Beaneball

Let me take a shot at answering Rich Lederer's 32 questions about Paul DePodesta and the Dodgers. This ought to be fun, right?

1. Why did McCourt hire DePodesta in the first place? McCourt got caught in the kind of thinking infamous at the big LaLaLand film production companies. Get the hot young starlet, use her up, and spit her out. That's not a perfect analogy (what ever is?). DePodesta was more like the hot indie actor that some big studio was going to take a chance on, asking him to carry a movie. Then, of course, when the first movie bombs, you send the actor packing, even though the script was awful and the director was incomptent.
2. Why did he give him a five-year deal and then fire him in less than two years? Hollywood mentality. Instant gratification. Moving away from metaphor and analogy, McCourt doesn't understand baseball, doesn't understand what makes a team successful. He saw Theo Epstein come in and win immediately, and he wanted the same thing. He wasn't smart enough to realize that the core Theo inherited was vastly superior to the one DePodesta was saddled with, and that he didn't have half the problems to deal with.
3. Did he hire him because Moneyball was in? I'd put money on it. See also: Romeo Crennel and Charlie Weis in the NFL this past off-season.
4. With the White Sox the new World Series champs, is Moneyball now out and Smartball--or whatever the hell you call the newest, latest, and greatest way to win--in? Did that influence the McCourts? I don't think so, despite what I said above. I'm conjecturing that the real reason this ended up happening was a culture clash, personality problems, between DePodesta and McCourt/Lasorda. I don't think they're going to go out and hire Joey Cora as their manager and, I don't know, Willie McGee as their GM. But I think they figured, "Well, if we don't like the guy and we only won 71 games, what's the good in keeping him around?" They ignored the fact that, whether DePodesta has poor social skills, whether you don't like him or not, he's more likely than a lot of potential GMs to build a winner in Los Angeles, and in the end, winning is what makes money, not the ability of some back-asswards media to get along with your executive staff.
5. Why wasn't leadership, now a "very important characteristic" in the search for the new GM, not valued 20 months ago when DePo was hired? To be fair, it's possible that DePodesta isn't actually a good leader. It's possible that this was, in fact, a reason for clashes between Lasorda/McCourt and DePodesta. It's also possible that DePodesta didn't have the force of personality to assert himself in the face of opposition within the organization, or maybe that he just didn't want to deal with it. DePodesta could drop out of baseball today and find a job getting paid big bucks at some Fortune 500 company. Baseball teams need him more than he needs them. It's understandable why he might not bother to go all Brian Cashman on the Dodgers. On the other hand, maybe he did try to pull a Cashman, telling McCourt that if the team wasn't going to be his team, then he wasn't going to stick around, so McCourt sent him packing.
6. Ditto for being a "good communicator" and finding "someone with the experience to do the job?" Again to try to be fair, it is possible that DePodesta doesn't communicate well with his underlings. It's more likely that the team didn't like his relationship with the Plaschkes of the world and want someone with more experience soothing the giant egos in the local media. Once again, though, McCourt didn't learn the Red Sox lesson: give your guy a chance to win and the media will get in line.
7. Why do executives go a complete 180 when they hire a replacement for the guy who failed previously? This is semi-justifiable. If you're firing a guy for lack of performance, then presumably you want to fix the things that he was doing wrong. Ideally, you'd just find someone better instead of different. That's not always easy, though, particularly when it'd be tough to say the guy you're replacing actually did a bad job.
8. If experience is so important, why do the McCourts think they know how to run a baseball team? They are being a little presumptuous, aren't they? Also, it's not as if DePodesta was a total neophyte. He'd been around the game for a few years before he got his shot. It's not like they hired him straight out of Harvard.
9. Why don't the standards they hold to others apply to themselves? It's not in the nature of the leaders in this country to display any type of accountability. Let me make a link to the corporate scandals of recent times. Why would we think that Fortune 500 CEO's would display less hubris, hold themselves responsible for their failings, if everyone in our government, right up to the President, can't do the same thing? How much passing the buck, how much hiding of secrets and shredding of documents, both in the private and public sectors, has to go on before we reach a critical point and something happens to change it all? How did it happen that a country with a revolutionary history got so bogged down in muck and mire of corruption and cronyism in so little time? When did the ideals get abandoned? When did mediocrity become the norm?
10. Just why is Jamie McCourt Vice Chairman and President? See the Murdoch family. And note how well they're doing.
11. Other than being married to Frank, what are her qualifications? She wasn't feminist enough to keep her last name when she married. That's all the qualification you need.
