This deserves a new thread
#Athletics acquire Jed Lowrie and Fernando Rodriguez from the #Astros for Chris Carter, Brad Peacock and minor leaguer Max Stassi.
@Athletics
Oakland Athletics
LowrieThis deserves a new thread
#Athletics acquire Jed Lowrie and Fernando Rodriguez from the #Astros for Chris Carter, Brad Peacock and minor leaguer Max Stassi.
@Athletics
Oakland Athletics
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Wow.
Holy cow.
Wtf
First reaction: I don’t love this.
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Yeah. Me neither.
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I can’t believe they gave up on Carter.
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That’s what kills me. That’s a special bat that we waited years for, and he was under control for a long time. He is going to hit an insane number of bombs at Enron Field.
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Yup. Against us too.
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Carter will be great with that short LF and no expectations… but how much would he really have played given the emergence of Moss? Scott Sizemore and Jemile Weeks, however, are probably calling their agents as we speak, hmmmm.
I know BB has been in love with Lowrie since the guy was with Boston so it’s not really surprising… I am more curious about Fernando Rodriguez because I have no idea who he is but I always like another bullpen piece, can never have enough of those.
This one will take a few moments to fully absorb.
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Carter doesn’t need a short LF.
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True, but it means even his warning track fly balls will now go over the train tracks down there.
Honestly my feeling was that Carter really was helped by being on a good team and he may regress on a bad one… I remember hearing him talk about this is a postgame interview with Cotroneo last year, about how he felt having good things going on around him helps his own game.
Hoooooooly Toledo!!!!!!! Billy Beane is a mad mad madman… someone oughta make a movie or write a book about him.
I do not like this. And I’ve been a long time believer in Lowrie.
Robothal: Nakajima still SS, Lowrie to be used all over IF
40 homer power dealt for a utility player? No way
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What were they thinking?
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Having a hard time understanding this one. There’s basically no way Moss repeats his season again at 1b.
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Yeah. This would only make sense if it didn’t include Carter. WTF.
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Except he would never have been at the plate enough to hit those 40.
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He still might not be.
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I agree, I think they were not hot on Carter vs. RHP and there was no way they were ever gonna give him enough ABs to approach those sort of numbers.
I also think that Carter benefited some from being on a good team, and this was a big reason he stepped it up so demonstrably last season as opposed to the awfulness of years gone by. I’d not be at all surprised if he went backwards switching leagues and playing on the worst team in the whole MLB.
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Astros are AL now (which I had to remind myself of, when wondering why they acquired a DH).
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Yeah, I guess they don’t care about the substandard defense and plan on DH’ing him most of the time, who knows.
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The platoon issue popped into my head as well, but then I was surprised to see that 58% of Carter’s PAs last year were against RHP. So they platooned him, but not by a huge amount. Relevant: elcroata’s article today on Hardball Times. Gomes only faced an RHP 21% of the time in 2012.
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*As a starter against opposing starting pitching
Overall Gomes faced RHP 41%, which is still an extremely low number
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Is Lowrie fringy at short? This trade makes no sense if he’s not an everyday starter there.
Even if he is an everyday starter there, it makes no sense if Peacock is good. Which he may not be.
Lowrie GP between majors and minors last 4 years: 99, 93, 65, 58
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True Athletic.
Off topic, but awesome.
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YES
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HOLY CARP thats sweet, I’ll have to put more fro’ on mine.
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They should have combined the bobblehead and the Coco Chia Pet so the ‘Fro would grow when watered.
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Definitely needs the fro.
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I’m also excited for the Coco Crisp children’s cereal bowl.
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Between the name, the hair, the lean, and the frequent injuries necessitating AAA help, he’s just an endless source of promotions (FSU edited for completeness).
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I’m excited for the Oaklandish T and the Balfour Ragin’ Gnome.
Sigh.
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I can’t believe that that would result in his value being a utility guy and a pitcher let alone requiring two more pieces to get that utility guy and a pitcher.
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I don’t think Lowrie is a utility guy per se, it’s more that it’s hard to see exactly where he belongs in the current A’s setup.
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Given the number of games he’s played each of the last 4 years it’s a little hard to see him as much more than that.
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My brain is with you all the way.
My gut, however, thinks that the club thinks WAY lower of Carter and Peacock than any of us fans do, and maybe they have a good reason for it.
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Well, maybe its for the best, they seemed to bench Carter every time he’d slam a no doubter…
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That’s what my gut says too.
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It’s hard to be a consistent MLB hitter when you’re not getting consistent MLB PA’s.
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Yup. sigh…
Do you all think this means Sizemore might get ABs at 1B, that they will move him there to share it with Moss and he’ll also share 2B with Lowrie? Sizemore picked up 3B pretty fast so I don’t doubt they’d give him a look at 1B, which is easier.
So I got exactly 1 game out of my Carter jersey. But at least it is now a throwback. Do.Not.Like.
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:(
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Huh?
Is the yellow jersey retired for 2013?
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No, sorry. Just couldnt think of a better way to say it. It’s actually the home white. Just a throwback player now…
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I hear you. I got zero out of my Gio jersey
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OK that’s worth it.
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Makes more sense if you read it that way.
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brilliant!
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win
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ZING
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Okay, that wins everything.
Really hope this doesn’t mean Barton at 1st…
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My bet is Moss is the full time 1Bman, with Lowrie getting spot starts there against tough lefties.
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Ugh.
FKWIZ: how many starts does Lowrie make at SS/3rd/2nd respectively?
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37/21/46
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Injured for the other games, or just on the bench?
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13 injured, 25 off the bench, 20 DNP
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80/5/5.
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95/0/21
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20/22/21, DL the rest of the year.
Love these kinds of details:
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That’s a hell of a lot better than “turned around in El Paso”.
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Or Las Vegas.
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or Tucson
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Wouldn’t want to be in Albuquerque for that. Being traded to the Astros in the city of blue meth…
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shoulda just shown up at the astrodome.
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LOL.
So Lowrie is currently signed to 1/2.4 and his total service time is 4.111 years (both values according to Cot’s). Does that mean that this is his last year of club control, or will he still be arby-eligible after 2013?
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I wouldn’t eat at Arby’s, even if I WAS eligible!
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One more arb year.
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I believe that means 2 years of club control, and he signed a 1 year deal to avoid arb.
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Read: “I was drunk and totally forgot we had Nakajima.”
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nice
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<3
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win-nosaurus rex
A good point is that this is almost as much about the OF/DH logjam aspect, that this frees Young and Smith to get DH ABs that would have gone to Carter.
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Not sure that’s a really a good thing.
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This is the Oakland A’s, there’s no “sure” anything. I think they feel Young and Smith are more proven players than Chris Carter and that some of the impetus of this move reflects that.
Also, I’d bet $$ (not that I have any, but if I did) that Sizemore gets reps at 1B in ST.
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I’d much rather see Carter get ABs than Smith.
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You may be right, I am just trying to say what I think BB and Forst think.
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ZiPS liked him better than both Smith and Moss fwiw…
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I did too.
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Vernon… {sobs]
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or Sizemore. or Young.
Slusser and Lee are quoting Beane as saying 25-man roster is basically set now. I guess that would be:
Anderson/Parker/Griffin/Milone/(Colon)/Straily
Balfour/Cook/Doolittle/Blevins/Rodriguez/Neshek?/Blackley?
Jaso/Norris
Moss
Nakajima/Lowrie/Donaldson/Sizemore/Weeks?
Cespedes/Crisp/Reddick/Young/Smith
Lack of depth at 1B is a worry now, and it’s not clear who will start where in the rest of the infield, but overall that’s not a bad team.
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I REALLY feel Sizemore is gonna get the Hatteberg treatment at 1B and we’ll see him getting reps there in ST.
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It’s probably a good bet that both he & Lowrie will spend time at first in ST.
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I’m sure that either one could handle it defensively, not as sure that either one really has the bat to play there more than occasionally.
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Oh yeah. I don’t even think it’s a question that neither has the bat. You also are really crossing your fingers that Moss doesn’t pumpkin (likely) and then you’re stuck with garbage again at first.
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Heeeeeeeeere’s Barton!
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Aaaand now the blood shoots out my eyes.
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Is it just me or does anyone else feel like whenever the A’s say the roster is ‘set’ one should expect a trade in the next couple of days?
I just dont see them giving that many PA’s to Moss.
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It’s not just you.
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What’s the prognosis on Norberto?
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While we’re at it, what about Chris Resop?
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good question
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I think he should be ready by ST IIRC.
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I might be the only one who thinks this, but Shane Peterson could be an adequate fill in for Moss if Moss fails catastrophically.
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I wouldn’t mind him getting a shot
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I dunno. If we’re reduced to playing Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend we’re probably in big trouble.
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I thought he was primarily an OF?
