Beaneball

Follow this link for a post at Athletics Nation that mentions this rumor mentioned by Mychael Urban, A's beat writer for MLB.com, author of a book about Oakland's former Three Aces, and creative name speller. For those who don't like links, the rumor is this: the A's would send Eric Byrnes and a "low-level prospect" to St. Louis for Reggie Sanders. The idea would be to solve Oakland's power-hitting woes. Does this make sense for the A's? (All stats in this analysis are either Davenport Translations or Equivalent stats, so as to create a level playing field between Sanders and Byrnes.) Sanders is 37 this year, Byrnes is 29. Byrnes has put up slugging percentages of .475 and .480 the last two years, and is projected by PECOTA (weighted mean) for .473 this year; the same numbers for Sanders are .577, .472, and .496. Sanders is off to a .485 slugging start to this year; Byrnes's number is a paltry .360. Sanders makes $2 million this year and $4 million next year; Byrnes makes $2.2 million this year and is unsigned for next (he's arbitration-eligible but not free-agent-eligible). (Salary data is courtesy of the fantastic Hardball Dollars site, taking over where Dugout Dollars left off.) With the salaries essentially even (and, if Byrnes has a good year, likely to be essentially even next year as well), the trade would essentially be the "low-level prospect" for a boost of .010 to .030 slugging points. On the other hand, the upside is a little higher in Sanders's case than Byrnes, which is surprising, given their ages: Byrnes's 90th percentile PECOTA slugging is .535; Sanders's 75th percentile PECOTA slugging is .531. Because of his age, you've probably guessed, without me quoting numbers, that Sanders's downside is much lower than Byrnes's. You might assume that Sanders isn't going to hit that downside, though, because he'd probably already be showing signs of done-ness: his current .265 isolated slugging, needless to say, isn't a sign of done-ness. On the other hand, he's hitting .228. The reduction in batting average doesn't seem to be coming from a lack of contact, though: his strikeout rate is actually down from last year. If the A's need an injection of power, then, I think Sanders would not be a bad target, assuming, of course, that the low-level prospect isn't really a top-shelf low-level prospect. I'd figure Billy Beane would try to sell Sanders off at the end of 2005, or even at the trading deadline, if the A's are out of it, either capitalizing on a good year to sell high or else dumping his contract if he looks done. Of course, the question begged is whether the A's need an injection of power. Sure, 19 homers is pitiful. Yes, the A's have the lowest slugging percentage in the American League, lower than the on-base percentage of four different teams. No, the problem can't be explained away by their ugly batting average, because their Isolated slugging of .106 is also the worst in the league. All of that said, though, do the A's need new players, or do the players they have need to play better? You have to believe that Byrnes, Erubiel Durazo, and Eric Chavez, as will Nick Swisher and Bobby Crosby when they get back from their owies, will all hit far better than they have. Also, remember that Oakland was already punting power at first (Scott Hatteberg), second (Mark Ellis, though Keith Ginter was supposed to give some relief there), center (Mark Kotsay), and, especially, catcher (Jason Kendall), and it's not one of those positions that's being upgraded: it's a position from which power was already supposed to come. You start to get the feeling that Scott Hatteberg is something of a sacred cow around Oakland. If the team really wants to shake things up, why not bring up Dan Johnson and let him hang around first base for a while? Let Hatteberg get a start or two a week and be a nice OBP source off the bench. The A's have the perfect opportunity to do this now that Swisher is hurt. Instead, they got scared, I guess, about having "only" four outfielders, and pulled Jermaine Clark up. Johnson is 25, so it's getting close to "now or never" time, his PECOTA mean projection has him hitting .347/.452 OBP/SLG, and his upside, even this year, is great: his 90th percentile projection is .394/.528 OBP/SLG. It's been the rare A's move that sabermetrically-minded fans have moaned about, but the Scott Hatteberg signing and subsequent relegation of Dan Johnson (and Graham Koonce, even) to secondary, "Sorry, no chance" status has been infuriating. This team is supposed to be the one that's closest to a meritocracy in the whole game, and our reward for that is a first baseman with a sub-.700 OPS? Ouch.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 20:53 | |

