Beaneball

This is awesome. Be warned that it's a Jayson Stark piece, so it's got his usual nonsense, but baseball players using video iPods to take their at-bats everywhere with them? Being able to break it out any time you feel like boning up on what Greg Maddux did to you last time he came to town? That's fantastic.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Baseball at 22:25 | |

It's a banner day when Darin Erstad signs with the White Sox instead of the A's. There were far too many rumors floating around that he was going to bring his sub-700 OPS to Oaktown to let me be comfortable. Now that I know he's taking his "grit and hustle" to the South Side instead of the East Bay, I can breathe easy and get back to wondering whether Brian Urlacher's neck is going to swallow his head before the Super Bowl. On the other hand, Kirk Saarloos is gone. The A's sent him (and a PTBNL) to the Reds for David Shafer (and a PTBNL). Saarloos fell off a little bit last year, but was a decent bet to be a league-average pitcher from a runs standpoint (because of the A's still-very-good defense), though like a below-average one from a defense-neutral standpoint. Shafer's 25 this season, so he's three years younger than Saarloos, but he has yet to even pitch as high as AAA. He was apparently a closer at AA last year, as he racked up 26 saves, but his more important numbers include: about 50 innings, just two homers allowed, sixteen walks, and 52 strikeouts. So he's over a strikeout per inning, obviously, and he's about 3:1 on the K:BB ratio. Neither of those numbers are flukes, either: in his five years in the Cincinnati chain, he's at a homer per eighteen innings, 2.7 walks per nine, and 9.8 strikeouts per nine. His hit rate, for what it's worth, stands at 7.3 per nine, so that's pretty sweet also. He basically saves the A's some dough while likely sitting in AAA this year in case one of the real relievers breaks down. While he's likely injury depth, I wonder about his durability, as he's only once thrown more than fifty innings in a season. That appears to be an artifact of his usage pattern, as his games-pitched numbers don't seem absurd, but you still worry about getting him up to 60-90 major-league innings without the requisite arm strength to manage it.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Baseball at 10:00 | |

The Phillies just locked up Chase Utley for seven years at about $12 million per year. That's already a boatload of money, but it becomes a noticeably odd deal when you realize that, despite his surge onto the radar screens last year and the year before, he'll have his age-28 season next year. So this deal locks him up until he's 34 at a pretty high price tag (even by today's standards and even, probably, by the standards of 2013). Sure, a second baseman with an OPS+ the last two years of 130 and 127 is worth a lot of money. But one who put those numbers up at ages 26 and 27 after having pretty much one very good full year in the minors? One who lifted a .219 average against lefties in '05 to a .301 average in '06 (while his average against righties remained constant)? And one who Baseball Prospectus has as a well-below-average defensive second baseman (Rate of 94 last year, and trending downward over his four years in the majors: 110, 109, 98, and then the 94)? One of the BP mantras is that you have to look at what a player can do, not what he cannot. And clearly the Phillies are looking at Utley and seeing a player who can be a fan favorite and one who can certainly hit. But you have to also be realistic: there's no reason to think that Utley's not just in the midst of a really nice 3-4 year peak, after which he'll fall into the kind of territory where $12 million bucks is a real albatross. It's the length of the contract that's really bothersome. A three- or four-year deal, buying out the arbitration seasons along with maybe one season of free agency seems much less risky for the Phillies.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Baseball at 11:40 | |

John Clayton criticizes Marty Schottenheimer for being too conservative and "playing the field position game" while praising the Patriots to high heavens for knowing how to win in the playoffs. John Clayton a few paragraphs later points out that the "strangest" play in the game was when Marty went for it on 4th and 11 early in the game. Uh, Mr. Clayton, that's not conservative play-calling. Besides which, it wasn't necessarily that strange. The Patriots, as I recall, had the wind at their backs in the first quarter, which might be one reason why Schottenheimer didn't want a 49-yard field goal try. Meanwhile, LDT called out Bill Belichick because of what the Chargers perceived as a classless celebration on their logo at midfield (apparently, it included finger-pointing and mocking Shawne Merriman's sack-dance), saying, "They showed no class and maybe that comes from the head coach." The Patriots are just making enemies left and right, aren't they? The Jets (with the Mangini feud), the Colts (with constantly whooping their asses in the playoffs), and now the Chargers.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Football at 12:01 | |

There's no doubt that the Chargers lost their game to the Patriots. The punt-return fumble was especially crucial. But can I just ask whether the conspiracy theorists are going to come out of the woodwork for this game like they do every year in the NBA? I refer, of course, to those two awfully borderline personal fouls called against the Chargers. One Charger appeared to be celebrating a bit too much, but how could the referee not notice that it was the Patriot player who reached out and shoved the Charger? And as to the push in the pile-up that led to the Chargers having to kick off from their own fifteen yard line, I can't remember a game in which I haven't seen a little extra roughness in the pile, especially with players trying to get opponents off of their teammates (which is exactly what was happening there). I'm of the belief that if you're going into an inherently rough game and calling unnecessary roughness on somebody, that roughness had better be damn well unnecessary, not maybe-probably-kinda unnecessary. This is all particularly true if you're going to ignore "Roy" Hobbs taking a swing at a Charger receiver downfield blocking on a running play. If you ignore things like that (which happen multiple times every single game), then you have to ignore all the marginal stuff. But, boy, it was all worth it to see Indianapolis and New England back together again, right? yawn

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Football at 01:14 | |

Today's ATM Report says that the A's have signed fan favorite Loomer Loney (i.e. Lou Merloni) to a minor league contract. Fittingly, they also resigned Antonio Perez recently, so Merloni can likely be seen as Perez's backup, waiting at AAA for Perez to have another 0-80 (or whatever) season. That the A's are keeping Perez around is really a testament to their recognition that small sample sizes create all kinds of havoc. They know he's not a .100 hitter, and it's a smart thing to keep some guys around who can play the infield when you've got a bunch of glass-jawed starters in those positions.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Oakland A's at 18:57 | |

I have no documentation of this, but I had both the Colts and Seahawks in yesterday's games (the Colts because they're a vastly better team than the Chiefs and the Seahawks because they were playing at home). I figured the Seahawks game would be close, but obviously you can't anticipate the craziness that ensued. I'll try to go 4-0 today as I pick Philadelphia and New England to win. Those aren't exactly controversial picks, although some people will get seduced by the Giants' offensive talent. The Patriots-Jets game is tough because while I'm not a Patriot-hater, they're not my favorite team to root for, and I really like Chad Pennington and Eric Mangini, so I'd like to root for the Jets, but I just don't think they're ready to beat Bill Belichick in the playoffs.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Books, Football, Law, Magazines, Movies, Non-Fiction, Reading at 12:39 | |