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BABIP of .478 in AAA last year. He’d never really shown much as hitter before last year either. ZiPS projects .225/.311/.330. I’d go to Barton before Peterson.
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We may have to weigh his spring (as well as others’) with more than feathers this year.
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I’m not sure that you’re the only one, but I’m not another one
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the loss of vernon brought you out of the woodwork.
hello!
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I back this idea.
Heh, just saw Brett Wallace is their other 1B!
So does Rosie make the 25 man now?
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I’d guess that final spot is between Rosales, Weeks, & Barton.
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I doubt it. He could take the last IF slot that I have pegged for Weeks above. Earlier in the offseason someone suggested that Rosales is a better fit for that utility spot because he can also play SS, but with Lowrie on the roster now that seems like less of an issue.
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So they traded Carter to upgrade from Rosales to Sizemore?
Wow, I can’t remember the last time we’ve seen the A’s trade this many prospects in an offseason.
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Yeah, Stassi was a big deal not too long ago too.
I was hoping for a Peacock renaissance…
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Stassi had a shoulder injury his senior year of HS. It hasn’t gotten better three years later.
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I wouldn’t put him in the A’s top 10, probably not even top 12.
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he really cashed in, considering the new cba
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And for such little return@
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It’s not like we’re trading top prospects. These guys have real warts.
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I agree. But we didn’t get players that were starters or without their own warts either.
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But you’re not going to acquire those players by trading toads. I’m perfectly content with giving up Pennington, Cole, Carter, Peacock, and Stassi in exchange for Young, Jaso, and Lowrie. The only one who figures to make us have any real regrets is Cole.
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To early to tell for Carter and Peacock, neither has had a real shake.
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I guess that’s true for Peacock, but even if Carter mashes he’s still only a DH and those are not all that valuable.
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Good DHs have value. Maybe not as much as most position players, but to say not all that valuable is just untrue.
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Sort of. I think we underpeg the cost of being a
DH which is why there are hardly any teams getting 2 WAR production out of the spot, which tells me the positional adjustment is off.
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I’ve been wondering about that too.
That said, we haven’t really seen one way or another how an extended time DHing will affect Carter either.
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I’m more interested in being able to use multiple guys in the DH spot as a means of resting them. If were devoid of any offense then yes, trading away a DH masher would anger me. But that’s not the case, we have too many hitters potentially and being able to use that spot as an infirmary of sorts appeals to me.
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I dunno. David Ortiz has been pretty valuable. Edgar Martinez is a HOF caliber player. Not that Carter is as good as them necessarily, but he’s got mammoth upside.
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Well sure and if Carter approaches a HOF level then it’ll be a bad trade but thats a huge if
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I didn’t mean that Carter’s awesome, necessarily, just that a DH can be important if he’s really good.
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or if Lowrie keeps playing <100 games
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Given what we gave up, it’s already a bad trade. Now it’s just a matter of how much it’ll haunt us.
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That’s just like, your opinion, man
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heh
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Remember, the Twins gave up on David Ortiz after what seemed like a good 2002 – and they released him to boot. He never even made it to the bigs with the Mariners.
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Ah… That’s the fear, eh… that Trogdor will turn into the next Big Papi? Hmm…
My spirit says yes, but my brain says no.
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Yeah, playing us 18 games a year.
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Not so much that Carter will be the next Ortiz, but that as great as Ortiz has been he was given up on as well, and the Twins didn’t even do a trade.
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Yeah Nontendering him was stupid, but he also hadn’t become a roid freak yet.
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Loved the Young trade, meh on the Jaso trade, disliked this trade. But in total, it’s been a reasonable offseason for A’s trades.
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I think what these trades tell us is that the FO is verrry happy with the most recent draft. They’ve purged some minor league talent in order to be competitive for the next couple years with the hope that these low-level guys will develop and be ready to contribute or be pawned off when needed.
Maybe that’s an obvious statement but I think Beane has looked at Peacock, Cole, Stassi, and co. as unnecessary for this competitive window. If the young guys in the rotation stay healthy and effective you don’t really need Peacock and Cole (especially with Gray still around) and the same goes with Norris wrt Stassi.
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Never too much depth in pitching.
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I don’t think we really lack for depth.
Anderson
Parker
Milone
Colon
Griffin
Straily
Blackley
Werner
Gray
…
There aren’t many teams that are 9-deep with decent pitchers. If you’ve lost basically your entire starting rotation then you’re fucked regardless.
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Looks good on paper, but this is the A’s, never too much depth in pitching.
Werner and Gray aren’t really ready to fill in yet IMO.
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That’s not depth that’s just a list of guys who can start. If Blackley, Werner, and Gray get starts next year that’s a bad thing.
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I still sign Joe Saunders, 2.70 lifetime Coli ERA and precisely the kind of nibbly pitcher Hamilton and Pujols have fits with.
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I’m with you on this.
I wanna hear what Saunders skeptics/haters have to say, tho.
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He won’t be pitching against A’s hitters if he plays for us?
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Back in 2007/2008, when Saunders was a “proven winner”, I think he was wildly overvalued (dude made the All Star team for a year where he had 4.7 K/9!). But now he would be a pretty good sign. Since 2008, he has *averaged* 195 IP/year, which is pretty awesome. MLB Daily Dish says that some team is willing to give pay him $15M for 2 years. I would be happy if the A’s got him for something in that ballpark.
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It wouldn’t surprise me if the Cards now jump in on him (if they aren’t already that team) with Carpenter’s career done.
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Yup. And it’s altogether possible too.
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Gray isn’t bad.
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Blackley and Werner aren’t bad.
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My point is how many teams can say that they’re comfortable with their 7-9 SPs? A couple?
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I don’t know. But not us.
Anderson counts as 0.5, Milone I’m quasi-comfortable with. Colon is 99 years old and (one expects) no longer on PEDs. Straily didn’t look ready last year, and everyone below Griffin is a huge question mark.
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That’s pretty pessimistic
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No its not, really.
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Pessimistic or not, it’s accurate.
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I agree with this.
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But as of right now, Peacock would have been maybe 8th on the depth chart. As pickle said, if it gets to the point where you’re giving him a significant number of starts this year, the difference between Peacock and (Gray or Werner) is probably not an issue.
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Unless he figures his shit out and becomes the solid pitcher he was supposed to be a year ago.
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This whole trade is one big IF
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A good sign of a bad trade is requiring the guy you received to do well and the guys you gave up to do poorly for it to be good.
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Except that’s not what I’m saying. Carter can be good Carter and, to me, he’s still a DH.
Peacock needs a turnaround season for him to be valuable. I’ve said it before but I trust Beane’s judgement on pitchers and I think he soured on Peacock.
Stassi is an oft-injured catcher who hasn’t shown an ability to hit outside of the California league.
Lowrie is a good player when healthy. I think he can be healthier than he has been and I’m fully aware that I could be wrong but I’m okay with the risk.
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Gray does nothing to make me be ok with giving up cole.
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I definitely like Cole more but I also like Jaso so there’s that.
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Also, Cole doesn’t really help this contention window.
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Not so sure, almost our entire rotation and a large chuck of our position players are here till 2015.
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He could be ready within the next season or so. How is that not part of this contention window?
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What about his season last year says he’ll be ready by next season? At least ready enough to be a major contributor?
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For some reason I thought we were still talking about Peacock.
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Forgiven
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How does getting lit up in single A imply he could be ready by next season?
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Well no, Gray has nothing to do with Cole. But I like Gray more than Cole.
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You should always feel like you have an embarrassment of riches in your farm system. Because most of those guys will never amount to anything.
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I’d rather have an embarrassment of riches at the major league level
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Because the A’s have so much money to sign FA’s?
This is how the A’s stay relevant, deep farms.
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You seem to be under the impression that we had a deep farm before this trade. Removing Stassi and Peacock from the equation doesn’t change the talent of our farm all that much.
My point was that we have a narrow competitive window and we should be doing everything we can to bolster it. Peacock and Stassi don’t really do much towards achieving that goal.
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I disagree, we have 3 more years of Cespy, more for Reddick/ Moss/ Donaldson, add an almost a complete rotation.
As others have discussed we could have made the same moves in FA without giving up pitching.
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That’s not what I’m discussing. I’d much rather have Hanley, of course, but I’m solely focusing on this trade and whether it is worth it, in a vacuum.
Hopefully one of those cool Dyson one’s with the pivot ball.
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weren’t they sponsors in 2006 or so?
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I have one of those Dysons and it’s great.
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“Removing Stassi and Peacock from the equation doesn’t change the talent of our farm all that much.”
Uh… it kind of weakens an a depleted farm system even more.
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I think pickle is in full on win now mode, which may explain our disconnect here.
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Even in a full on win now mode it doesn’t make much sense. Packaged with others, we could have gotten more bang for our buck to win now with.