One of my kids loves to taunt me about the A's, and while his Red Sox (yes, he's a Sox fan in New York, though I'll testify on his behalf that he was one before they won the Series) have won a championship more recently than my A's, I can always come back at him with the recent success the A's have had getting to the playoffs. Unfortunately, I can't bring that up about last year, and it's looking like more of this same this season. What he mentioned when I walked into class today, though, was, "It's about time Barry Zito got a win." My response? "Yep." What else can I say to that? "He should have won one other game this year, but didn't get much offensive support"? That's weak. No, Barry Zito just hasn't been good enough to win ballgames for his club this year and through large stretches of last season. Nobody can seem to figure out how he's supposed to turn this around and we're all sort of realizing that maybe the best course of action was to trade him after he won his Cy Young a few years ago. What's (not) done is (not) done, though, so there's no use spilling milk in my tears or whatever. Let's just rejoice that Barry Zito (huzzah!) won a game yesterday (HUZZAH!). Sure, he only struck out one Mariner in seven innings. And sure, he was something less than economical, throwing 4.75 pitches to the average Mariner hitter. But he didn't walk anybody, he didn't give up any home runs (and gave up two extra-base hits overall, helped by his 12/7 G/F ratio). That's 2/3 of the battle right there, as far as Zito is concerned. The defense did the rest, taking his 23 balls in play and allowing just five hits as well as turning three double plays. The lack of homers and walks combined with the defense conspired to limit Zito's propensity for the big inning, as his runs were given up in single doses, one in the third and one in the sixth. As if you needed more waffling out of me, though (yes, I am aware that I do a lot of it), I should note that another base stealer reached succesfully against Jason Kendall. Ichiro! took second in the ninth inning against Octavio Dotel, which is, of course, a critical situation, the game being decided by one run and all. I don't know that Adam Melhuse is much of a thrower, but at some point, do you consider going to him in the late innings? The offense wasn't great, as three runs tends to not win as many ballgames as you'd like, but eight hits and a walk is a decent output. What we end up with is just one member of the starting lineup for last night hitting under .200: Eric Byrnes. The A's aren't necessarily bursting out of slumps or anything, but there does seem to be some semblence of offensive life coming back.

Standings

Oakland is right where we left them last year, in second place, a game back of Anaheim. They've been outscored on the year, though, which is never a good sign for a team with hopes of contention. Unsurprisingly, that has come from their lack of offense. Just two teams have scored fewer runs than the A's. One of them (Cleveland) is just one run behind despite playing one fewer game and the other (Pittsburgh), while admittedly quite some distance back (23 runs), has played two fewer games. They're grouped with a bunch of teams toward the top of the middle of the pack in runs allowed and, while you might expect some of those teams to fall off a little (Chicago's Sox and Milwaukee's Brewers, perhaps), I wouldn't expect the A's run prevention to radically improve. It's going to have to be the offense, then, which should come as no surprise to the non-comatose.

Next up

The A's are at home for three against the Rangers. Pitching for Oakland will be Rich Harden, Kirk Saarloos, and Dan Haren. You've got to hope for mediocrity out of Saarloos against a tough offensive team. Luckily, he's up against the guy having the worst year of the three Texas starters, Chris Young. Unluckily, there are some things not to like in his statistical profile for the year. He's got a healthy strikeout rate (7 per nine), has only allowed one gopher ball in 26.7 innings, and is walking 2.7 batters per nine innings. In other words, you wouldn't necessarily expect an ERA closer to five than four. The other matchups similarly leave plenty for the pessimist to moan about: Kenny Rogers would probably love to start up a new streak at the Coliseum against Rich Harden tonight and Chan Ho Park seems to finally have come alive for the Rangers (ERA under 4.00). This is one of those series where I wouldn't be surprised by a sweep out of either team, nor by anything in between. Want me to make a call? Oakland takes two of three.

Injuries

Ok, just one. Let's just hope Nick Swisher is ok. It's not like he was hitting all that great, and this'll give the A's a chance to show off the supposedly five-deep outfield they built, but still, you don't like to see a good hitter, whether he's hitting well or not, hurt. Will Carroll's latest column has no news, except that Swisher's sure to hit the DL, which is unsurprising given the A's reluctance with handing out medical information, but he doesn't sound any notes of alarm, either.