12. Who else interviewed for that job? I wonder if baseball's "gotta interview minorities" rules apply to those positions? Would Bud Selig be mad if the owner just went down to UCLA and interviewed the first 20 kids he saw? He'd probably meet the diversity requirements that way.
13. Was Drew McCourt really 23 years old when he was appointed Director of Marketing last April? Well, the team does have a history of hiring young whiz kids (see, e.g., Paul DePodesta).
14. When did the Dodgers become Sly and the Family Stone? If only. I might dance like I've got ass in my pants if that were true.
15. If leadership, being a good communicator, someone with experience, and having a "keen eye for baseball talent" are so important, why didn't McCourt hire Pat Gillick rather than DePodesta? He didn't ghostwrite a textbook on how to build a baseball team.
16. What would Gillick bring to the table today that he didn't back when he interviewed for the same position in 2004? He's a few years older and that much wiser. DePodesta was just keeping the chair warm for the up-and-coming Gillick anyway.
17. If McCourt "wants Dodgers here," then how does Gillick fit into that goal? Gillick has GM'd for lots of teams that wear blue in the past. DePodesta worked for teams that wear red, green, and yellow. Gillick is much more likely to bleed blue when he gets stabbed in the back in three years.
18. What makes Bobby Valentine such a great choice? This one's defensible. I love Bobby V. Thing is, if personality matters as much as it apparently does down in Dodgerland, isn't Bobby V precisely the wrong choice? Isn't the only reason he's not managing in the big leagues that he aggravates people?
19. Would Gillick or whoever becomes the new GM truly pick the next manager or will there be an understanding that Valentine is the manager in waiting? I wouldn't be surprised if McCourt dispenses with pretense altogether and hires a manager before a GM.
20. Has anyone pointed out that it took Valentine more games (1,704) to reach the playoffs (in 1999 with the Mets) than any other manager since divisional play began in 1969? That's just unfair. Nine .500+ seasons out of twelve is pretty damn good, especially considering the talent level of some of those teams.
21. If Tommy Lasorda is so fond of Valentine, why didn't he hire him as one of his coaches after Bobby retired in 1979 and before he became the manager of the Texas Rangers in 1985? Because it took some time for Valentine to prove himself as a manager?
22. If Lasorda's comment that Orel Hershiser's "not qualified" for the GM position is correct "because he has never done it," then would any of us have ever gotten a promotion to a new position? Based on that logic, wouldn't we all still be cavemen? Has Lasorda ever said anything to show that he himself isn't a caveman? On the other hand, maybe I shouldn't be slandering cavemen. That Geico guy sure got himself torn a new one, didn't he?
23. Why would a "special advisor" be so widely quoted in the press? Aren't such confidantes supposed to be more behind the scenes types? Lasorda-as-Karl-Rove ain't gonna happen. Really, be glad for that, because he probably would have orchestrated a locust attack on an Angels game at some point.
24. Has Lasorda ever done anything behind the scenes, other than snipe about guys like DePodesta, Fred Claire, and Bill Russell? On the other hand, it's working, ain't it? DePodesta got fired.
25. How did the Dodgers perform the year Lasorda was named special advisor? Now, now, we can't go instituting the same standards of accountability on people like Lasorda as we do on people like DePodesta.
26. Is he not to blame for the Dodgers' problems this year or is that Al Campanis' fault, too? Blame, fault, ... what do these words even mean?
27. Has there ever been anyone who clamored [for] the spotlight more than Tommy? I'm sure I could come up with someone. Tom Cruise, maybe?
28. As long as Lasorda is in a position of power, why would anyone other than one of his cronies or a McCourt family member want to become the next GM or manager? There's always the hope that you can be the man (or woman) who can actually unite the factions, who can get along with everyone while still creating the team in your own mold. There are only thirty of these jobs out there. It'd be pretty damn hard to pass it up if offered, whether you know it's a toxic situation or not.
29. If McCourt is so fond of staying the course, why did he let DePodesta go? Again with the demands for accountability and consistency.
30. When did that course begin? In 1955 when the Dodgers won their first championship? In 1958 when they moved to Los Angeles? In 1977 when Lasorda became manager? In 2004 when McCourt bought the team? Or a few weeks later when DePodesta was hired? All of the above, depending on which is more convenient at the time.
31. Is baseball the only business in the world in which a degree from Harvard is a negative? If only the rest of the world followed baseball's lead. The country would be a better place if everyone weren't so in awe of that damn place. Who knew that your grade in high school history would be so important?
32. Wasn't the late and great Branch Rickey the forefather of the use of baseball statistics in player evaluation? Maybe Earnshaw Cook. He never gets enough pub.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Baseball at 20:38 | |