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full on win now mode would have been making the Hanley deal
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Stupid Trolley Dodgers….
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I think so.
I will say though that this is the most spirited baseball debate I’ve had in a while and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I hope Billy makes a lot more controversial trades!
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Well, whenever Billy says the roster is set…
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I think many here are overvaluing these two guys. I mean if they were the second and third pieces for an oft-injured, good-not-great SS then how valuable can they really be?
I think Peacock weakens the farm a bit but Stassi isn’t really that valuable of a prospect. I’m fine with weakening the farm if it means a better shot at reaching the playoffs.
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I think you’re overvaluing Lowrie while grossly undervaluing Carter.
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Am I? Even in roughly half a season Lowrie was as valuable as Carter can realistically hope to be and Lowrie has the added bonus of playing a position we need help at.
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We haven’t even seen how good Carter could be since we haven’t given him a chance to play everyday. And Lowrie may play a few positions of need, but those are positions that are already filled. Meanwhile, we have an outfielder for a our starting first baseman with no backup. When Moss regresses rather grossly, we won’t have anyone to step in and take over.
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They’re filled by a bunch of question marks. Weeks was terrible last year, Hiro is an unknown, and Sizemore is coming off a major injury that could affect his ability to play 2B.
I realize Lowrie is also a question mark but he’s also probably better than those 3 guys I just mentioned.
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We have question marks all around, yes. But we have more available people (all with question marks, yes) to attempt to fill those positions already than we do at first.
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I still don’t see Carter as a viable option at 1B. If this is going to continue to divide our opinions then I don’t think we’re going to be able to convince each other one way or the other.
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Also, we didn’t really have anybody to play SS outside of Hiro and that’s tenuous at best.
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Neither has been problem. Whether he’s viable or not, Carter has and does play at 1B. And whether we have guys to play at SS, we do have guys like Keebs & Rosales who also have played and do play at SS.
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I would repeatedly shit my pants if Sogard or Rosales were our starting SS
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Meh. We made it through last season with that basically happening.
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Yup.
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That’s no reason to avoid doing anything about it.
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DC: Of course. You just don’t fix a problem by creating another problem.
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If we have indeed created another problem.
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And I think people are way, way, way overvaluing Carter.
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I’m not sure anyone’s really overvaluing Carter. He’s a pretty big question mark. And that’s kind of the point. We don’t really know what his true potential is.
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What dmoas said.
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So… the Yankees?
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Nice one!
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Agreed
Pennington for Young was a steal.
I didn’t like giving up Cole.
I don’t think that this deal make much sense.
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It makes total sense, we collect former Red Sox and Diamondbacks.
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Why don’t you think this trade makes sense?
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Its a depth for depth trade that depletes depth. What we needed was one reliable surefire INF, not another question mark.
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I can see that. Don’t think our depth is really depleted due to this though
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Josh Donaldson is better than you think
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Probably not better than DFA thinks, actually.
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Funny how almost everyone thought Cole and Peacock were far and away the two best prospects from the Gio deal (though I think I preferred Milone to Peacock), and they are both gone already.
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and when they came in it was “ZOMG Shiny New Toys!” but when they left it was “Meh. They all suck”
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That’s understandable since they both stagnated last year to some degree. I’m still surprised how willing Beane was to trade them for good not great pieces.
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What “great” pieces could we have gotten for Peacock and Stassi? I’ll grant you Cole, but those other two are what they are, simply “other” pieces.
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I was only talking about Peacock and Cole. I would have liked to package them together for a star, but they didn’t hold their value. All in all, Lowrie and Jaso is OK considering the years P and C had in 2012. I just wish we didn’t have to also give up Carter, who I really like.
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I like him too. I’m a big fan of monster homeruns, so I’ll miss him.
One reason to like this trade is that Carter was basically insurance in case Moss flops whereas Lowrie is insurance in case Donaldson, Hiro, Sizemore, Weeks, and/or Green suck. Also, trading a starting DH for a starting SS is always a good deal. If you’re high on Peacock and Stassi (I’m not) then you might dislike the trade for that reason.
It was posted over at ** but Lowrie’s injury history isn’t as bad as you may think. He missed most of one season with Mono and then last year’s injury was due to someone sliding into him. Give him the Zobrist treatment (minus the OF) and give him regular rest and he could play in 120+ games.
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Not true. Not when the starting DH can be good and the starting SS sucks. And “could play in 120 games” only helps if the playing itself isn’t awful.
And whatever you think about P/S they’re not valueless.
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That’s why I said starting SS. I’m assuming he’s not Yuniesky Betancourt. In this situation, yes, I’d gladly trade Carter for Lowrie. I may have been a tad too general in my original statement.
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Lowrie wasn’t traded for Carter tho. He was traded for Carter +
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I guess I just don’t really care about the +. I get that they have value regardless of my opinion of them but I also think a lot of A’s fans are overvaluing their supposed value.
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SP’s have real value, Peacock was very well regarded before last season, IIRC there was a change to his mechanics but cant remember what or why but could definitely explain his woes last year.
He had a 11.77 K/ 2.10 B in 98 inn in 2011, even last year he had a +9 K rate and he’s just 25 in 13′, we sold low.
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Don’t some view him as a possible reliever down the road? That would certainly hurt his SP value.
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Sickels had him as a B-. Those don’t grow on trees.
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But they’re not exactly rare either. I think this most recent draft class will yield at least a couple B- by this time next year.
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Someone drafted and in low A is nowhere near as valuable as a AAA SP, the rate of attrition is very high.
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And when has Lowrie ever been awful? If he’s healthy he’s going to contribute.
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His best season is 2.1 WAR, his worst is -0.6 WAR. And yes, they were both partial seasons (because all of his seasons are partial seasons).
If you play the Rich Harden wishcasting game and give him 140 starts… maybe he’s a three or four win player.
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OK, now do the same thing for Carter.
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-0.7 – 0.9, three years younger coming off his first real chance in the majors (which was also his best of the three years). Plus a B- pitching prospect and a C+ catching prospect.
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The main complaint isn’t really Carter for Lowrie. If it were only that, I’d have fewer complaints. I wouldn’t be wowed but I wouldn’t think it was an overall bad trade. Including Peacock & Stassi and getting Lowrie and a reliever (which we have plenty of) makes it a bad deal.
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I agree with this.
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if you’re mentioning the wishcasting game, don’t shortchange Lowrie on his wishcast… 2.5 WAR last year over 346 PAs is about 4.8 for a full season.
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Why do you think Lowrie sucks? Injury prone? Certainly. But sucks?
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I’m going to jump in with several others to say that you’re overly bearish on Lowrie. Yes, the injuries are something to worry about, but he has a career 98 wRC+ and can legitimately play shortstop.
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Also, he seems to be improving offensively over the past couple years.
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Hard to project offensive improvement in a 29yo season. He has probably peaked.
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That’s fine, he had a pretty damn good season projected over a full year’s worth of playing time
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Scouting on the SS is all over the place.
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This
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If he can legitimately play SS, why is he being hyped up because he can play all 4 IF positions?
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Personally, I don’t really care what Beane is saying right now. If Lowrie is better at SS than Hiro then he will start there. If Lowrie is the worst out of Donaldson, Hiro, and Sizeweeks then we’re in great shape.
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Then why isn’t Cespedes in CF, he’s got a better arm?
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If Lowrie is the worst of that group this trade fucking sucks.
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Yup.
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I don’t think he is the worst. I think Donaldson is the only one with a chance to be better next year
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Let me elaborate. I think Lowrie will be healthier than last year and his performance will stay roughly the same. I think 2nd half Donaldson is for real, especially the defense. I have no idea what to expect out of Hiro. I don’t think Weeks or Green will have any real impact. I think Sizemore will be pretty damn rusty after missing an entire year plus re-adjusting to 2B, and his defense could suffer from the knee injury.
I like Carter as much as the next guy but I could easily see him continuing to be September-esque Carter. Peacock is a 25 y/o pitching prospect with legit concerns about his repertoire who just struggled in his second try at AAA. Also, I trust Beane when evaluating pitchers and if he’s not too taken with Peacock then I won’t doubt his judegment. Stassi is a catcher whose strength, defense, is severely hampered by having 3 shoulder injuries in 4 years.
Yes, Lowrie has questions but so do the 3 dudes we just gave up and none of them have had the success Lowrie has at the big league level, nor do they play as important a position with respect to the needs of the team. Is it a risk? Definitely. But I don’t think Beane has mortgaged the future and the potential reward for the team is worth the risk, IMO.
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Meh I guess I should’ve said his first full season at AAA.
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I don’t know why you’d have any reason to believe that Lowrie will be healthier next year than he’s been the past 4 years.
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You and I disagree about the nature of his injuries causing future injuries. Also, I think not having to play every day will help as well.