ARC

Moving on to things where I might have something original to say, here's today's ARC report. As usual, here's the link to the explanation. Most Valuable Pitcher for 5/1: Barry Zito, for a strong start. Least Valuable Pitcher for 5/1: None. All three pitchers did their jobs. Most Valuable Offensive Player for 5/1: Eric Chavez, who had two hits and a walk and appears to be getting back on track offensively. Least Valuable Offensive Player for 5/1: Eric Byrnes, who, sadly enough for him, wouldn't even have been in the game but for Swisher's injury. An 0-3 with two men left in scoring position is ugly. Check out the ARC page here, or linked in the Stats section in the sidebar.

ARC Standings

No changes at the top of the ARC standings. Check out the ARC Standings page here or linked in the Stats section in the sidebar.

Relievers

If you notice that the projected dERA numbers have changed and that the in-season numbers are very different, it's because I got park-adjustments working in the DIPS spreadsheet. I also decided to give decent guesses for HBP's and IBB's, neither of which are predicted by PECOTA (at least not visibly). A few shifts in the stats of the relievers combined with good relievers working tight games recently have pushed Ken Macha's usage number down six spots since we last updated, from 18 to 12 (the scale is 0-24, from good to bad). Good job Kenny! Check out the Relievers page here or linked in the Stats section in the sidebar.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 19:57 | |

I've done what I did with the Red Sox for the A's. The results are here. The recap: Miller wins with Blanton, Duchscherer, Harden, Harville, Mecir, Redman, Rincon, and Saarloos. Melhuse wins with Bradford, Dotel, Garcia, Hammond, Hudson, Lehr, Mulder, Rhodes, and Zito. So the initial score is 9-8, Melhuse. We're going to throw out Blanton, though, because he only threw to 30 batters all year. Garcia only got a brief callup and faced just 32 batters, so he's out. Finally, Harville gets the same treatment: he was traded after facing just 11 batters. With those revisions, then, we get an 8-6 edge for Melhuse. Combine that small edge with the fact that the differences in Redman, Mulder, Hudson, and Bradford's dERA's are pretty small (note that three of those fall on the Melhuse side) and we can conclude ... not much. If we knew that catchers really did have an effect on pitchers, we'd conclude that Melhuse and Miller were about equal last year. Unfortunately, we don't know that, so this only adds a data point to the "random" side of the debate.

Posted by jason in Baseball at 21:21 | |

Bill James mentioned recently that he didn't think the Catcher ERA discussion should be closed just yet. This made me wonder whether the year-to-year randomness in catcher ERA seen by researchers in the past was perhaps more due to the DIPS problem, i.e. that balls in play don't tend to be terribly well-controlled by the pitcher (nor by the catcher, you'd assume) and thus can cause undeserved fluctuation in a pitcher's runs-allowed record. Where a catcher could have effect, possibly, is precisely where the pitcher has effect: the DIPS stats. People talk all the time about catchers "framing" pitches, and it stands to reason that some catchers might be better at this than others, resulting in fluctuations for the pitchers in walks and strikeouts. How they might affect home runs is harder to see, but if a catcher can, overall, make a pitcher better, then they might help their pitchers avoid the long ball. The process of getting some preliminary data for this study is tedious, but I did it anyway: I broke down the Boston Red Sox pitchers in 2004 by their catchers and calculated the DIPS ERA (using Larry Mahnken's worksheets) for each combination. The results are here. It should be noted that I couldn't figure out how to get the left vs. right checkbox to do anything, so that adjustment hasn't been made. The same goes for knuckleballers, which is particularly important in this case, since Tim Wakefield is in the data set. That said, the adjustment wasn't made for any of the catchers involved, or any of the pitchers involved, so comparisons between the data are still fair. The usual weaknesses of this kind of study persist: the backup catcher (Doug Mirabelli) caught far fewer innings than the starter (Jason Varitek) did. That said, here's the list of pitchers where Mirabelli's DIPS ERA was lower than Varitek's: Adams, Arroyo, Astacio, Brown, DiNardo, Embree, Foulke, Kim, Leskanic, Lowe, A. Martinez, P. Martinez, McCarty, Mendoza, Myers, Nelson, Schilling, Timlin. Varitek wins with Williamson, Wakefield, Malaska, and Anderson. Four pitchers out of a shared set of 22. Are we on to something? Maybe. It'll take someone smarter than me to really nail something down here, but at the very least, assuming someone else hasn't done this already and I missed it, hopefully I've created something we can run with.