Lee Sinins's ATM Report points me to a couple bits of interesting news. I'll put them in reverse order of what's the most interesting and relevant for A's fans. First, Mike Schmidt has interviewed for the Devil Rays's managerial job. This is only interesting in that I think a lot of people assumed he was being groomed for the Phillies job eventually. However, with the changes at the top (see next item), it's not obvious that the team will retain the same feelings for Schmidt as they did under Ed Wade. Thus it makes sense for Schmidt to look anywhere he can for an opportunity. There haven't been that many managers who were also Hall of Fame players, or even close to Hall of Fame players. Frank Robinson jumps out at you, of course, because he's still hanging around. Perusing the list of managers at Baseball Reference, though, here's the entire list of post-WWII major league managers who were Hall of Fame players:

• Luke Appling managed Kansas City for just 40 games, winning only 10.
• Yogi Berra managed in three different decades despite working just seven seasons, and compiled a .522 winning percentage in 930 games, with two pennants, one in each league, and no last-place finishes.
• Lou Boudreau was a player-manager, but continued to manage after he stopped playing, working seven seasons for three teams, but never finishing higher than fourth place.
• Max Carey managed two seasons with the Dodgers, winning 47.6% of his games.
• Larry Doby managed the White Sox for 87 games in 1978, winning 37 of them.
• Billy Herman managed three full seasons, plus two games in 1964 (he won both games). His full-season teams finished 7th, 9th, and 9th.
• Rogers Hornsby managed two seasons after retiring as a player and went 113-135.
• Bob Lemon managed in nine different seasons, winning 51.6% of his games and one World Series (in 1978, when he was the third Yankee manager of the year).
• Ted Lyons managed three years, never finishing higher than fifth.
• Eddie Mathews managed in three different seasons, going 149-161.
• Tony Perez managed in two different seasons, going 74-84.
• Frank Robinson has now managed in 15 seasons and won 47.8% of his 2080 games, never finishing higher than second. He's just six wins from 1000, though.
• Red Schoendist twelve full seasons and parts of two others, winning 52% of his games, two pennants, and one World Series.
• Ted Williams managed four years but never finished higher than fourth.

This list isn't an overwhelming testament to managerial ability. For the most part, I'm guessing a lot of these guys were chosen for box-office draw, or other reasons than necessarily for their overall managerial ability. After all that, the second bit of news is that Pat Gillick and Gerry Hunsicker have been interviewed for the Phillies GM position. It's interesting to see that despite the sort of copycatism that's going on with regard to teams hiring the next hot young statistical analyst as their GM (see next item), there are still places where guys who are a little older, maybe a little more conservative in their baseball views, have a chance. That said, I do recall Hunsicker being known for his open-ness to statistical analysis in his time in Houston, so it's not like we're bringing back Herk Robinson or anything. (Here's some commentary from Jeff Hildebrand.) Third, Josh Byrnes has been hired as the GM of the Diamondbacks. Byrnes as an assistant in Boston under Theo Epstein and is one of those whiz-kid types. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, because Arizona has Jeff Moorad running the team as CEO. It seems that more teams are going with these types of arrangements: see the hiring of Sandy Alderson in San Diego, as well as the Larry Lucchino situation in Boston. Coming from the Red Sox and one of those "crowded front office" situations, Byrnes will probably be at less of a disadvantage in dealing with it than other candidates might have been. Finally, and most interestingly to us, Paul DePodesta is apparently set to be fired this weekend by Frank McCourt. It seems ridiculous that McCourt would want to get rid of DePodesta after giving him all of two seasons (one of which he didn't really have a chance to put his team on the field) to prove himself. A huge part of a GM's job is in building a whole system, creating the kind of thing the A's have where injuries and outgoing free agents don't hurt the team because they've got talent coming up. That kind of system takes years to put in place, particularly in a situation as difficult as the one DePodesta inherited in Los Angeles. Suppose Billy Beane had been told after 1998 that since the team had won about 43% of its games since he took over, he was going to be fired. The owners gave him time, and he rewarded them for their patience. That said, I'm sure if DePodesta wants to come back to the A's, Beane will be glad to have him. Back to the fold, Paul, back to the fold!