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He’s had serious traumatic injuries; those almost always have carryover. I think a lingering nerve issue will affect him in the future but more to the point, I think he’s kind of fragile. He goes in hard into something he comes out with more than a bruise.
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We’ll have to play the waiting game, I guess.
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So if the guys we got improve, and the guys we traded go the other way, the trade is good!
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I think the guys we traded are already going the other way perhaps with the exception of Carter but I think I’ve made my thoughts on him clear by this point.
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If Moss flops we’re fked given we have no one who has a bat now that can give us production at first. It would take a combination of two or three of all those you listed (and a couple more) to flop before the loss of those infielders would be a problem.
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If one thing is clear, it is that Melvin/Beane were absolutely done with the Chris Carter at 1B experiment. If he was staying, it was purely as a DH.
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We just need .400 OBP Barton back. Which I personally would LOVE
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Well sure. But the clock already struck midnight and Cinderella already HAS her prince. She has no need for the mouse-turned-horse.
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Before this trade if Hiro flopped we were fucked. Now we have a known commodity at SS.
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and if Moss flops?
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My guess is that if Moss really flops, Beane will make a trade. People have to remember that Carter really really shouldn’t be playing 1B, and so he wasn’t actually that great a safety for Mossfailure. Even with his 137 wRC+ last year, Carter was still a below average player because of his defense.
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And if Hiro flopped? Much easier to replace a 1Bman at any point than a starting SS.
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I agree with this
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The real question is what are we going to replace him with when we’re losing trading chips in the process. I guess we could trade Cole… nope. Oh, I know Peacock… nope. Gray? Ha. Given that we went through, what, seven 1B last year before coming up with Moss/Carter? I know the same could be said of SS, but trading one problem to create another isn’t the way to fix things.
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We still have trade pieces. Gray, Choice, Head, Krol, and anybody who emerges in the coming months can net us a 1Bman. I wonder if Jaso could play there if needed?
It’s not like Peacock was going to net us a great 1Bman anyway, but he did help net us a starting SS/whatever inf. position we need.
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Yeah, you could trade them, but then you have no farm system. And Peacock + Stassi could have netted another 1B that was rough around the edges. But the key is, they wouldn’t have to since we’d still also have Carter.
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Then my question is, were you comfortable with SS going into next season?
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Yes. More so than last season even though that’s not saying much. I was NOT comfortable at all with first base. Moss is a huge question mark and I don’t deny that Carter is too. But having both gives better odds of one turning out okay. We survived okay without a short stop for years. We were gawdawful without a first baseman last season.
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Carter is not a 1Bman
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Thats funny, he started 51 games there.
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And I think they found out something about him. Honestly, I’m shocked that so many people are defending his defense. It’s not exactly breaking news that he has been awful at every position he’s played.
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I think the argument is more that you don’t believe he can play 1B at all, which clearly is not the case, by the numbers he was as ‘bad’ or better than Moss.
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I’m not just going off his 51 game sample last year but rather his entire professional career where defensive questions have dogged him. If he could’ve been a competent 1Bman he would’ve answered those questions long ago.
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If by “the numbers” you mean fielding percentage.
By advanced stats like UZR Carter was worse.
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Yes, still not totally sold on UZR/ Totalzone yet, not say it doesn’t have value.
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Yes, he is.
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Has this ever stopped us before?
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How could I not be. Hanley is awesome.
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Not when you have Cespedes waiting in the wings! (but yes, this is trufax)
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CESPEDES TO 1B!
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This actually would make sense from a defensive alignment perspective. I would thing Theth gets a fair number of 1b starts.
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Nah, put him at SS.
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don’t laugh, Gallego worked Yo out at SS before they got Drew last year, just to see.
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I know. Too bad the FO already more or less nixed any chance of that.
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I thought this was all during his time on the DL, and they said (correctly) that if he reaggrivated an injury screwing around at SS, everyone involved would be fired.
Maybe that changes when he’s healthy.
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Hmm… I vaguely remember seeing some report that the FO recently said that ain’t happening.
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Gallego confirmed this story at BlogFest.
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Sure. Rely on your secret insider-y sources.
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Actually, now that Kay mentioned it, it may have been another bloggy blogger that I read who said it the FO was against it, so I’d take your version of that over them. Still sadly unlikely.
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I’m sure one of the bloggy bloggers would have direct quoted the whole juicy tidbit. My version would have been a lot tighter if my phone/recorder didn’t crap out on the way up.
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It wasn’t actually from the blogfest thing so much as an anecdote to Gallego.
I like the construction of most of the team, but I would be a lot happier if the A’s inf had on sure fire not going to fail option rather than 8 could be good could be awful options.
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I just hope it’s not like last year’s first base situation… or hell… entire infield situation that took all year and a trade to resolve.
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It makes it that much more exciting!
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huh, I feel like this trade makes the team much more “sure-fire” than otherwise…
before you had Nakajima as the SS with no backup plan, and who the hell knows what he’ll be like. And Carter, who’s certainly a “could be good could be awful” option, with not a large role on the team.
Now you have Lowrie who’s a very safe bet to be good when he’s playing, and the depth that he provides makes injury less likely for everybody (plus his injuries have mostly been freak injuries). So we can withstand failure from Nakajima/Sizemore/Weeks. I’d put Donaldson on that list, but it is impossible for Josh Donaldson to do wrong.
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I was with you until the end there.
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heh
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It’s true that there significant uncertainties with the entire infield on this team, so having someone who can fill in at any spot and provide solid production is quite valuable.
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I agree that the depth is improved. I just worry that it is going to take too long to sort out the failures from the successes for us to contend in a brutal division.
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There’s also spring training, which may very well include some sort of injury attrition rate + first-hand scouting of Nakajima, and doesn’t count for anything in the standings…
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ST doesn’t mean that these players are going to be facing live MLB pitching and because there are so many options for the INF we are going to be further diluting the elvaluational value of ST
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I think that early spring PA’s should not be weighed nearly as highly as the last 10 days worth of spring’s PA’s. Unfortunately, the club is going to be forced to do a FKton of evaluation during the spring. Sizemore’s health + Weeks attitude + is late ’12 Donaldson for real? + Does Nakajima have league average range and arm? + Rosales vs Sogard, and the list goes on…
Melvin wants to go with a versatile ensemble cast, and he likely will have it, to play Chess and/or Hungry Hungry Hippos with as necessary.
Seems I’m in the minority — I think this is a brilliant trade.
Value-wise, meh, it’s probably fairly even.
But roster-construction-wise, I think this is a really shrewd move. First of all, Beane was burned by injuries 2007-2011, and the line was always more or less that they had the players, they just needed them to stay on the field… now they have the players and they have the players for when the players can’t stay on the field…
Nakajima starts at SS, and if he sucks, Lowrie will very quickly take over as the starting shortstop. If he doesn’t suck, Lowrie acts as the super-utility of the infield until someone gets injured, plus giving people much needed days off to keep them from getting injured. Either way, Lowrie plays a fair amount at the beginning, and then likely becomes a starter at some point into the season. Not only does this system (just as in the outfield) provide security in case of injury, but helps reduce the chance of injury.
The one thing it does signify is belief that Moss will continue to be good, but as a believer in Moss, I’m fine with that. And Carter really was still a wild card, despite his flashes of awesomeness. My guess is that the A’s were worried by the fact that Carter had a massive slump at the end of 2012. In the minors, he always took a while to adjust to the next level, and then destroyed it. Perhaps him showing that he had sucked in the majors, figured it out, but then sucked again, made the A’s worry that that pattern was… falling apart.
Personally I think this makes the 2013 A’s vastly better, and really just not that likely to not be good… a lot of things have to go wrong at this point for that to happen.
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Isn’t Lowrie the Rich Harden of infielders and a huge injury risk in his own right, though? Or do we buy the “it was just mono one year and a freak injury on a slide at 2B” theory?
This is one of those trades where we need Letterman from “The Electric Company” to swoop down and turn Lowrie into Brett Lawrie.
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Well, to be fair, Rich Harden was my favorite pitcher ever.
But also Harden didn’t have a bunch of weird injuries… basically his arm just couldn’t handle throwing a baseball really fast.
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The alarm clock was pretty weird.
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haha oh right
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It does add a level of redundancy I’m not familiar in regards to things cleated in white.
I also think its safe to say Carter would have sat more than started so…
On reflection I feel we sold really low on Peacock, sure he could have continued to underwhelm, but say he had a great first half he could have commanded much more value at the deadline.
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We’ll either be eating our hats or chuckling with relief, cuz I bet he starts several games for the Lastros vs. us this year.
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GP, positives are we’ll have a good insight into his weaknesses.
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The Lastros hired a real GM and KG to coordinate their scouting. I do not think they will be a laughing stock for long
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I agree.
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Still a couple years away though at least.