Posted by jason in Baseball at 15:28 | |

Andrew Koch does an interesting calculation of what percentage of a team's earned runs various starters have allowed. Barry Zito is at the "top" of the list.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 12:42 | |

Mike Hargrove said after last night's loss to the A's, "We have the bases loaded in the eighth and ninth innings and only score one run. That's a tough way to win a ballgame." Funny, that's what I've been telling the A's for about three weeks now. The A's and M's split the first two games of their series, so the rubber game is today, with Barry Zito going against Joel Pineiro. If Zito were nobody, would a year and a month of struggling to throw strikes and keep the ball in the park have him relegated to Sacramento? Probably. But because he's Barry Zito, and there's supposedly some hidden great pitcher in there, we keep waiting around for him, letting him start and letting the A's lose 20% of their games before they've even taken the field. Ok, that's harsh, because the A's do win sometimes when Zito is on the mound. He did, after all, managed an 11-11 record last year. He's 0-4 this year, though, and the A's lost the game in which he got a no-decision. Maybe Oakland should have taken Ben Sheets after all.

Catching

Oh, Jason Kendall? How's that whole throwing out runners thing going? Sure, you have an excuse, because one of the stolen bases yesterday was of home (!) on the back end of a double steal, but still, you allowed two steals of second in two tries. That means that for the year, you've got a .625 OPS and you've caught 10.7% of the runners who've tried to steal on you. Why, exactly, are you taking home $10.5 million again?

Hitting

Maybe, just maybe, the A's are ready to come out of their collective slump. Ten players got into the game yesterday for Oakland and four of them are hitting below .200 for the year. Sure, that's awful. But it's also better than the last time I did this count, when just four out of ten were above .200. And before you go all stathead-y on me and start spluttering about on-base percentage, just realize that the four players who are hitting under .200 have OBP's of .276, .276, .293, and .263. So no, they're not walking enough to make up the difference. All of that said, the A's had six different players earn their way on base more than once yesterday, including Mark Kotsay's five-hit performance. Combine that decent work out of the bullpen (Octavio Dotel's blown save in the ninth notwithstanding) and you've got a recipe for wins. For some reason, the A's seem to think this formula is a secret, but I'm pretty sure all of baseball, stathead front offices or not, have figured out that if you pitch, hit, and play defense (two double plays, no errors), you'll win some games. Maybe I should write a book and send it to Ken Macha.

Freaky performance

Keiichi Yabu, in earning his second major league win, threw a scoreless inning in just eight pitches despite walking a batter. That's impressive.

Stat reports

Big update today, including the A's in the Leaderboards report, since it's Sunday.

ARC

What's ARC? Most Valuable Pitcher, 4/29: Dan Haren, who had a quality start (three runs in seven innings) and even struck out nine batters for good measure. Sure, he walked three, but the real reason the A's lost was lack of offense, as usual, as that juggernaut Mariner pen of Thornton, Putz, and Villone combined in the middle innings to shut the A's down. Ugh. Least Valuable Pitcher, 4/29: Ricardo Rincon, who gave up a homer to the first batter he faced. Most Valuable Offensive Player, 4/29: Nick Swisher, with a vanilla 1-3 with a walk, which tells you how well the A's offense did that day. Least Valuable Offensive Player, 4/29: Marco Scutaro, who hit into a two-on, no-out double play in the fourth. Most Valuable Pitcher, 4/30: Octavio Dotel, who worked out of a jam in the eighth, then again in the ninth, despite giving up the tying run. Least Valuable Pitcher, 4/30: Kiko Calero, who faced four batters, got one out, and left the bases juiced for Dotel. Most Valuable Offensive Player, 4/30: Mark Kotsay (duh), with five hits, including the game winner. Least Valuable Offensive Player, 4/30: Eric Byrnes, who got a classic LVOP: a bad day directly behind a guy having a good day. If you're 0-4 and the guy in front of you is 5-6, you know you're going to wind up with a bad ARC score for that day. The only change at the top of the ARC Standings is Ricardo Rincon moving into a tie for first in most LVP's. For the season to date, from the ARC page, we see that Rich Harden and Juan Cruz have been the top and bottom pitchers, respectively, while for hitters, it's been Mark Kotsay and Eric Byrnes. None of which should come as a surprise. The only real race is for the bottom of the hitter pack, where Byrnes, Eric Chavez, Erubiel Durazo, and Nick Swisher are all involved in a big scrum for the honor.

Posted by jason in Baseball, Oakland A's at 11:20 | |