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Baseball at 10:59 | |

The Lakers sent Jumaine Jones to Charlotte for a second round draft pick today. Finally. No, I'm not a Jones fan. I thought he played way too much last year at the expense of guys like Devean George, Caron Butler, Luke Walton, and even Slava Medvedenko. It always seemed like he had 25 minutes with about four points, two rebounds, and three turnovers, and watching games when he was in was even more infuriating. He's probably not nearly that bad a player, but the Lakers did have a glut at small forward, especially considering Lamar Odom is playing out of position at the power forward, but getting rid of Jones and using Butler to get Kwame Brown lessens that a little bit. You could argue that Brown wasn't worth Butler by himself, much less with other players, but we'll just ignore that for the moment. *** And yes, as soon as the A's do something, I'll comment on it.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Basketball, L.A. Lakers at 21:31 | |

Brian Leiter has a post about protests against Professor John Yoo at Boalt, who wrote the infamous memo making the case that the U.S. could torture detainees. A student at Boalt whose Con Law class was interrupted by the protest wrote in. The most relevant quote from the email that Leiter posted is here:

I'm certain most of my classmates are very respectful of his right to teach here, while disagreeing with his politics. Similarly, those of us in the class were pissed off as hell that our time was taken from us.

On the other hand, here's one of the students who was involved in the protest (from the story that Leiter links to):

There's a lot of concern about the disruption of studies, but my own studies are being disrupted when I can't sleep because I dream about what the world is like.

Now, that's a little over-dramatic, but I like his style. Particularly for law students, it doesn't seem there's a lot of choice over who your professors are. If you're in section X, and section X is assigned to have Prof. Yoo for ConLaw, then you've got him. It doesn't matter how disgusting or distasteful you find what he did, you have to take his class if you want to graduate. Imagine being told that the author of a memo that discussed ways to get around civil rights law and keep Black people from voting was going to be your professor and you've got the situation these students are in. But they're not reacting! They care that their studies are interrupted, but they don't care that the man in front of the room, teaching them about the Constitution, didn't have strong enough morals to refuse to write such a memo. The lax attitudes of the students in Yoo's class is a strong point in favor of the National Lawyers' Guild's argument that law school creates an environment that promotes conservatism and keeps dissent to a minimum. Remember, this is Berkeley! Shouldn't there be a little more outrage? A little more concern for something other than the big-money job at Morrison & Foerster after graduation?

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in News at 16:20 | |

Bill Simmons will probably find it in himself to make at least fourteen jokes about this, but I'm happy that Sheryl Swoopes has come out in an interview with ESPN The Magazine that's out today. The more prominent and successful who come out, I think, the more closeted people have role models to follow, and the more we can have an open society that promotes acceptance. It is, however, no coincidence that the first major athlete to come out while still an active player is a woman. It's obvious and commonly known that lesbians are more accepted than gay men, due to the popular "inversion" theory that many people (incorrectly) believe in about homosexuality: lesbians are "more masculine" women and gay men are "more feminine" men. In a patriarchal society such as ours, it's better (in the sense of societal advantages) to be more masculine than feminine, so of course lesbians are better-regarded than gay men. This preference for masculinity (and thus discrimination against gay men) will only be magnified in the macho world of men's sports. I worry about the potential backlash against Swoopes, and hope that her teammates don't do anything bigoted like demand separate showers or something. UPDATE: Off Wing Opinion, one of the better sports blogs around, has some comments on the topic, and mentions Bill Simmons also. See also Deadspin with a note that the timing (toward the end of Swoopes's career) makes this less important than it might be otherwise; OutSports also has a story that includes a couple of quotes from ex-NFL player Esera Tuaolo, who came out after he retired.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Basketball at 14:53 | |

I totally meant to mention this yesterday, but it slipped as the anger over the subject grew: where's the NBA union in this whole fiasco? I've read nothing about a union response, and if this isn't a place where the representatives (both players and non-players) should be stepping in and saying something, I don't know what is. Thanks to Michael McCann at Sports Law Blog (one of my favorites on the blogosphere in general, particularly now that I'm actually in law school) for pointing this out.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Basketball at 20:14 | |

A guest-blogger at Eduwonk wonders whether there are other things to offer "meritorious teachers" instead of just pay increases, and suggests a sort of "slush fund" reward that would give teachers money to spend on their classrooms. I'm not sure how serious (s)he is being, but the idea that meritorious teachers should get money to improve their classrooms and their schools (like the idea of teachers banding together to hire a social worker) and "bad" teachers shouldn't is ridiculous. Utterly insane. What kind of logic is it that sends the scarce resources a system has to the places where they're least needed? Merit pay is a bad idea on its own, simply because the idea of rewarding teachers for test scores is a horrible one. I've said it before and I'll say it again: these little incremental fixes (like merit pay, or smaller schools, or buses to the suburbs) people keep wanting to implement aren't going to get the job done. Education needs to be completely re-imagined and have its purposes re-investigated before anything's ever going to get fixed. As long as we're focused on the idea that a student's vocabulary quiz is all that matters, education isn't going to work all that well.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Education at 16:55 | |

