito's control isn't all there all the time, either, and he still manages alright (this year notwithstanding). By the Davenport Translation numbers, Cruz was worth over three wins for the Braves this year, which I think is pretty good for a middle reliever. On the other hand, in terms of expected wins added, which take into account his performance with other people's baserunners and so on, he was down half a win. I'd guess that, while the latter is a better measure of his actual value to the team, the former is a measure of how he'll pitch in the future, in terms of the components of pitching, where his actual value will vary with his role. For example, if the A's push him back into starting (because you have to figure there are now two spots open in the rotation, which will be fought for by a number of good candidates), I'd be pretty optimistic about his expected performance. Finally, there's Dan Meyer. He was drafted in 2002 and has already made his big league debut, pitching in two games late last year. Meyer never had an ERA over 3.00 at any minor league stop, and unearned runs aren't really hiding anything: there's no big discrepancy between the R and ER columns in his record that jumps out at you. He's struck out over a batter per inning, walks one about every five innings or so, and doesn't give up the long ball in great quantity. In the 2004 Baseball America Prospect Handbook, he was rated the Braves's 4th best prospect. That's in an Atlanta system that BA ranked as the fourth best in baseball, by the way, and Meyer was the top left-handed starter in Atlanta's minors. BA also comments that he has a good fastball and a slider that should be a good major league pitch. John Sickels gave him a B+ and notes that only a mediocre strikeout rate at Myrtle Beach in 2003 kept him from bumping him to an A-. Given that he's had another year and very similar performance to his prior years, but at a higher level, I wouldn't be surprised if Meyer was in the A range in this year's Sickels book. I feel sour in the mouth, because this is, after all, Tim Hudson. What A's fan will forget how Hudson came up as a 23 year-old in mid-1999 and immediately set the world on fire, going 11-2 with an ERA almost half again as good as the rest of the league? And then followed that up with a 20-win season that was actually, in most respects, his worst season: he walked a ton of guys, gave up homers, and posted his only ERA over four. Of course, when your worst season by ERA+ is a 114 (as it was in 2000), you're probably a pretty good pitcher. But obviously the A's didn't feel they'd be able to re-sign Hudson so they figured they'd save the money he'd cost and get some actual ready-now or almost-so players in return, rather than draft picks. In terms of the Oakland's competitiveness this very year, you have to worry a little, but remember that the Angels probably overperformed last year. Anaheim has signed Paul Byrd, but dumped Ramon Ortiz as well. They've also picked up Steve Finley, but don't you have to figure he'll just collapse and die in center field at some point or another? Maybe I'm over-reacting to the Adrian Beltre and Richie Sexson deals, but you have to wonder if Seattle might leap-frog a team or two this season. What I think everything boils down to in whether this trade works out or not is Curt Young's ability or lack thereof to get Barry Zito and Mark Mulder straightened out (or healthy, or whatever) and to continue the development of guys like Joe Blanton and Rich Harden. I like the A's collection of arms for the backend of the rotation better than anyone else's (Blanton, Cruz, Meyer, Duchscherer, and so on), but I'm really worried about the front two. Here's a collection of links, annotated as usual, from the A's blogs I know of that have written about this trade already:

• Brian at A's Y'all is excited about Dan Meyer and generally optimistic about the trade.
• Mad Dog at Barry Zito Forever is also excited about Meyer, but doesn't like Cruz as much as I do.
• Jon at Bridge Ball clearly is unhappy, referring to the players as "three warm bodies," which pretty much summed up my initial reaction when I found out that nobody named Giles (or Marcus for that matter) was coming to Oakland. I got over it, though, and if Meyer and Cruz perform like I think they can, I think Jon will come around.
• Oakland A's Days rails against the economic system that allegedly led to the trade and site, uniquely, the less-quantifiable characteristics that Hudson brought to the team. The tribute is touching, and I especially love item 4 on the list, but I wonder whether the A's would trade him even if they were a bigger-revenue team. Hudson will, after all, be 30 in the first year of his free agent contract, and you certainly have to question, especially after seeing what's happened to Pedro Martinez in his 30's, how well that slight frame of his will hold up to the rigors of pitching once he's 10 years or so into his big league career, especially since, either with the A's or Braves, he's likely to be pitching for a contender, in games that matter down the stretch, when he won't be able to sit to nurse minor owies, as he might were he pitching for a team that was out of it.