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Plus Mike Fast
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Plus they have an interview with another good THT researcher within days
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You’re going to be an Astro?
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Heh. No, I’m not moving to the US. I’ll let you know who it is if/when it will be official
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Yes these silly American companies and their wanting people to move to the US. Sounds great for someone though.
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Actually, the worst part would be downgrading from 42 vacation days to 15…
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15 if you’re lucky!
(though I get 20)
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Yeah. Also, I don’t do 60 hours weeks
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I think I need to move to a part of the world where this is the prevailing philosophy.
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Psh. I get 84 this year.
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And diapers to boot!
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Lazy.
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Work smarter, not harder
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I know you’re just trying to save the world from imminent destruction.
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/reduced-work-hours-as-a-means-of-slowing-climate-change
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Um, yeah, that’s it!
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Um… oh… oh… yeah??? Well *I* get baseball at a reasonable hour. So there!
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True dat
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I’m pretty sure that if you weren’t throwing your hat in for a gig in Chicago, you most definitely would not in Houston without a VERY substantial pay differential.
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DanBot!?!?!
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Oooo, that’d be bittersweet.
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No
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My wife says that if a club wants to hire you, they should let you work wherever in the world you want, and fly to the US once a month for conferences.
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Your wife should be hired as an adviser
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AWESOME.
Wait. You can’t help them. Email
meBilly.up
This is kind of my concern with the deal. I feel like pitching is always something you can stretch a little more trade value out of.
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Especially weird that they’re dealing Cole and Peacock while Forst is saying the team is concerned about the farm system being thin on SP’s.
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Guys, they were just quoted saying “the lineup is set…” which is A’s-speak for ‘more trades to come’.
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The A’s need help at 1B.
Conor Jackson can play 1B.
Bob Melvin loves Conor Jakson.
…
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I like the way you think.
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Ok, but only if we trade Addison for him.
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If it makes PL78′s head explode, it might just be worth it.
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until your pitching prospect blows out their arm or has two shitty seasons in a row and now is old.
Either of those were real risks with Peacock.
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His 2012 was bad, but not horribly bad, 4.26 FIP/ 9.29 K9/ 4.41 B9
Haven’t heard anything about any injury risks w/ him.
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He was an A.
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GP!
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And he had an era of 6.
and he throws a baseball for a living.
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Are you arguing ERA over FIP?
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My jaw would drop, but I’m still numb from the dentist.
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Heh, I hope the pain clinic wasn’t traumatic.
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They’re real risks with a lot of pitching prospects. Doesn’t mean that Carter+Peacock doesn’t seem a little steep for this deal, given how often teams will overpay for questionable pitching.
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Which isn’t what you said. You said that that more value can be stretched out of pitching rather than selling low. This is not accurate.
My initial reaction? I do not understand this trade. Yes, Chris Carter is pretty one-dimensional but he came around last year. I guess Jed Lowrie will fill in somehow as a backup infielder for the A’s but I see they gave up on Brad Peacock already too.
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I have to think that the A’s were concerned about Carter’s K rate. Still, I think they gave up on him too soon.
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I’m surprised about giving up on Peacock, especially since Colon’s kind of a question mark and it seems like we can’t survive through May without a starting pitcher falling over with the bubonic plague.
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Woulda been nice to sign McCarthy if we were going to trade our AAA depth.
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I may or may not have said some obscenities along those lines earlier today.
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The A’s would have had to offer significantly more than the DBacks to make up for the state tax differential.
I might have to get me one of these:
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What is the DK (?) in the orange circle supposed to represent?
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Dead Kennedys
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Ah, of course. So basically, Grateful Dead Uber Alles?
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I keep thinking that if someone wore this at a punk show 25 years ago they would have gotten their ass kicked.
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Oh hell yes. And probably bad vibed upon at a Dead show. That’s the beauty I see here, time sort of melding the dissonance into acceptability.
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why can’t I put in a picture? or a link>
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_yv02MoFmfxo/SfnBrjwi_eI/AAAAAAAAAVY/ePi4mGVBhuA/s400/uniform_choice_logo.jpg
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Nice!
Yeah all of my fancy commenting controls ( I really miss my italics…) have been absent for days, I’m on Chrome fwiw.
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It’s a host issue. Some sort of security thing.
I’m 95% sure I’ll switch hosts once I get time.
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I figured it stemmed from that, feel free to hit me up for hosting fees btw.
Its totally workable as is.
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When I pay for the tickets I’ll add $5 for the re upping somewhere else
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Cool. If/when I do it I’ll put together something more formal.
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A “Donate Bitches!” button on the front page.
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Either there needs to be a comma there or I need to be first in line for donations.
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Perhaps it should be randomized.
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They actually put that on a card? Wow.
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That’s badass!
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Ok, my morning is that much better now.
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I seem to remember some of our fold having never worn a suit and tie, I’ve always thought of this as a pj bottom and lab coat crowd.
I’ve always liked the “Buy Grey a daiquiri” thing they have going at Razzball.
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I have only worn a tie twice in my life, but I do have a pinstriped skirtsuit I like to wear when I go to shopping with my mom.
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We’re signing Adam Kennedy now too?
More on the remarkable ascent of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” to #1. Only the second song from an independent label ever to ascend to #1 on Billboard’s charts (and the only other one was because the unknown signer knew a famous actor who put it in his movie). This commentator says it’s the tip of the iceberg, as the privileged sanctum of music bigshots is about to collapse in the face of more accessible self-promotion opportunities.
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I think you could have written that blogpost five years ago. Macklemore might be (somewhat) more popular than some other big indie acts, and I guess there is a difference between “unsigned” and “signed to an indie label”, but he’s not the start of any trend.
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Yeah, I can’t say how epochal a change it might herald, but it’s not just about him being “somewhat more popular.” Being able to get huge enough fast enough to reach #1 without a major label promotion drive behind you is basically unprecedented, and it does make me wonder if a certain critical mass of self-controlled media tools might have been reached.
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Arcade Fire’s last albums, both on Merge Records (straight outta Chapel Hill), hit #1 and #2 on the Billboard Top 200 albums. Bon Iver’s last album, on Jagjaguwar (Bloomington, Indiana!), hit #2. Admittedly, these examples are from the Billboard album chart, which is different from the Hot 100 singles.
Those are just the examples that came to mind most readily. Checking this week’s Billboard 200, The Lumineers are at #2. I wouldn’t have necessarily guessed that they were on an indie label, but evidently Dualtone Records is just that.
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Five years ago much less so, I’d imagine. So you’re right, not a brand new trend, but an emerging one. The opportunities for distribution and promotion are closer to the artist’s hands than ever.
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I FKing hate that band!
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Which one? If it’s Arcade Fire, then I agree. If it’s Bon Iver, then I like some of his stuff fine.
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Why do you hate Arcade Fire?
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Hate is overly strong, for sure. I just don’t like them particularly.
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They’re a sad band that sings about mental illness, like the Eels or Pink Floyd.
When I’m depressed, I love them. When I’m happy, I have no use for them, other than the song “Neighborhood #2,” which is still sad, but quite anthemic if you forget that it’s about a violent mentally ill person dragging a household and neighborhood into sort of a group depression.
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The Lumineers!
I belong with you… you belong with me… in the cutout BIIIIIIIIIIIINS!
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HEY!
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HO!
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HIP
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LETSGO!
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They’re forming in a straight line!
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Oh yeah, I haven’t really heard them much except I saw them play on SNL. They seem pretty bad.
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I tried to listen to that whole song yesterday when it came on the radio. I didn’t even make it to the chorus before I changed the station.
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I had to sit through the whole album on Christmas Day on the way up to Roseville.
Next year, I’m bringing my shooters’ hearing protection, just in case such a sordid event threatens to transpire again.
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Try a completely different song by the same name, by Gin Wigmore.
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Sorry it’s so big.
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Bet you’ve never said that before.
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I bet you have.
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Did you just call me fat?
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No, I called you loose.
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I hate to admit that this reminds me of a Gilbert Gottfried joke that’s not only NSFW but NESFFK.
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Well, I can’t deny that.
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How can anything be NESFFK?
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I think the biggest change has been distribution – itunes, amazon, and paypal changed everything, I think Billboard is no longer the industry measure/ standard it once was. Blogs/ websites, social media, and viral campaigns hold more sway.
The other main shift is that the ‘product’ doesn’t necessarily need to be produced physically anymore.
The folks who buy vinyl and cd’s still tend to listen on an mp3 player be it FLAC or whatnot.
I only buy it physically/ vinyl if its got design points or I really really love it.
Between these two factors (and home tracking/ small studios possibly) make the mega labels less and less important each year.
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also mega labels want to sell shit.
Well at least I’ll only need to learn half the teams jersey numbers, last year was work!
Between Wallace, Pena, Maxwell, and Carter, those are some epic K numbers, looks like we have competition folks.