I haven't weighed in on the new NBA dress code, in part because that's not really my area and in part because I didn't have anything to add that wasn't being said better elsewhere. I proofread a paper for Austen today, though, that gave me a little germ of an idea I'd like to mention here. Also, and I'll talk about this first, I want to mention something from my experience teaching high school in the Bronx and living in New York in general. The school I taught in was almost exclusively Dominican, Puerto Rican, and African American (what de-segregation?). Everybody, for the most part, dressed alike, in the "urban" style that the NBA wants its players to stop wearing: baggy jeans, sagged low, often adorned with logos; big t-shirts, often knee-length, often plain, solid-colored; hooded sweatshirts; do-rags; flat-brimmed hats cocked at a variety of angles, depending on mood; and visible gaudy jewelry. (Note, of course, that I'm just talking about males here; there were females in the school, but we're not worried about them in a discussion of the NBA's dress code.) I've noticed the argument that the dress code is reflective of a generation gap between the players and the owners, rather than a race one, because older black men don't wear the clothes these young kids in the NBA wear. That, however, would come as news to many of the fathers I met while I was teaching, as well as many of the 35-years+ Black and Latino men I've seen walking around the city. Perhaps this is a localized phenomenon, and in most parts of the country, the "urban" style stops being the primary mode of dress as men get older. From my experience here, though, I'm not ready to dismiss the racial theory based purely on a supposed generation gap in dress. The other (and, I think, more important) point is about the idea that David Stern, et al., aren't being racist against the players, they're merely protecting their multi-billion dollar business by making adjustments to please the people who spend money on their product. Stern and the owners, the argument goes, don't have anything personal against the players; they're just doing the smart business thing and making their employees dress in a way that their sponsors and fans want them to dress. Even supposing that's true, is the act of furthering institutional racism morally less reprehensible than practicing personal racism? If the sponsors and (white) fans want the players to change, it's because they think the players dress like thugs, like gang-bangers, like street-corner hustlers. They've heard that these styles came from the prisons, where the inmates are forced to wear baggy clothing (another assertion I'm not certain about, though I could be convinced by research). In short, the players scare them. This fear, and the demand that black men conform to a white standard, is the epitome of institutional racism, and it is disgusting. The NBA has the economic power to resist this pressure. Will people really stop watching (paying) because Kobe Bryant wants to show up in a throwback jersey when he's injured? Because Allen Iverson wants to wear his flat-brimmed hat on the sidelines when he's banged up? And if people keep watching, will the advertisers stop buying TV time? The league could, instead of caving, continue to promote their players and the good work they do in their communities. It could educate its fans (and sponsors), showing them that the players, regardless of how they're dressed (or what color their skin is), are not boogeymen, not thugs, not street-corner bangers. But the NBA gave in. The league decided that, rather than help create positive change by allowing people to be themselves, they'd help push the country farther backward in the racial equality department, demanding assimilation (whitification) from its young black employees. No, I'm not blind to the fact that some NBA players do stupid things. Tony Allen has come off pretty thuggish in the last few weeks. Carmelo Anthony made that appearance in a "Stop Snitchin'" DVD. But would Allen wearing a suit on the airplane have stopped him from ordering a beat-down? Would Carmelo removing the bling on the sideline keep him from shooting that video in the off-season? Of course not. The issue is perception, specifically the perceptions of a bunch of white men who live in tony suburbs and gated communities, and whose perceptions are, frankly, racist ones. The NBA, by allowing itself to be pushed around by racist sentiments, is taking on the despicable role of the enabler.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Basketball at 21:08 | |

We saw The Squid and the Whale this weekend, and were mightily disappointed. I'll just quote Austen for you:

What an overrated movie. It was just straightout bad. It hit one note over and over, lacked focus, making it's "resolution" seem too easy and lacking. I don't know what all the fuss about it was. They had good actors and the performances were good and Jesse Eisenberg proved he could act yet again, and Kevin Kline's son is a better actor than his father, but other than that I was thoroughly disappointed.

I'll take credit for first usage of the word "focus" in our post-film discussion, so I've actually contributed something here. This has been a bad year for movies, but not so bad that this gets to crack my Top Ten. There's simply no way a case could be made for Baumbach's bomb over Good Night, and Good Luck.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Movies at 20:30 | |