In the end, I think the trade was forced, but not necessarily because of an economic system. Rather, almost in the sense of being "forced to call for value" even when you know you're well behind in a poker hand, the A's, in order to maximize their assets had to get top value for Hudson: they believed that getting players for him now, rather than a year of his performance plus draft picks later, was the way to maximize their return. You'd like to think they'd do that even if they had the cash to burn, but you wonder, especially when you see Wonder Boy and the Super Friends signing Edgar Renteria for $40 million bucks, whether that would be true. It's almost a blessing to be perpetually short on cash, then, though I'm sure Billy Beane doesn't believe that.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 20:20 | |

The A's have acquired Keith Ginter from the Milwaukee Brewers in a trade involving two minor leaguers (Justin Lehr and Nelson Cruz). This is a great trade for me personally because Ginter is the starting second baseman for my A's in my copy of MVP Baseball for the Playstation 2. It makes me hope for other acquisitions like Matt LeCroy and Magglio Ordonez. More to the point, though, Ginter had a career year in terms of his power numbers, slugging .479 (a .217 ISO), with 44 extra base hits in just 386 at-bats. His OBP took a hit, dropping to .333 from .352 the year before. I'd take him to split the difference this year while keeping the power, at least in adjusted terms. Despite being a pretty bad defensive player (11 runs below average in his limited playing time), he was about two and a half wins above replacement overall, which is about what Marco Scutaro was worth in his more regular playing time. Two and a half wins is also about Mark Ellis's 75th percentile PECOTA-projected value for 2004. Throw on top of that relative lack of value a year of missed development time and you never know what you're going to get. Ginter will be 29 this year, so he's certainly not a long-term solution, but he might be, assuming he wins the A's second base job outright, the first player to get over a hundred games in two consecutive years as the Oakland second baseman since Scott Spiezio in 1997-8. Second base is Oakland's great unsettled position, as Chris Kahrl noted in a Transaction Analysis at the beginning of the year, similar to the Chicago Cubs's struggles to find a third baseman. Aramis Ramirez isn't a Hall of Famer, either, but like Ginter, there really seems to be the potential for him to be a useful player for more than just half a season or so. Interestingly, this trade occurred on the same day that the Red Sox have apparently signed Edgar Renteria to be their shortstop for the next four years, at ten million bucks per year. This is interesting because Renteria actually put up a negative MLVr last year. Let's run a table comparing Renteria to the other major-league regular shortstops from last year. Here are the shortstops from last year, sorted by last year's WARP1.

Shorstops by WARP1

Player	Rate	MLVr	WARP1	3YWARP1	2005Age
Tejada, Miguel	111	0.203	9.9	7.17	29
Guillen, Carlos	111	0.279	8.9	4.47	29
Wilson, Jack	111	0.109	7.6	4.17	27
Jeter, Derek	103	0.096	7.2	5.30	31
Furcal, Rafael	103	0.027	5.2	5.13	27
Rollins, Jimmy	94	0.090	5.2	4.80	26
Izturis, Cesar	100	-0.036	4.7	2.37	25
Vizquel, Omar	101	-0.026	4.7	4.23	38
Lugo, Julio	101	-0.042	4.4	4.40	29
Guzman, Cristian	111	-0.131	4.3	2.80	27
Young, Michael	91	0.102	4.2	3.35	28
Valentin, Jose	108	-0.101	3.8	4.10	35
Counsell, Craig	110	-0.150	3.7	2.87	34
Larkin, Barry	100	0.091	3.2	2.20	41
Everett, Adam	108	-0.088	3.1	3.00	28
Cruz, Deivi	104	0.002	3	2.27	32
Renteria, Edgar	93	-0.005	3	5.37	29
Eckstein, David	99	-0.143	2.8	3.90	30
Gonzalez, Alex	98	-0.122	2.6	2.93	28
Cabrera, Orlando	98	0.017	2.1	4.37	30
Clayton, Royce	92	-0.084	1.9	2.30	35
Aurilia, Rich	96	-0.205	1.4	2.53	33
Martinez, Ramon	105	-0.168	1.4	1.50	32
Cintron, Alex	95	-0.150	1	2.15	26
Gomez, Chris	89	-0.134	0.7	***	34
Reese, Pokey	104	-0.360	0.7	2.07	32
Berroa, Angel	90	-0.113	0.6	2.70	27
Crosby, Bobby		-0.077			25
Greene, Khalil		0.095			25
Matsui, Kaz		-0.020			29

I wouldn't pay $10 million to Deivi Cruz or David Eckstein, but of course last year was a bit of a down year for Renteria, as the following table, sorted by, for those shortstops for whom the number is both available and relevant, the three-year average of the WARP1 scores, shows.