1) There’s already 3 lefties projected to be in the pen (Blackley, Doolittle, Blevins). I think Norberto and Figueroa go to AAA to stretch out as starters given the lack of depth there.
2) To beat a dead horse, a lot of the problems solved by these recent trades could’ve been solved by signing Youkilis or Napoli and/or trading for Yunel.
3) The stuff about Nakajima still being the starting shortstop is probably just initial PR for Nakajima’s camp. Healthy Lowrie is just unquestionably better than Nakajima. I’m going to guess that on opening day, Lowrie will starting at short “so we can put guys in the best position to succeed”.
4) I like Lowrie but I will miss Trogdor.
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I suspect Blackley joins the AAA stretch out squad.
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Can Blackley be sent to AAA? Surely he’s out of options.
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Did he ever make it to AAA last year? I know that’s what the plan was for him last season.
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He is.
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Don’t say such cruel things. :(
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You’re correct re: trading for Escobar. Rumors where Green or Peacock to get a deal done. Even if Miami really, really liked Dietrich the A’s could have added Stassi and have ended up with a healthy, effective SS for slightly less money than Nakajima and Lowrie will be making. Plus Carter on the roster. Sizemore ready to back up 3B if Donaldson struggled. Weeks and Green in place within the org to play 2B is Sizemore was otherwise occupied.
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OR YOU KNOW MAYBE SOMEONE LIKE HANLEY RAMIREZ BUT WHATEVER I GUESS
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I’d acknowledge that point more often if you ever gave up the campaign for Barton to 3B.
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I gave that campaign up like 2 seasons ago when he had the torn labrum in his throwing shoulder.
The meme kept up though.
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Campaign… meme… I had enough on my plate two years ago to notice the difference!
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I’ll accept that.
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REMEMBER, NICO HASN’T HAD INTIMATE RELATIONS WITH GOATS FOR YEARS AND HE’S TIRED OF THE JOKES!
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lol
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I wonder if Nakajima can take on the utility infield role or if he’ll only play SS.
I don’t see the need for Lowrie, since Pee El already told us Addison Russell will be in Oakland this year.
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I bet there’s a post from him on sfgate complaining that Lowrie is blocking Russell.
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I can’t decide if the potential laugh is worth the guaranteed headache.
I’m surprised. This one could come back to bite the A’s, if Carter is for real and in the division. (I’m skeptical, but he’s a hard guy to figure out, and certainly had flashes of brilliance.) Adding the extra pieces adds to the risk.
But I was tired of not having a real shortstop. And he will be the starting shortstop if healthy.
Finding a first baseman, if Moss flops, is easier than finding a shortstop. Years of SS mediocrity have taught us that.
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Bear old friend, that bit about it being easier to find a 1B than a SS might be true for other organizations but it surely hasn’t been the case in Oakland. Over the past 10 seasons the A’s have gotten ~ 1 fWAR or better from 1B 5 times. They’ve gotten ~1 fWAR or better from SS 9 times. When the A’s have gotten lot of production out of 1B it was to the tune of 3.5+ fWAR or better 4 times. They got 3 fWAR or better from SS 3 times.
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How many times have they gotten 5 fWAR from 1B?
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4.7 fWAR in 2010. Fangraphs credits the 2007 A’s as producing 5.7 WAR from 1B, but counts the total of Swisher’s 4 WAR to 1B even though he only made 39 starts there. Dan Johnson and September call-up Barton were good for 2+ fWAR at 1B in 2007, so there numbers plus some of Swisher’s… call it 3.5 fWAR in ’07.
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I accidentally a word. Not from 1B total, from *a* 1B.
Barton was 5.0 in 2010
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Damn skippy. The signed print on my office wall looks a lot better if he ever regains that OBP.
Unfortunately, it’s looking more likely that he unseats Craig Paquette as my favorite little-account A
I don’t love this trade. I get it, but I don’t love it. When Carter is on, damn is he good. And I think Peacock, while he’s never going to be a star, is valuable and the A’s should have been able to get more for him. Stassi? Meh.
Lowrie doesn’t excite me, but he’s solid good when he’s on the field, but I feel like he’s just a cog in the A’s injury machine.
Ok, I have a question, of Moss and Carter, which one is more likely to hit 30 HR in a season? and which is more likely to hit 200 hr?
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Here’s what bugs me. Whether it’s short term or long term, the A’s have decided to go all-in with Moss instead of Carter.
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Doesn’t matter, Carter can’t play defense.
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Then make him a perma-DH.
I understand why the A’s would rather have someone versatile enough to play multiple infield positions and not having Carter as a perma-DH opens that spot to rotate other players through, but I’d have rather they went in other directions to address some of that. I may very well end up wrong but I still like Carter’s future.
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I have no problem with disliking the trade because you like Carter and the other pieces. But Carter was not really Moss’ backup because he cannot play defense. Carter was the DH, plain and simple, but even then he wasn’t going to see a ton of AB’s with the other guys already on the roster.
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except.. he played 55 games at 1b last year and was only DH 4 times?
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Yeah, that’s just utterly wrong.
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Is it? If Carter was the 1Bman of the future then he wouldn’t have been traded. I think it’s obvious from Slusser’s and Beane’s quotes that they did not see a defensive home for him.
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He’s not a DH. Not yet at least. It may be in his future, but he is a first baseman right now. You can keep trying to say he’s not a first baseman all you want, it won’t make it true.
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What he said, a .987 fielding % in 469 inn with 6 E, is nothing to be proud of, but its not horrible.
Here’s Moss who no one seems to complain about -
.982 FP, 443.1 INN, 8 E
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And if we’re talking about not being a first baseman… Moss… isn’t a first baseman. He’s an outfielder moved to first just because.
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I’m pretty sure our whole IF is constituted of people playing out of their position.
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That sounds about right.
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Are you “PL”?
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That’s insulting
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unless you’re a Panamanian Lesbian or Paul Lukas, of course.
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He was passable. He’ll never sniff a gold glove but it wasn’t like he was a clankfest bucknering balls there.
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Carter actually improved to the point of at least SEEMING to look average at 1B with a glove overall.
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We must have watched different games.
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I got away from the point of feeling like he’d clank whatever was hit to him.
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He looked ok towards the end and even made a few tough plays, I watch pretty much every game if I can fwiw.
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As I recall he sort of pooped the bed defensively a couple of times during that 10-game road trip in September, and Melvin more or less barred him from being within 50 feet of a glove after that.
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Sure, not necessarily defending him, but so did the most of the IF last year.
I feel like people made up their minds on Carter prematurely.
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I was pleasantly surprised by Carter’s work at first most of last year, but he seemed to lose the manager’s trust down the stretch. Compare that to Moss, who had that horror show against the Giants and then made very few mistakes with the glove the rest of the way.
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The FK he was passable! Tyler Perry as Madea was more passable!
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Carter
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Carter, Neither
I think who this really is not good for is my beloved KEEBS.
And I’m sorry about Stassi because of his awesome tweet from yesterday:
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Well, at least the Texans are likely to be good again next year.
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Plus, he’ll fit right in with the Texas Board of Education, to be honestly
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Hehe!
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I didn’t realize how cute he is until he was posing for pictures at FanFest.
Hi friends.
One thing I haven’t seen on here is this: due to new league construction, and the perpetual interleague series, it will be nigh impossible to “stack” your roster for your interleague roadtrip. So, that said, its strategically malfeasant to have a roster spot that is dead weight 80% of the time. Given current construction, the 13 guys who are not pitchers will be rotating in and out of positions for rest/platoon maximization, and will allow Bob to do the ol’ double switch more often and not lose a step in interleague.
ALSO, the addition of the pitcher means we have another arm, not for our bullpen (guys stats were horrendous)but, when he gets up to snuff, another arm to do the sac/oak shuttle when we need fresh arms. Hi-ho option year!
ALSO if any of you like crab, seek me out. Hosting a crab feed in March.
Lof.
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AND!
Remember last trade deadline what shortstops were fetching? It was near highway robbery! This year’s market won’t be much better. Puts us in a good position for deadline deals.
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Both good points!
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They’re play basically the same amount of IL games so I don’t see how this helps anything. If anything it’s worse since you won’t necessarily have the large blocks of road IL that you used to.
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His point is that the IL games are sprinkled around the schedule more; in the past they could move a no-glove like Cust to AAA or the DL for a two week swing of NL games. For instance in a May-June 2013 stretch the A’s series go SF-CWS-MLW-CWS, back and forth.
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Meh, having a DH type come off the bench for 3 games or take 3 games off will never hurt a team. There’s little gained from those up and down moves. Plus at most you’d see 6 straight games AT the NL so you’d lose that player for 4 AL games at a minimum. No one was really hiding guys like that anyway.