Nico at Athletics Nation has some ideas about whether the A's, if they add a big bat, should add a lefty to mash righties or a righty to mash lefties. Here's his post in an iframe. I'm not sure what this is going to do for those of you on the feed, but I'll find out in a few hours when I get the feed in my inbox. He notes that despite perception, the A's hit .271/.346 (AVG/OBP) against lefties this year but just .259/.324 against righties. My first idea was to check slugging. Why'd he leave it out? Turns out the A's slugged the same against the two sides: .407 against lefties, .408 against righties. That means that the ISO, a better measure of pure slugging, was about ten points higher against righties than lefties (because of the lower batting average), but ten points isn't huge by any means. On to this other ideas, then. First, that perhaps the A's just faced a higher proportion of lefties while they were "hot" than they did while they were "cold." At first glance, of course, before the hypothesis even gets tested, we have the question of causation. Did the A's get hot because they faced lefties, or did the A's happen to face lefties while they were hot? Eyeballing Baseball Reference's awesome team schedule breakdown (which has a visual representation of the team's streaks - go check it out to see what I mean), we can break the season down into a few chunks. Through May 1, the A's were 13-12 and never had a streak (winning or losing) longer than three games. From May 2 through May 29, the A's went 4-20, so that's a notably bad stretch. Then from May 30 through August 30, Oakland went 58-24, which is pretty good baseball. From then to the end of the season, they went 13-18, another mediocre-to-bad stretch. So let's see what kinds of pitchers they faced during those periods. I'll start off just worried about starters for two reasons: 1) It's easier; 2) I'd guess that bullpen usage isn't going to vary that much because of managers playing the matchups. (Note that this is an untested assumption; I just don't have as much time as I'd like to go into it more.) From the start of the season through May 1, the A's faced 20 righties and 5 lefties. It's nice that it broke down so evenly: that's 80% righties, and the A's won 52% of their games. From May 2 through May 29, the A's faced 16 righties and 8 lefties. That also breaks down nicely. The A's won just 17% of their games while facing 67% right-handed pitching. From May 30 through August 30, the A's faced 55 righties and 27 lefties. That's very close to nicely, but not quite. The A's won 71% of their games while facing 67% right-handed pitching. Finally, from August 31 to the end of the season, the A's faced 25 righties and 6 lefties. That works out to 81% righties and 42% wins. Is there a pattern? When the A's were mediocre, they faced a lot of right-handed starters. When they were awful, they faced a lot of lefties. When they were awesome, they faced a lot of lefties. We could say that the A's play to extremes against lefties, but that seems unlikely. Next idea? That a couple of A's hit lefties better than they should have been expected to. ESPN.com gives you split statistics in a heartbeat, so that makes our job relatively easy here. The guys who hit lefties well are Mark Ellis (313/403/509), Bobby Kielty (322/398/469), Bobby Crosby (314/391/549), Eric Byrnes (329/389/610), Erubiel Durazo (350/381/600), Mark Kotsay (324/359/458), and, for on-base ability, but no real power, Dan Johnson (283/395/404) and Jason Kendall (293/366/335). Now, Durazo only got 40 at-bats against lefties before going down with his elbow, so we'll throw him out. Of course, all the samples are small, but the next-smallest number of at-bats is Eric Byrnes's 82, which is not so out-of-line with Ellis (112) and Crosby (102) that I want to throw him out. Ellis hit 258/333/413 in the three years (though for him, he only had two years) before 2005, so he hit significantly better against lefties this year. That said, his overall performance was so good that I don't think his performance against lefties was fluky. His isolated on-base percentage is about the same as it was before, but his isolated power is greater, both in his split and in his overall numbers, and that's something we might expect as a player gets older, especially one who was small and might have filled out at this point. In other words, while his performance was a pleasant surprise, I don't know if the A's should worry about it dropping off next year to the point where the team's numbers against lefties will decrease. Bobby Kielty was brought to the A's precisely because he had smacked lefties in the past, to the tune of 296/388/504 from '02-'04. His numbers this year, then, were about the same: a little more OBP, a little less slugging. Crosby only had one full year of at-bats prior to '05 and his performance against lefties was awful: 194/287/381. That kind of performance could have easily cost him his Rookie of the Year trophy. That said, the A's probably would have been foolish to expect him to hit that terribly against portsiders in '05, though expecting the excellence he came through with might have been seen as overly optimistic. On the other hand, looking forward, I'd be disappointed if Crosby didn't put up the kinds of numbers against lefties over the next 3-5 years as he did this year. Eric Byrnes had put up good numbers against lefties in the past as well: 298/361/524 from '02-'04. His power spiked (again, as we might expect for a player his age) even beyond an abnormally high batting average, but this production wasn't so out of line with the past that it could be said to be responsible for the team's supposedly fluky performance against lefties. Kotsay had hit 301/360/420 against lefties from '02-'04, so his average was better this year, but the overall OPS gain was only 37 points, so we're not talking smack-your-forehead crazy here. For Dan Johnson, we don't really have anything to go on, but it's not like he went nuts or anything. Given that he's with the A's because of his disciplined, professional-hitter approach, I wouldn't be surprised to see him hit something with 20 OPS of this again next year. Finally, Jason Kendall hit 299/377/360 against lefties in the last three years. His numbers this year, then, were actually worse. It's a small difference, of course, and quite possibly lessened or erased entirely by park effects, but it's clear that he wasn't driving any unreasonable hitting attack against the lefties. In all, then, it doesn't appear that any A's had anything like a "fluke" year against lefties that could explain the performance. In fact, it sort of appears that this is what we'd expect them to do going forward, if not perhaps better due to things like Jay Payton picking it up a little bit, Bobby Crosby getting his full complement of at-bats (taking away from Marco Scutaro), and Erubiel Durazo getting his at-bats (assuming the A's bring him back).

