Beaneball

On Saturday, we went and saw Mad Hot Ballroom, a documentary about public schools in New York City that have ballroom dancing programs. It was a pretty straightforward film, but I couldn't help but be impressed with the footage of the actual dancing competitions the kids entered. The crowd got very into it, awwww-ing at all the appropriate moments. I don't know whether it's playing widely outside of New York, but the opportunity to see 10 year-olds doing an impressive merengue and rumba should not be passed up. Last night, as I mentioned, we saw Crash, the Paul Haggis (the writer of Million Dollar Baby) film that grew out of his experience being carjacked in L.A. It was as bad as all the reviews said, unfortunately. A lot of good talent, including Don Cheadle, Brendan Fraser, Ryan Phillipe, Sandra Bullock, Terrence Howard, and Larenz Tate, went wasted. The theme of the movie, racism, would have been better approached in a much more subtle way. Modern incarnations of racism, after all, are more under-the-surface, more quietly insidious, than the view presented in the film, where everything, while mixed up and "not quite what it seems" (if the movie is going to traffic in so much cliche, then so will I), is quite overt: Matt Dillon is a blatantly racist cop; Sandra Bullock insists that her locks be changed again because a Latino man who she believes to be a gang-banger changed them the first time; a gun-shop owner calls an Iranian customer "Osama." We did get two great trailers, though: Hustle & Flow, also starring Terrence Howard as a pimp trying to make it as a rapper, which was all the rage at Sundance this year; and Rize, David LaChapelle's documentary about "krumping," a new dance form coming out of inner-city Los Angeles. The cinematography looks as fantastic as you'd expect out a renowned photographer and I expect that the dance moves will be as impressive as watching any extreme sports or And 1 video. Finally, I read the article in Sports Illustrated about online poker last night. As Wilson points out in this comment, it's really just an article saying, "College kids play poker online." It talks about people who made money, mentions a kid who's lost over $50k, and briefly says that colleges don't have gambling addiction programs, but that's really it. There's no real exploration of the issues of legality (that's relegated to a sidebar), no exploration of the addiction, no discussion of social and familial problems that are allowed to arise when money starts being lost hand over fist. Any or all of these themes would have made excellent articles on college kids playing online poker. Instead, we got something akin to Moneyball: a piece that was supposed to be about a larger point but devolved into a series of profiles of "interesting" people (the players were made much more intriguing in Moneyball).

Posted by jason in Magazines, Movies, Reading, The Blog at 18:09 | |

Congratulations to Dan Johnson on his first big-league hit. And that ends the good news. Seth Etherton pitched about as well as you'd expect a Quadruple-A player to pitch, giving up five runs in five and a third innings, and the offense struggled again, managing just two extra-base hits against Jake Westbrook and the Indian bullpen. There's not really much to say. There are no small fixes for this. Getting Bobby Crosby back should help. Moving Jason Kendall down in the order might help. Letting Adam Melhuse play a little more could help. Getting the pitchers healthy could help. None of that, though, is going to get offensive production out of first base, second base, third base, or one of the outfield spots. Keith Ginter needs to hit, Eric Chavez needs to hit, and either Charles Thomas, Eric Byrnes, or Nick Swisher need to hit. Scott Hatteberg is doing what he can, as are Mark Ellis and Marco Scutaro. Basically, the whole team is hitting like Jeremy Brown - theoretically good on-base percentage, absolutely no power. Stats will be updated to reflect today's action soon. For now, we're off to see Crash.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 01:25 | |

The four major files (not the Leaderboard one) have been updated in the Stats section, finally. Many apologies for the long neglect. Interesting tidbits from those pages:

• The A's offensive MVP to date is Bobby Kielty, which should come as no surprise.
• The A's offensive LVP is Eric Chavez, which is also no surprise. There are only so many bases-loaded strikeouts a guy can have before his numbers really start to suffer.
• The most valuable pitcher has been Rich Harden, which means his injury only hurts that much more.
• The least valuable pitcher has been Joe Blanton, but that's with one huge drag due to his last game against the Devil Rays. Just above him is Juan Cruz, who's my real candidate for LVPitcher.
• Huston Street, it's becoming clearer and clearer, is the A's best pitcher in the bullpen. Forget closer. Give him the ace reliever role, letting him work jams in whatever innings they arise.
• The A's are on pace to lose anywhere from 99 to 105 games. No comment needed.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's, The Blog at 21:37 | |