Sorted by 3-year WARP1 average

Player	Rate	MLVr	WARP1	3YWARP1	2005Age
Tejada, Miguel	111	0.203	9.9	7.17	29
Renteria, Edgar	93	-0.005	3	5.37	29
Jeter, Derek	103	0.096	7.2	5.30	31
Furcal, Rafael	103	0.027	5.2	5.13	27
Rollins, Jimmy	94	0.090	5.2	4.80	26
Guillen, Carlos	111	0.279	8.9	4.47	29
Lugo, Julio	101	-0.042	4.4	4.40	29
Cabrera, Orlando	98	0.017	2.1	4.37	30
Vizquel, Omar	101	-0.026	4.7	4.23	38
Wilson, Jack	111	0.109	7.6	4.17	27
Valentin, Jose	108	-0.101	3.8	4.10	35
Eckstein, David	99	-0.143	2.8	3.90	30
Young, Michael	91	0.102	4.2	3.35	28
Everett, Adam	108	-0.088	3.1	3.00	28
Gonzalez, Alex	98	-0.122	2.6	2.93	28
Counsell, Craig	110	-0.150	3.7	2.87	34
Guzman, Cristian	111	-0.131	4.3	2.80	27
Berroa, Angel	90	-0.113	0.6	2.70	27
Aurilia, Rich	96	-0.205	1.4	2.53	33
Izturis, Cesar	100	-0.036	4.7	2.37	25
Clayton, Royce	92	-0.084	1.9	2.30	35
Cruz, Deivi	104	0.002	3	2.27	32
Larkin, Barry	100	0.091	3.2	2.20	41
Cintron, Alex	95	-0.150	1	2.15	26
Reese, Pokey	104	-0.360	0.7	2.07	32
Martinez, Ramon	105	-0.168	1.4	1.50	32
Crosby, Bobby		-0.077			25
Gomez, Chris	89	-0.134	0.7		34
Greene, Khalil		0.095			25
Matsui, Kaz		-0.020			29

Now the two guys surrounding Renteria are making significantly more than what the Red Sox will be paying him. Tejada's deal even came post-market correction. Of course, Tejada's a better player, so he deserves more money. Renteria looks like a better deal by this table, though it ought to be considered that, as much as his average is weighted down by his worst season since 1999, it's also being weighted upward (unweighted?) by his career 2003 season, which, as he moves into his 30's in this contract, he's unlikely to approach again. The Red Sox, then, might expect about five wins above replacement from Renteria, which means they'll be paying close to $2 million per marginal win (dividing his $9,700,000 marginal salary by his five wins gives $1,940,000). The Red Sox paid over $2.3 million per marginal win this year and won the World Series doing it, but they were the seventh least efficient team in the game by the Marginal Dollars per Marginal Win measure. As the Sox move forward, you have to wonder if Renteria could become a liability rather than a boon, especially considering his uninspiring defensive performance:

Sorted by Defensive Rate

Player	Rate	MLVr	WARP1	3YWARP1	2005Age
Guillen, Carlos	111	0.279	8.9	4.47	29
Guzman, Cristian	111	-0.131	4.3	2.80	27
Tejada, Miguel	111	0.203	9.9	7.17	29
Wilson, Jack	111	0.109	7.6	4.17	27
Counsell, Craig	110	-0.150	3.7	2.87	34
Everett, Adam	108	-0.088	3.1	3.00	28
Valentin, Jose	108	-0.101	3.8	4.10	35
Martinez, Ramon	105	-0.168	1.4	1.50	32
Cruz, Deivi	104	0.002	3	2.27	32
Reese, Pokey	104	-0.360	0.7	2.07	32
Furcal, Rafael	103	0.027	5.2	5.13	27
Jeter, Derek	103	0.096	7.2	5.30	31
Lugo, Julio	101	-0.042	4.4	4.40	29
Vizquel, Omar	101	-0.026	4.7	4.23	38
Izturis, Cesar	100	-0.036	4.7	2.37	25
Larkin, Barry	100	0.091	3.2	2.20	41
Eckstein, David	99	-0.143	2.8	3.90	30
Cabrera, Orlando	98	0.017	2.1	4.37	30
Gonzalez, Alex	98	-0.122	2.6	2.93	28
Aurilia, Rich	96	-0.205	1.4	2.53	33
Cintron, Alex	95	-0.150	1	2.15	26
Rollins, Jimmy	94	0.090	5.2	4.80	26
Renteria, Edgar	93	-0.005	3	5.37	29
Clayton, Royce	92	-0.084	1.9	2.30	35
Young, Michael	91	0.102	4.2	3.35	28
Berroa, Angel	90	-0.113	0.6	2.70	27
Gomez, Chris	89	-0.134	0.7		34
Crosby, Bobby		-0.077			25
Greene, Khalil		0.095			25
Matsui, Kaz		-0.020			29

The Sox know the virtues of a groundball pitcher, but those virtues are somewhat muted if your most important middle infielder can't get to as many balls as you need him to. According to this, Ginter's contract details are as follows:

Ginter gets a $100,000 signing bonus and base salaries of $350,000 this year, $450,000 in 2005 and $1,025,000 in 2006. If he reaches certain plate appearance milestones, his 2005 salary could increase to $600,000 and his 2006 salary to $1,825,000.

Let's assume that Ginter hits those playing time milestones because he wins the A's second base job, and let's further assume that he plays just like he has the past two years, but with more at-bats, and thus racks up about four WARP each season. Then, taking out the $300,000 minimum salary, Ginter would be providing rates of $75,000 per marginal win in 2005 and $381,250 in 2006. Those are pretty astounding rates of return. Of course, it assumes that his performance continues like it has, but that doesn't seem too unreasonable: his 2004 hitting conforms very well, playing time and all, to his 75th percentile PECOTA projection. He wasn't playing out of his mind, in other words, and is a reasonable bet to be a pretty decent hitter, while Mark Ellis is clearly a more worrying option and Marco Scutaro a less desirable one all around.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 20:26 | |

Tim Hudson is, of course, the next big free agent for the A's. With the recent announcement that contract extension talks aren't going to proceed after March 1, a lot of fans, including some posting comments on this thread at Baysball, are making what seem to me to be outlandish statements like, "I hope Beane can fit him in at $12 million per!" and "Sign him or trade him, but don't let him walk." Have we been paying attention to how the A's operate? If this crazy rumored deal with the Braves that would send Marcus Giles and Jose Capellan to the A's for Hudson were for real, you'd have to think Beane would jump all over it. While the poster who calls Giles the best hitting second baseman in the game is a little bit overzealous, Giles is a very good hitter at a position where the A's will probably only get average production at best next year out of Mark Ellis. What's more likely is that, just like with Jason Giambi and Miguel Tejada, Hudson will take his 30-year old (yes, he'll be that old already) self to some other team and the A's will thank him for his six and a half years of excellent pitching, take the draft picks, and move on with Joe Blanton or whoever the next big thing is. Hudson's age is a key indicator here. He still tends to be referred to as a "young starter," but that's really only true compared to Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. Hudson's not old by any means, but, again, remember that he's coming into his age 29 season in 2005. Is he all of a sudden going to turn into a pumpkin? Unlikely. But do the A's want to be paying him $12 million when he's 34? Also unlikely. The Eric Chavez signing seems to have raised the hopes of a lot of fans that the A's will suddenly start resigning all their players. What they don't seem to realize is that Chavez is a special case, a player who, because he reached the majors so early, would have been a free agent after his age 26 season. Thus the six-year contract he signed carries him only through his age 32 year. The three aces that are coming to free agency in the next few years were brought up on a timetable that would (purposely) not let them be free agents until their late 20's. It isn't just grooming your own talent that makes a team successful, it's holding on to that talent through their most valuable seasons, and not a minute longer.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 13:43 | |