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I disagree. We’re seriously in the era of 23 man rosters with (in effect) 4-8 guys rotating through the final two spots. Being saddled with a full-time DH who can’t play defense and is suspect against premium righties may be something of a liability within the context of a flexible system.
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Meh. Most of that rotation has involved injuries and sucking ass. As well as the A’s unwillingness to put guys on the DL.
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I think you’re correct in regards to the wtf was the old manager called era, but under Melvin, it seems that they’re stacking bullpen arms and serviceable utility players in AAA and swapping out the spare parts more often, and not always in response to injury.
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Mostly to sucking ass.
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most importantly, I FKing love crab
second most important, versatility is overrated. I would rather have one badass SS, and one badass 2B, and one badass 3B isntead of a couple guys who are all decent but can play 3 positions.
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Me too. And if one goes down, I’m okay with mediocrity at that position since you have BAD ASS at the rest.
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Or one badass SS/3B, sniff….
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OR HANLEY GODDAMN RAMIREZ
Fuck, why can’t they just listen to me? IF they did we’d have Matt Kemp and Hanley Ramirez right now.
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He’s who I meant. [ kicks the couch ]
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I would punch so many things for Matt Kemp, not gonna lie.
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The time to do it was a few seasons ago when Kemp hated LA, Colletti was disgruntled and didn’t like Kemp, and they both said a change of scenery might be needed, OH AND HIS AGENT WAS DAVE STEWART
They wanted a “real” defensive CF (hi Rajai Davis), another OF (hi Ryan Sweeney), and pitching (Hi Tyson Ross) for their bad defensive CF who just came off a down year. Sigh.
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That deal was never going to be made.
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This.
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I reject your reality.
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Crab info:
3/2, Palo Alto, 5 PM
$50 4 course dinner including ACYE fresh caught crab
little ones (<12) $25
Might have live funk show too. Or pianist. Or something.
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Oh how I miss Dungeness crab.
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Interesting
Not that it changes my opinion but:
2012 A’s C: .204/.262/.325/.587
ZiPS Jaso: .259/.361/.398/.759
2012 A’s SS: .203/.272/.313/.585
ZiPS Lowrie: .253/.331/.430/.761 (2nd highest on team!)
2012 A’s 2b: .228/.303/.316/.620
ZiPS Naka: .271/.316/.366/.682
Those three positions were either the three worst positions on the A’s or 3 of the 4 worst (A’s 3b hit .227/.280/.391/.671) in terms of offensive production last year. At the very least, the A’s should get better production at the plate from those three positions.
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I think you could have expected better production out of 2B without signing Nakajima or trading for Lowrie; you had Sizemore coming back, plus Weeks and Green fighting for a chance.
Lowrie can help the A’s if he stays healthy and he remembers how to hit lefties. I just wouldn’t bet on him staying healthy. Nor do I think he’s the starting SS even when healthy.
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It removes some uncertainty at least. In this division, the A’s don’t have much time to find out what they have with Weeks/Green, Sizemore and Nakajima all at once. They all have big question marks. Lowrie will probably get hurt at some point, but he’ll be healthy to start off the season (I’m assuming) and he’s shown he can be productive when healthy. When he invariably gets hurt, you’ll have that much more data on Sizemore, Weeks, Nakajima, Green, and whoever else to make more informed decisions. The A’s can’t really afford to have another April/May like last year while they figure out the team dynamic if they want to compete. I think the Lowrie acquisition speaks to that.
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Are those park adjusted?
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It’s just ZiPS, right? I spent 2 minutes on google and couldn’t figure out whether ZiPS takes home park into account. But even if it does, then it’s really unlikely that the projections have already been updated to reflect this trade. So that number for Lowrie either assumes that he plays half of his games in Houston, or else doesn’t take park into account and is just based on an average of his numbers with the Astros and Red Sox (which are both good hitters parks, of course).
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Oliver for the three
Nakajima .320 (Oakland)
Jaso .330 (Oakland)
Lowrie .321 (still Houston)
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Cairo for good measure:
Nakajima .304 (Oakland)
Jaso .327 (Oakland)
Lowrie .325 (Houston)
not surprised that there is a lot of disagreement on Nakajima…
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Yeah, there are just way to few data points on both sides to make anything more than a somewhat educated guess
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I’m a little surprised that they don’t all just throw up their hands and use the projection from one guy somewhere who is the NLB guru.
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Lowrie with the A’s is .320
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huh. That’s a way smaller difference than I was expecting. Isn’t Minute Maid Park supposed to be a bandbox?
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Hard to hit surrounded by the heavy fog of futility that encases the place
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Man. It’s so weird to be thinking about the Astros in the AL West.
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Also weird that MLB/ESPN are so excited about it that they are putting the Astros in the fake opening night slot.
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Who doesn’t revel in watching anything Texas get destroyed?
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But they’re playing against Texas, so it’s net meh.
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I think so. I know Oliver is
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ZiPS is. Jaso and Nakajima are park adjusted for Oakland, Lowrie for Houston.
Dammit… meant to leave links.
Lowrie’s injury history. I can’t compute serious traumas as “fluke” injuries.
Wrist and mono.
Shoulder.
Ankle.
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The ankle injury gives me the most pause, especially at SS.
I would really, really, really love to believe that the Super Bowl power was deliberately cut by gamblers or the NFL or the secret world government. So I’ve decided to.
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FKing Illuminati.
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Wait. The ILLUMINati turned OFF the lights?
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mind blown, right?
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And not for the first time.
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Flesh out this conspiracy theory. It needs to get pretty baroque before I buy in.
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Well, supposedly there is actually a past history of gambling syndicates blacking out power in Euro soccer games. The NFL was on the verge of losing a huge audience sector in a blowout. The blackout distracted a watchful Twitterati long enough for black helicopters to do, well, something.
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I’m listening…
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Canadian gamblers?
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Ha!
I’d love you if I didn’t think it would lead to awkwardness.
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Shhh. Just let it happen.
Just a quick thought.
Three main acquisitions this year are Young, Jaso and Lowrie.
Their observed platoon splits are 0.060 wOBA, 0.093 wOBA and 0.062 wOBA. Even after regressing, they are significantly above league averages of 0.023, 0.035 and 0.040. The A’s were second most frequent creators of platoon plate appearances last year. I expect them to easily be number one by the end of 2013
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Can they get an exemption and have a 32 man roster to fully take advantage?
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You don’t really need to. I am seriously starting to believe that platooning is the “new moneyball”.
You NEED two catchers. The A’s will split their playing time not to “number one, until his knees fall off and then occasionally number two or three”, but to handedness. Jaso and Norris don’t cost more than Suzuki and Recker, to name an example. Ditto for a “fourth outfielder”. Ditto for a “utility infielder”
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The A’s could easily get more than two wins just out of mixing and matching next year (in comparison to not platooning with the same expected production out of each player)
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Yours is a reasoned answer but nowhere near as funny as the set-up MikeV left for you.
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I know – I’m in my nerdy calculating mode…
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Or they could ask for a split season.
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We could be #1!!!
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So Young is platooned with Smith, Jaso with Norris and Lowrie with…um….Weeks?
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Lowrie is platooned with everyone. He plays when there is a LHP. Sizemore, Nakajima or Donaldson can take a day off.
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When healthy. Fewer than 100 games played 4 years running. Wrist surgery. Dislocated shoulder. Nerve damage in his leg.
I get the versatility, switch-hitting with very good numbers vs. LHP argument but I’m not convinced he’s durable enough to justify the price. The A’s had infield depth before Lowrie and if they were really worried about Nakajima at SS they could’ve had Escobar for less than it cost them to acquire Lowrie.
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or they could have just signed Drew back for money and not prospects
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Problem with that. Drew took a 1 year deal with Boston to rebuild his value and land a huge payday a year from now; so how much more would the A’s have had to pay to get him to make the attempt in Oakland? Or would you have been willing to give him the 4 year, umpteen million annual he was hoping to get this offseason?
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or his perceived value was way lower than he thought.
Regardless, the point is there was a SS available who only cost money.
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Could’ve taken a lot of money and we’re not even sure how good Drew is anymore.
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I was strongly in the Escobar camp. I am just saying that we are probably overlooking how platoon splits are playing a role in this and other offseason decisions. I am running some numbers now – potential is staggering
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Crisp’s career splits are pretty even, but he has struggled some vs. LHP the past two years. Samples are small enough that it could be noise, but it opens a door for Young to get starts in CF since he crushes lefties. If Crisp is hitting well he could bump Smith out of DH vs. LHP or Lowrie gets some DH time if Moss is holding his own. It would make sense if the last bench spot was taken by a switch hitter of LH bat… maybe Weeks? Gives the added bonus as a pinch runner.
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Ooops, my bad – I thought I was looking at career, while I was looking at 2012
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what’s with the capital “g” over at fangraphs?
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???