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Baseball, Oakland A's at 18:48 | |

So with the rumors flying that Leo Mazzone was going to join the Yankees, it comes as a surprise to me that he's going to the Orioles on a three-year deal. Not only does he leave the team with which he made his name and which he's helped build into one of the most impressive dynasties of (I'll say it) all time, but he joins a team that hasn't sniffed success since I was in high school. Perhaps strangest of all is that the Orioles brought him in to replace Ray Miller, who's a pretty darn good pitching coach himself. As I recall, the Orioles experienced an immediate turnaround on their pitching staff when Miller was hired mid-year last season. Mazzone brings impeccable credentials to Baltimore, but what's the marginal gain for Baltimore? Is it really worth the extra expense and what's likely to be some ill will on the part of Miller and, perhaps, some of the pitchers as well? This is, obviously, a story to follow for 2006. As for Miller, I hope, if he wants to continue coaching, he gets a job somewhere. Maybe he'd like to come work with the A's. I'd be perfectly happy to see Curt Young go back to the being a minor-league coordinator type, with Miller working in the majors. (This assumes, of course, that Miller's philosophies mesh well with the A's system.) *** On a sadder note, it looks like Larry Walker's called it quits. Walker was a fun one to keep track of. For a guy with such injury problems (he reached 150 games in a season just once) to play seventeen season is a testament to work ethic, dedication, love for the game, and, I think, a whole host of other things. People who think about the game in the way I do tend to discount these things, but they're nice to appreciate sometimes in guys like Walker who battle back time after time from setback after setback. Walker's best season, unsurprisingly, was that season in which he broke 150 games. That was 1997, with the Rockies, when he was 30 years old. Walker posted a .720 slugging percentage that year along with a .366 batting average and .452 on-base percentage. Those are amazing numbers, even accounting for the Coors effect. Adding in a slightly above-average fielding performance, Walker was worth almost 11 wins to his team that year. That was Colorado's best year to date (tied with 1996), but they still managed just 83 wins. Why? Well, that'd likely be due to the fact that the next best players on the team were Vinny Castilla, with 6.7 WARP, and then the immortal Roger Bailey with 5.4 WARP as a pitcher. Consider the Giants in 2000, who leveraged a similar Barry Bonds season (11.4 WARP) into 97 wins and a division crown. That team also had Jeff Kent, who tied with Bonds in WARP, and threw in Rich Aurilia, with 6 WARP, Ellis Burks with 7.2, Bobby Estalella with 5.4, Livan Hernandez with 6.3, and Robb Nen with 7. The team totaled 75 WARP, compared with just 57.4 for the Rockies. Sure, having two superstar seasons helped the Giants, but the Giants won their division by 11 games. If Kent dropped back to "very good" territory (say 8 WARP), the Giants will win going away. The Rockies wasted a number of great post-30 seasons by Walker by not managing to surround him with any talent whatsoever. Walker's not a Hall of Fame guy, but he was a really good player for a long time, and certainly the best Canadian (sorry Tip O'Neill) ever to play our game.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Baseball at 13:35 | |