I know certain people get a little pissy when I post about things that aren't the A's or sports or something, but here it is anyway. From Slashdot, I get the story that a bunch of business schools are using admissions software (fill out your application online, etc.) that people could manipulate to get their decisions earlier than they were intended to. These schools, claiming a breach of ethics, then reject all candidates who accessed their information early. Some, like Carnegie Mellon and Harvard, do it outright; others, like Stanford, are a little more patient and allow applicants to explain their actions. In the end, though, out of the schools affected, only Dartmouth admitted anybody involved, and even they considered the "break-in" as a large negative factor. Except where's the negative factor? What ethics were breached? A computer system was not cracked. Rather, a system that claimed to be secure made the mistake of putting files in a public space and figuring that by not linking to them, they'd be safe, which is, of course, ridiculous. I have files on this webspace that aren't linked that access-log spammers try to get at all the time. Is that unethical? I think it's annoying, but if I'm going to have the file available, I have to accept the consequences. Besides which, it's not like people were accessing other people's information, or were able to change their status. They simply wanted to know whether a decision had been made. If Harvard decides to reject me from their Business School but doesn't inform me until two months after they make the decision (because that's the notification date), don't I have a right to be a little upset? I don't claim that there's an ethical challenge to be made against the school, because they don't have a responsibility to me to make their information known, but I also expect that they can't make ethical claims against me for trying to find out the information that they're hiding.

Posted by jason in News at 16:21 | |

So over at Superchicken.org, there's this:

In this week's Sports Illustrated, there is an article about how college students play online poker. I don't subscribe to SI to read articles about online poker. If I cared at all about online poker, I would just play online poker. Even then I wouldn't want to read an article in SI about it.in SI. Probably the best part of the article is how several times it namedrops game theory, which is probably not a direction the majority of SI readers are comfortable with going. I guess it's cool that the article was written by a former contributor to Beaneball.org, but basically SI is just crap that I throw in the recycling bin every Thursday night.

Posted by jason in Corrections, Magazines, Personal, Reading, The Blog at 23:32 | |

The site's back up, obviously. There were issues with my host and I had to get moved to a new server, which entailed updating nameservers. Maybe the whole thing should have stayed away, though, because it's not like there's ever going to be happy news to write about with Oakland anyway. Erubiel Durazo is now gone to the DL with about half of the important A's, so that's another blow, at least in theory. In practice, he wasn't hitting anyway, so I'm almost able to just shrug it off. Especially since Dan Johnson is finally up. And since he's up because of the Durazo injury, you know he's going to get playing time. Here's hoping he has a hot couple of weeks and asserts himself as the man right now, pushing Hatteberg to his more appropriate bench role. In fact, Johnson did start today at first, with Eric Byrnes DHing and Scott Hatteberg on the bench (he made a pinch-hit appearance). While he failed to register a hit, he did walk once, so he wasn't totally useless (which is an upgrade over about 85% of the lineup). Anyway, when the happy news is the callup of a 25-year old first baseman, however highly regarded, your season isn't going so well.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 05:40 | |

Check out the sidebar for a new feature. The most recent comments left here are contained in a Bitty Browser which is scrollable and, more importantly, you can click the links and read the comments in that Bitty Browser. No popping up, no opening the link in the full window - it's all self-contained. Let me know how you like it (and watch your comments appear in the Bitty Browser! So meta!) so I can provide feedback. Interested in having your own Bitty Browser? Go to Bitty.com.

Posted by jason in The Blog at 22:56 | |

It's a scintillating pitching matchup between Setherton for the A's and Doug Waechter for the Devil Rays tonight. It's already 3-2 (A's up) after one inning, with Scott Hatteberg contributing a two-run bomb. The last time the A's were this bad after 43 games was when they were also 17-26 in 1997. That team went on to win just 65 games while featuring almost none of the talent that would drive them to a successful half-decade run in a few years. Jason Giambi played left and Miguel Tejada and Ben Grieve got into a combined 50 games. The pitching staff was young (nobody over the age of 30 made even a single start), but not good: the ace, in terms of ERA, was Jimmy Haynes. In other words, we have to hope that eight years from now, we can look back on this A's team and see the seeds of far more talent than we saw in 1997. Thank god that Tampa Bay is one of just two American League teams with a worse record than Oakland at the moment.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 21:09 | |

A's win! A's win! A's win! My god, it's been weeks, months, years! A's win! Ok, boys, see you again in two weeks for your next victory.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 06:55 | |