A lot of people, including, for example, posters on the thread at this post on Dodger Thoughts, have mentioned that the A's can just trade Jason Kendall in the last year of his contract if any of the guys like Jeremy Brown or John Baker or whoever happen to be ready for the show at that time. But can they? Kendall had to waive his no-trade clause to come to the A's, and I'd assume that what he did was temporarily waive the clause, not actually remove it from the contract. In other words, if the A's felt that Kendall needed to be traded, I'm assuming they'd have to get him to waive the no-trade again, which would probably be quite hard. Consider that he's already waived his no-trade very reluctantly the first time, and that was to go from a hopeless team (for the next two years or so, anyway) to a good one, and a good one in his home state, to boot. Now we are to suppose that he'd just blithely accept a trade from that same, hopefully still good, hometown team to somewhere else, maybe Washington, maybe Toronto, maybe who-knows-where? Unless this is all moot because trading a player with a no-trade actually completely removes the no-trade clause from the contract, this is, I think, a perfect example of why the A's seem so resistant to handing out no-trades (see the Giambi bargaining, for example).

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 07:13 | |

I'm pleased that Andrew Koch linked to my last post, especially since his comment made me realize that I was probably being harsher than I meant to when I made the "payroll implications" comment that he mentions in his post. Sorry about that, Andrew! Anyway, it's the first of the month (wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up), so it's time for a stats and searches wrap-up from the site. 'Cause it makes me happy, that's why. November was my biggest month yet, with 1124 unique visitors, almost four hundred more than my previous high. My top actual referrer was, as usual, Baseball News. Amusingly enough, the top search phrase for the month was "maureen dowd rolling stone picture." I've mentioned the two objects in that search in two different, but I've never actually mentioned the picture itself until now. I guess word of that picture really got around or something, though it's not like there's anything to see. I mean, Dowd is an attractive middle-aged woman, but she's just sitting on some stairs, if I remember correctly. Yes, fully clothed. All the various permutations of that phrase provided me with 112 referrals this month. Not bad. Other good searches:

• "jewish penis": This is about to become my site's second name. I mention the phrase once, in a stupid joke about a Seattle pitcher, and this is what it gets me. People with a weird fetish, probably.
• "baseball": This is only notable because I must be on like page 200 of the google search for "baseball". Actually, using Google Rankings, I found out that I'm not in the top 1000 for that keyword, so I'm past page 100 somewhere. That's a lot of clicking.
• "are there talks about trading jorge posada for tim hudson?": For the next person who gets here this way, let me just say I hope not. I've heard rumors, but I would hope the A's aren't interested. Actually, they have to definitely not be interested now, because they've acquired Jason Kendall, but even before, I'd hope they wouldn't trade their best pitcher for a catcher who's about to start aging any day now.
• "difference between peeing in the pool and peeing into the pool": It's all about whether you're in the pool or outside it.
• "karl malone mormon": Doesn't it seem unlikely?
• "funny anti-marijuana commercials": Funny intentionally, or like that one where they run over the little girl coming out of the drive through? Because that was funny, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be.
• "freshdirect weed nyc": Still looking, and I still don't know why they're looking here!
• "terrence long lawsuit": Maybe the A's are suing him for intense suckitude.
• "tim hudson sucks": Actually, uh, he doesn't.
• "food": Again, how on earth did they get to me?
• "how good a shortstop was larry bowa?": I don't know, but we can use BP to find out. He wasn't a good hitter, ending up just about 50 runs above replacement in a few more than 9000 career plate appearances. His fielding probably grades out to average overall: he's got double-digit negative FRAA years and double-digit positive ones as well, with the extremes being +13 and -18. For his career, he ended up with +19 FRAA. Overally, he ended up about 60 wins above replacement in 2247 games. He wasn't terrible, then, but the Phillies and Cubs probably could have done better.
• "mark mulder broken heart women": Finally, an explanation for the second-half slide!
• "positives of bullying?": I'd guess they're few and far between.
• "medieval yellow knight s name": I think they change and they don't always get to be the same knight, but I could be wrong about that.
• "every body dance now": Or better, sit down and shut up now.

It's been fun! See you on New Year's!

Posted by jason in The Blog at 15:31 | |