A teacher friend and I went to see Kathleen Edwards (official site) and My Morning Jacket (official site) at Webster Hall (official site) last night. I'm especially incompetent to write anything approaching a "review" of the show, so consider this a bunch of highly personal observations. First, Kathleen Edwards is awesome! I've gleaned from her website and from some of the things she did on stage that Edwards is in a relationship with her guitarist and producer, Colin Cripps (FirstAct Guitars), which will depress any potential groupies who were in the crowd. Cripps, though, was really good, and his guitar work was featured in a way that I didn't realize from listening to Failer (Village Voice review), Edwards's first album. Edwards played about eight songs, three of which I recognized from Failer. I assume the other five were from her more recent album, Back to Me (MetaCritic reviews), which I (obviously) don't have yet, but which has now vaulted to the top of my wish list. My Morning Jacket, on the other hand, disappointed me a little bit. I've listened to their breakthrough album, It Still Moves (MetaCritic reviews), a number of times, and Austen has an earlier song of theirs (Evelyn is Not Real (lyrics)) on a southern-music compilation (Oxford American Magazine). Their songs tend to be long on instrument, short on lyric, and seemed like they would lend themselves well to live jams. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Sure, the songs on stage were long, but they're long on the album, too. It was too bad that they didn't make more of an attempt to cut it loose up there. Also, the band really seemed to be a little bit self-consciously "rock star"-like, and not in a particularly fun way. The only smile I saw from any of the band members came from keyboardist Bo Koster is the second song of their encore. Well, drummer Patrick Hallahan, who looks remarkably like Cousin It, also seemed to be having a lot of fun. But guitarist Carl Broemel (Musical Family Tree), bassist Two Tone Tommy (Interview at a blog) (at least he's got a good name), and, especially, frontman Jim James (XPress Mag) seemed over-serious, far too often striking "rock star" poses and doing that "deep concentration" thing that I guess serious musicians are supposed to do. You want to tell them, "It's just music! You're up there to make us shake our booties!" This, it should be noted, didn't detract from the music. The songs they played from It Still Moves were as good as they are on the album, and the band does have an interesting (and fairly unclassifiable) sound that makes me want to hear more, particularly from Z (Pitchfork review), the album they're supporting with this tour. The highlights of the night were probably, in this order, Kathleen Edwards's entire set and then My Morning Jacket playing Mahgeetah (Last.fm), my favorite song from It Still Moves, in their encore.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Music at 15:53 | |

Aaron Gleeman points out that Matt LeCroy has been sent to AAA by the Twins. LeCroy said he's likely to test free agency. If the A's could manage to dump the entirely useless Jason Kendall, wouldn't a catching platoon of LeCroy versus lefties and Adam Melhuse versus righties be a nice one? Sure, they'd allow about 200 stolen bases, but it's not like Kendall showed off a cannon arm last year.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Baseball, Oakland A's at 15:39 | |

How's my rooting going? Nice of you to ask. The Division Series in the AL were fantastic. Seeing Boston get swept was cause for celebration, and watching the Yankees go down in painful, five-game fashion was almost better. As I said, though, since I actually like Alex Rodriguez, the scorn and bile heaped on him at the end of the series by New Yorkers didn't seem quite fair. He's being compensated well to take this kind of abuse, though, so I guess he'll just have to deal with it. The NL didn't go so well. It was unfortunate that my #1 (Padres) and #2 (Cardinals) teams were matched up in the first round, especially since my #1 team was so thoroughly overmatched. Jake Peavy's broken rib certainly didn't hurt matters. The Astros-Braves series also came out opposite the way I'd have preferred, but at least it was a good, competitive series. And now, of course, following the NL trend more than the AL one, the Cardinals are somehow losing to the Astros while the White Sox are beating up on the Angels. The Angels got jobbed on "The Drop," sure, but when you play close games, certain tiny things often tip the scales. Usually, those tiny things actually take place out on the field, like your shortstop's dive coming up three inches too short, or your closer's fastball being an inch too far outside. I guess what it's really coming down to is the pitching of the White Sox and Astros living up to their billing, which was entirely predictable, and also entirely unsatisfactory.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Baseball at 09:21 | |

The world has gone absolutely looney with the hiring (after all) of Ken Macha to be the A's manager. It's an uninspiring, uninspire choice. The A's like a guy who'll take their marching orders, though I see no reason why they couldn't get a guy with a willingness to work with the front office but who also has actual tactical strengths. They do exist, I'm certain. Larry Dierker, Davey Johnson? Hell, as us statheads get excited about every time a managerial job opens up, Earl Weaver's still alive, ain't he? Maybe Ken Macha keeps a good clubhouse and the guys are prepared to play every day. That is, I guess, the main job as manager. There are other things, though, even aside from the tactical considerations: injury management, for one. I'd guess some managers are better than others at keeping their benches loose and their frontline starters from breaking down (which breakdowns can lead to actual injury sometimes). In addition, on a related front, a manager, in concert with the philosophy of the team as a whole, has to promote open communications. The last thing you want is players hiding injuries. It's almost impossible to grade Macha in any of these categories, though it can be said that his bullpen management is (as seems to be the theme) unimaginative. Macha doesn't appear to be the guy who's going to implement the 21st century bullpen. On the other hand, Larry Dierker claims in his autobiography that he tried to implement something of the sort early in his managerial career, but the players didn't really like it, preferring to know when they were going to be called on to enter the game most often (by inning, that is). To which criticism I wish Dierker had said, "Suck it up," so we could have had a pre-Boston indication of how this might work out in the modern game.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Baseball, Oakland A's at 22:10 | |