Peter Gammons has a column on ESPN.com that was posted on May 15th, and contains this snippet: "[A's General Manager Billy] Beane wants to get infielder Dan Johnson, last year's Pacific Coast League MVP, up to the majors and into the club's lineup." ... That was my blank stare. Beane's had every opportunity to bring up Johnson, including when Swisher got hurt and when Harden got hurt. That's putting aside the idea that Oakland might send down Charles Thomas for a spell. So what do the A's have? Six outfielders, four left-handed and one nominal switch-hitter, one first baseman who doesn't hit like one, and a complete inability to win a baseball game. I hate to pound on this point over and over again, but this idea that Beane "wants" to bring up Johnson but hasn't found the opportunity yet is ludicrous. Klutts hit it on the head when he said, "I think he must have some sort of plan for the roster construction and the Dan Johnson dilemma but I don't see it clearly yet." We're on the same page on this for now. Based on Beane's past, you have to assume he's thinking about how this is all playing out. What he's thinking is impossible to tell, though, because he seems to be making the weirdest possible move at each step. I mean, come on, Jermaine Clark?

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 17:32 | |

So, just for a little perspective, this is the worst the A's have been after 36 games since 1994, when they were 10-26 (on 5/14). For the rest of the way, that team went 41-37, to finish 51-63 in the strike-shortened season. That, by the way, is just one game behind Texas, who had been six and a half ahead of the A's on May 14th. Let's compare the teams! Baseball Prospectus has, thank goodness, historical stats, so we can compare the production of the key players. I'll use MLVr for hitters and VORP/IP for pitchers. Behind the plate, Terry Steinbach was still two years away from a fantastically suspicious 35-homer walk year, and he put up a 0.014 MLVr: nothing special, but nothing to complain about from a 32-year old catcher, either. Jason Kendall, meanwhile, is 31, and hitting -0.244. That's ugly, and while it's far below what PECOTA figured for him (weighted mean of -0.003), it's, frankly, not surprising me. I don't know what I said about him this off-season, but his lack of power should have worried everybody, and it seems to be showing now. Kendall has all of six extra-base hits on the season, for an ISO of .048. The average catcher in 2005, while not much of a hitter, at least puts up an ISO of .135. Winnner: 1994. Mark McGwire and Troy Neel split the time at first, with Neel getting about 2/3 of the starts there. Neel was a slightly below-average hitter at first, while McGwire hit for his usual low batting average, high walks, high power numbers. A weighted average (by plate appearances) of their MLVr's results in a 0.129 figure for the first basemen. We all know who's at first for Oakland these days. Not only is Scott Hatteberg not hitting for any power, though (expected), he's also not walking as much as you might think, with an isolated on-base percentage of just .058, when PECOTA figured him for a .090 figure. Granted, that kind of difference can be made up just by having a three-walk day somewhere next week. Anyway, Hatteberg's lack of any offensive skill results in a -0.074 MLVr, against his PECOTA projection of 0.015. No matter what happens, in other words, Hatteberg isn't going to outhit 1994's first base team. What if Oakland brought up Dan Johnson? The 0.129 number he'd be trying to match is somewhere between his 75th and 90th percentile projection, so you'd figure him for maybe a 20% chance of outhitting the 1994 team. Advantage: 1994. Oakland's main second baseman in 1994 was Brent Gates, and while he only logged 64 games on the season, the rest of the starts were split among a cast that included Steve Sax, Scott Hemond, Fausto Cruz, and Francisco Matos, with nobody appearing enough to really register offensively. Gates put up a -0.091 MLVr, taking a slight step back from his 1993 season and beginning his long, disappointing slide to being out of the majors after his age-29 year. This A's team is running out a combination of Keith Ginter and Mark Ellis, with Ellis getting about 60% of the plate appearances so far. It hasn't mattered which one has been out there, though, because neither has hit. Their weighted average MLVr is -0.180, twice as bad as Gates's numbers eleven years ago. PECOTA sees Ginter as essentially a league-average player, predicting a 0.005 MLVr for him, while Ellis isn't actually hitting that much worse than he might be expected to. His -0.111 MLVr slots in nicely between his 40th and 50th percentile projections. In other words, two things have to happen for the A's to start getting production at second: Ginter has to play almost all the time (not going to happen) and he has to start hitting. Advantage: 1994. Scott Brosius was having his fourth consecutive terrible year with the bat (his OBP's stayed under .300 until he turned 28), but nobody else really got a shot at third base. I guess we know why Eric Chavez was drafted two years later. Anyway, Brosius's no average, no walks, no power act came out to a -0.133 MLVr for the season. I'm sad to say that I'd rather have Brosius doing twice as bad over Eric Chavez right now. Chavez is hitting for a -0.321 MLVr as of this writing. That's ugly. That's horrible. That's not even close to anything PECOTA has for him (his weighted mean MLVr is 0.198). Unless Chavez is hiding an injury, he has to start hitting sometime, and when he does, he'll probably surpass Scott Brosius. And if he doesn't? Well, maybe that Leon Durham in 1985 comparison isn't such a bad one by PECOTA. Still, advantage: 2005. At short, Mike Bordick was running through his usual routine, good for a -0.178 MLVr. Bobby Crosby's grade is, of course, incomplete at this point, but Marco Scutaro has put up a -0.076 MLVr in his absence. No matter who's out there at the six-hole, then, you've got to figure they'll out hit Bordick. Advantage: 2005. Oakland's three main outfielders were Stan Javier doing his no-hitting dance in center, Ruben Sierra doing his no-walks dance in right, and Rickey Henderson doing his no-power dance in left. None of the outfielders, in other words, were all that good, though at least Henderson put up a .411 OBP for the year, despite just a .260 batting average. Rickey wasn't completely done, as he had two more good power years left in him (1995's .147 ISO and 1999's completely ridiculous .151 ISO at age 40 in Shea Stadium). The three put up a weighted average MLVr of 0.008 for the season. Since Charles Thomas is apparently a mop-up outfielder, I'll use Nick Swisher, Bobby Kielty, Eric Byrnes, and Mark Kotsay as Oakland's outfield team. That group has averaged a -0.019 MLVr for the year, though it ought to be noted that if we remove the injured Swisher from the equation, the three that are left have gone for a 0.017 on the season. Eric Byrnes is dragging, of course, while Bobby Kielty has made Billy Beane look good and been the best hitter on the team. Mark Kotsay has balanced a hot start with a return to earth. Kielty and Swisher are hitting in the upper and lower reaches of their PECOTA projections, respectively, but not above or below their 90th and 10th percentile projections. Byrnes is between his 10th and 25th percentiles and Kotsay right around the middle of his projected range. Kielty is the only, one, then, who might be expected to come down a little, and even that could be mitigated: perhaps PECOTA is placing more weight than necessary on his awful time in Toronto and last year in Oakland. That time adds up to about 400 at bats, while his previous 500 at-bats, with Minnesota, ranged from decent to excellent. All in all, then, I think advantage: 2005. The great Geronimo Berroa was Oakland's DH in 1994 and he put up a 0.195 MLVr, the best on the team. His only challenger for team MVP might have been Mark McGwire, and that challenge was rendered moot by McGwire's lack of playing time. Erubiel Durazo, meanwhile, is hitting -0.082, opposite PECOTA's 50th percentile projection of 0.088. Berroa obviously wins right now, and in order for Durazo to catch the popular Dominican hitter, he'd probably have to outperform his 90th percentile projection the rest of the way. In other words, advantage: 1994. It's not even fair to compare the pitching. That 1994 team saw Ron Darling as Oakland's ace and Dennis Eckersley, who had his last good year two years earlier, as the closer. Billy Taylor did good work in the bullpen also, while Steven Ontiveros was Oakland's best pitcher by VORP, but benefitted from a remarkable 0.236 BABIP. Mark Acre looks good by ERA, but his BABIP was even lower and he walked more batters than he struck out. The edges of the staff held such men as Steve Phoenix and Roger Smithberg, who I think Baseball-Reference just made up. Is there any reason, then, to think that this year's team couldn't do what 1994's team did and play over .500 the rest of the way, finishing up close to the leader of the division? No. On the other hand, should we really be taking comfort in aspiring to be a team that finished twelve games under .500?

