Beaneball

I'm excited to see that Torii Hunter has signed with the Angels for five years at about $14 million per year. Why am I excited? Because it seems, on the face of it, like an awful deal for Anaheim. Hunter's already overrated, both defensively (because his range doesn't match his highlight home-run robberies) and offensively (because he's only had two years in his career (one of them last year) in which he hit for enough power to overcome his weak OBP). Further, he's 32, and thus there's a good chance that last year, when he had a 122 OPS+, was the last good year of his career. Finally, because Anaheim has decided to spend its money on a player at a position where they've already got too many players (Vlad Guerrero, Garret Anderson, Juan Rivera, Gary Mathews, Reggie Willits) thus ensuring that this wasn't the most efficient use of their resources. The worry, of course, is that the signing merely frees up one or two of those outfielders for a trade for an actual impact player -- especially after the Jon Garland-Orlando Cabrera deal added to their starting pitching depth. On the other hand, if that player they trade for is Miguel Tejada, then I won't exactly despair for the fate of my team. But more on that if and when it happens. EDIT: I can't do math - the deal is actually at $18 million per year.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Baseball at 12:06 | |

ESPN has the story today that Marco Scutaro has been traded to the Blue Jays for a couple of minor league arms. This should come as no surprise, since Scutaro is arbitration-eligible this off-season and Donnie Murphy is waiting in the wings. It's nice that the A's were able to get something for him instead of having to go the non-tender route. Offensively, Murphy flashed nothing more than a little power with the A's this past year (a ~.220 ISO), but he hit 326/388/509 for Sacramento in 2007, and had a very similar line for Wichita in 2005. His 2006 season, also with Wichita, was pretty bad. However, he'll be 25 this year and he can apparently play all three (important) infield positions, so there's plenty of upside.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Oakland A's at 20:51 | |

While the big Oakland news is that the A's will open the season against the Red Sox in Japan (and almost certainly have to face Dice-K and Hideki Okajima in front of hometown crowds -- can we bring back Keichi Yabu?), the news I found a little more shocking is that Dan Haren didn't receive even a single third-place vote in the AL Cy Young race. By VORP, he was the sixth-best pitcher in the AL, which certainly doesn't qualify him for a third-place vote, but Roy Halladay (9th), Erik Bedard (7th), and, shockingly, Justin Verlander (16th) all received third-place votes, so why not Haren? Haren was the only pitcher in the top seven in the AL who didn't receive a vote. That said, Haren's grievance is but a minor complaint next to Fausto Carmona and Johan Santana's. Santana likely fell victim to "we've seen it before" syndrome, as he finished fifth in VORP and yet garnered just one third-place vote, the same that Halladay, Bedard, and Verlander got. Worst of all is what happened to Carmona. We can likely file this one under "He wasn't even the best pitcher on his own team" treatment, because, while by VORP, Carmona was second in the AL, just 1.2 runs behind Sabathia, the winner of the Cy Young and the best AL pitcher by VORP, he managed to pick up just one second-place vote and four third-place votes. Twenty-three writers left him off their ballot entirely. This is inexplicable, especially since it's not like his mainstream stats masked his value: Carmona was second in the AL in ERA, 0.15 lower than Sabathia; and Carmona and Sabathia each had 19 wins, with Carmona taking one more loss. Carmona did have many fewer strikeouts and many more walks, but should that matter when we're purely talking about value in this season? Given Sabathia's tremendous K:BB ratio, he's certainly the better bet next year (see also Carmona's DIPS ERA, which approaches four, while Sabathia's sits comfortable around three). But the Cy Young isn't given for next year, it's given for last year. Sabathia was the right choice, but the complete ignorance of Carmona's accomplishments was misguided.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Oakland A's at 15:13 | |

I can't say I'm broken up about the latest A's player to be claimed off of waivers - Colby Lewis is now a Royal. Lewis managed a 6.45 ERA in 26 games with Oakland. Carney Lansford, though, is another story - he's the new Giants hitting coach. That's a travesty! Carney was a much-beloved Athletic, playing ten years with the team and retiring as an A. His son, Jared, is a pitcher in the A's minor league system. Now he's across the Bay coaching the bad guys.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Oakland A's at 11:53 | |