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 08:57 | |

The ever-reliable Klutts responded to my last post here, and the comment deserves highlighting here. When I wrote the post in question, deciding that Dan Johnson shouldn't be brought up after all, I'd forgotten how old Johnson was. Klutts pointed out that since he's already 25, even if he was brought up now, the A's would still have his rights until he was 31. Even better, the A's wouldn't even have to go with arbitration with him until after his age-27 season. So on that point, I withdraw my earlier withdrawal and return to my original clamoring: Free Dan Johnson! Klutts also mentions a rumor that Matt Watson could be brought up if Rich Harden hits the DL, with Keiichi Yabu moving to the rotation. I don't take as much issue with this move as he does. First, six relievers is plenty. Also, while Yabu has been successful in his role, and there's some attractiveness in being risk-averse, the A's didn't become such a strong organization by being risk-averse. They did it by putting the best man for the job in to do the job more often than most other teams in baseball. Seth Etherton's been hurt and Yabu has pitched well. While Klutts argues, "Why change roles when a replacement is available at AAA?", I think a just-as-valid argument is, "Why call up a pitcher when a replacement is waiting in the bullpen?" Part of Yabu's value to the team is his ability to make starts here and there, after all. Klutts's other point about the move is dead-on, though. Watson would be Oakland's sixth outfielder, and their fourth left-handed hitting outfielder (plus Kielty, a switch-hitter), which is extreme overkill. Once again, the A's find an opportunity to shake things up a little by bringing up Dan Johnson without having to send anyone down and, if the rumor is true, they fail to make the move.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 20:23 | |

Here's a new A's blog that I noticed in my referrers log, called The A's East Coast Advocate (which is what I swore I was already, but I guess I didn't claim the name early enough). Corey makes me feel old, so I reserve the right to dump on him a little in the future. It'll make me feel more secure about my place in the world.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's, Reading at 15:04 | |

This Associated Press story warms my little heart. Billy Beane is meeting in secret with A's coaches. Is a move forthcoming? Are the A's finally going to bring up Dan Johnson? Or maybe Ken Macha's on the way out and the A's are going to hire Davey Johnson! Well, wishful thinking abounds if you let it. At this point, though, should the A's bother? Sure, we're only about 20% of the way through the season, with 35 games played. At the same time, though, how much can Dan Johnson fix by himself? Is he going to make Jason Kendall hit? Can he turn around Erubiel Durazo? What about Erics Chavez and Byrnes? Will he bring Bobby Crosby and Nick Swisher back from injury (and help Swisher hit)? No, of course Johnson can't do all that by himself. Even if the A's did something like acquire Reggie Sanders and call up Johnson, the best they could do would be to provide power boosts out of two positions. If Johnson is worth a win or two over Scott Hatteberg (and is he? That might be generous) and Sanders a win or two over Byrnes, how good does those two or four wins make the A's? Is striving for 77 wins instead of 73 really a goal? This A's team is young. The vast majority of the players, while not neccessarily signed for next year, will be back, most of them cheaply. This isn't a contract year for anybody important. In other words, this isn't a win-now year. Do you just declare the season lost and start dumping veterans like there's no tomorrow? No, if only because there's an outside shot of something crazy happening and the A's putting themselves back into the race (at which point, of course, the team should not go crazy and sell off the future for the present, either). As I drop into the depths of despair, then, I am actually going to reverse course on Dan Johnson. The A's should not bring him up to the majors to replace Scott Hatteberg. Nothing's happening this season for Oakland, so why start Johnson's service clock early? Beane should get in his car and drive down to Sacramento today to meet with Johnson, where he'll say, "Sorry, kid, you're going to play out the year in AAA again. But listen, you'll be up in September, and you're our first baseman next year. I know, I know, we've been dicking around with Scott Hatteberg all this time, and you, and even Graham Koonce, have been ready to step in for what seems like eternity. I know Sacramento sucks. But hey, this is a promise. Hatteberg's headed to the bench. He's going to be a $2.5 million pinch-hitter. You're the man in 2006."

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 09:45 | |

Blez at Athletics Nation wants Mike Sweeney on the A's. Blez at Athletics Nation is willing to trade Erubiel Durazo and Dan Johnson and Eric Byrnes for him. Blez at Athletics Nation has lost his mind. Sure, Sweeney is a slugging first baseman and Scott Hatteberg isn't. But if Durazo were traded for Sweeney, that wouldn't fill a hole in Oakland's lineup. Durazo's translated slugging percentage last year was .536. His PECOTA mean projection for this year is .481. The same figures for Sweeney are .509 and .479. So that's no upgrade, in other words. Durazo even had a superior OBP last year and it wasn't all batting average. Yes, his walk rate decreased, but if you're getting more balls to hit, you're going to hit them. Blez does note that Sweeney is an injury risk. Problem is, he understates the case. Sweeney isn't an injury risk. Sweeney is an injury certainty. He has a chronic back problem. That's not going to get better with a move to the great salt air of Oakland. As I said in my last post, the answer isn't Reggie Sanders or Mike Sweeney, particularly if it's going to cost the A's essentially equal (or better) players than they're actually getting. The answer is (and Klutts said this in his comment on my last post) to get Johnson up to the bigs and push Hatteberg to the bench. Whether that's done by exchanging Thomas or, more likely with Swisher hurt now, Jermaine Clark, doesn't really matter. What matters is getting Hatteberg on the bench, where his bat is actually a weapon as it represents an improvement over banjo-hitting middle-infield types. Remember: Eric Byrnes, though streaky, isn't the problem. Erubiel Durazo, though infuriatingly not what we expected of a White Whale, is not the problem. Eric Chavez, nasty facial hair and all, is not the problem. The problem is the unwillingness to get a sacred cow or two out of the lineup. Whether that falls on Ken Macha, Billy Beane, or elsewhere in the organization is impossible to say, but someone needs to figure something out around the Oakland offices before this ugly season gets any uglier.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 15:16 | |