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oh, now I see on my computer. On my phone, it was a capital “g” in the comments.
Quick and dirty calculation:
- Starters versus starters is where you accrue the biggest part of your PlatoonPA
- Starters versus starters account for about a half of all PA
- Last year, the A’s had 64% of those PA versus RHP
- Per position, there are about 700 PA per year, meaning that the A’s will roughly have 240 PA versus RHP and 120 versus LHP (only starter versus starter) per position
Imagine a team with a starting catcher and a backup catcher. They alternate randomly, with starter getting two thirds of the starts. So The Starter would have 160 PA versus right and 80 versus left, and The Backup 80 and 40. Now imagine we are talking about Jaso and Norris and going to extremes, where Jaso gets all 240 PA versus right and Norris all 120 starts versus left.
What that does is creates 80 PlatoonPA (the ones where he switched the matchup from less favorable one to a more favorable one) for Jaso and another 80 for Norris.
Keep going on in this extreme scenario, there are 1080 PA for the 2B/SS/3B. Instead of evenly spread 270 PA for Sizemore, Donaldson, Nakajima and Lowrie (180 vs R, 90 vs L), imagine Lowrie gets 270 versus left, leaving the other three with 240/30 split each.
That’s 180 PlatoonPA for Lowrie, 60 for each one of the other three.
Similar for outfield, with Seth and Coco taking the role of Lowrie. So instead of five players going 144/72, you have Coco and Smith with 216/0 and Cespedes, Reddick and Young going 96/120.
That’s 72 PlatoonPa for Coco and Theth, 38 for each of the other three.
Even using league average splits and even without accounting for additional 1B/DH PA, that is two wins added
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Does that account for the lost Carter/Moss and Carter/Moss/Insert DH platoons we lost?
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No, but I’m sure it will not be all that difficult to platoon at those two positions, especially DH
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I guess my question is, what would the difference be in that calculation between having Lowrie in that platoon vs. having Carter in that platoon?
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Huge.
First, Lowrie is on the long end of the platoon, Carter on the short. Second Lowrie can play three more positions than Carter
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Carter doesn’t have much of a split though. He doesn’t really need to be platooned.
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he hasn’t had enough ab to know that
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k
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We can estimate.
In MLB he has shown almost no split, although that is based on fewer than 400 PA. In Minors, he had almost 3,000 PA and he showed a very strong split (more than double of the average right-handed hitter). Taking all data into account, our best estimate is that he has about 50% more pronounced platoon split than an average right-hander.
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Do you know if the numbers bear out that righthanded hitters have less pronounced platoon splits than lefthanded hitters do, on average? That seems to have been the conventional wisdom over time and I always wondered why.
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I’ll forgive you that you don’t read my articles
I did. And here is why:
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I’ll apologize, but also note that I live and work in a country that allows us very little leisure time.
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NOW I know. And feel for you
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LOL
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It was not a question whether he needs to be platooned, more if he adds anything in that department. Lowrie does, a lot.
I met Lowrie’s mother-in-law back in 2008, at a bed and breakfast in Boston (or maybe Brookline?). They weren’t married back then, but he and his girlfriend had been together since back at Stanford. I got into a conversation with the mother at breakfast because of the Stanford connection and she was telling me about her daughter, who was a pole vaulter and at the time was getting a masters in international relations from the Woodrow Wilson school at Princeton. Then she mentioned that the reason they were in town was because her daughter’s boyfriend played for the Red Sox (except Lowrie was already injured at that point). Jed and his girlfriend were going to come by the B&B to pick her up later, but I had to run so I didn’t hang around to spy.
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Lowrie seems to be pretty into photography — http://www.jl4photography.com/
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Good gear, to much HDR and kitsch.
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Yeah, it did seem like a lot of heavy editing.
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Selective color, ugh.
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Oh, yeah, that one hurts
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I feel like injudicious use of HDR and Instagram will be like the color balance/ photoshop tricks from the 90′s in ten years from now.
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It’s hilarious seeing people on Craigslist looking for a photographer and wanting a link to your Instagram feed.
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Oh God.
I don’t even use Instagram.
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Me neither.
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“Oh honey, you’re not looking for a photographer, you’re looking for a tweeny with an iphone.”
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Hehe, pretty much.
YES. FK YES. HELL FKING YES.
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Meh. I’m done with Tom Cruise.
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Me too, but I’m just getting started with Tom Skerritt.
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I want to see a post-Scientology Tom Cruise star as David Miscavige in a blockbuster movie expose, tearing down everything he’s ever known, in a catharsis on film.
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OH MY GOD YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
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Sometimes I think we’re the same person. You’re just the cooler version. But since we’re agreeing with something Tits McV is saying, this is obviously a sign the world is going to end.
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You’re the more talented version, so fair’s fair.
As long as it doesn’t end before I get my Top Gun ogling done.
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That is the first time I’ve ever been called that.
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It works though. It’s got a good beat and I can dance to it.
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Agreed.
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It’s got a great beat and I can really dance to it. I give it an 88, Dick.
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I like it because it leads to us calling him Titty Sprinkles.
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as long as you do it in Morgan Freeman’s voice.
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Is there any other way?
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This is probably the closest you’ll get to the real thing.
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You’re welcome.
Want:
Too bad I can’t make it to that game.
Interesting point from Fangraphs. It’s written from a fantasy perspective, but it appears that Barton is out of options and has shown a reverse platoon split in his career, FWIW.
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As good place as any to preach the regression.
With Barton’s numbers (.368 wOBA vs L, .315 vs R and 533 and 1638 PA respectively), we should regress his 800 H-mean PA of – 17% split with 1670 of league average 6.1% split, meaning that his true talent is most likely to be neutral hitter, or at most 3-4 points of wOBA better agianst the lefties. That’s not a platoon player.
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Yeah, and most of those PA’s were in 2010 to boot. Still, I wonder if it will come into play this season at all.
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Yup.
Anywaym, a player can be a part of a platoon even if he doesn’t have a pronounced split. It is enough that the other half does, and that you are better than his weaker side.
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I hadn’t thought of it, but Carter for Lowrie really increases the chances of Barton making this team, since our starting second baseman now can play shortstop. Barton is useful as a late inning defensive replacement for Moss or a pinch-hitter when you need a base runner.
1. Cespedes
2. Crisp
3. Reddick
4. Young
5. Smith
6. Donaldson
7. Lowrie
8. Nakajima
9. Moss
10.Norris
11.Jaso
12.Sizemore/Weeks
13.Barton
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Yuck. No thanks. I think his defense is overrated and his bat is still mehy.
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But a great point to start a discussion.
You have your starting nine, than you have a back-up catcher as 10, utility infielder as 11, fourth outfielder as 12. What role do you (all of you) want to fill with #13?
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I want Jonny Gomes. Or, more precisely, a version of Jonny Gomes who is a competent defensive first baseman.
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I want someone who could can play all 9 positions, switch hit, run, throw, hit for both average AND power, get on base, and get me a slurpee. Or an Icee. Whichever. I’m pretty flexible on that last one.
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Must also be good with a t-shirt cannon.
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And get me laid.
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With a t-shirt cannon.
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I don’t know if I want to try to catch the women coming out of the cannon. I think just introducing me and getting us a room would suffice.
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If I’ve learned anything from DFA, it’s that women are a numbers game. Having them flying at you out of a cannon is just a more efficient way of sorting through them.
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Conversely, you can just put yourself into the t-shirt cannon and aim somewhere.
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My boy side so wants to say “TAGLINE”
but my girl side is all “THE FK YOU WILL!”
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I side with your boy side.
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I think it might make sense to give him a shot at the beginning of the season, rather than just releasing him, because there’s no clearly better option for the 25th spot on the roster right now. Now if we can acquire a RH backup first baseman who can really hit, or if Shane Peterson blows the doors off in Arizona, by all means drop Barton off somewhere and drive away quickly.
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That’s where the yuck came in. Because it does kind of make sense.
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Agreed. There was talk about him having to prove himself in ST to make the team, but that was pre-Carter trade. Barring further moves, I think he makes it.
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Carrying both Sizemore and Weeks is also a possibility, though I tend to think they would rather have Weeks playing every day in AAA than pinch running in the majors. I guess the other possibility is Sizemore + Rosales. I just have a feeling they won’t DFA Barton without giving him one more chance.
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Carrying the extra middle infielder/utility player over Barton seems too redundant, unless they’re really planning on playing a lot of Lowrie at 1B. But I dunno, it might come down to some ST judgments.
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Some guy on Fangraphs wants them to platoon Barton and Moss
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I saw that and barfed a little.
I’ve gone Crosby on Barton…
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Me too.
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“Gone Crosby”
Is that a good 2013 band name, or a bad 1993 band name?
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Yes.
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Oliver says
Carter .345
Moss .341
Barton .332
.013 points of wOBA over 600 PA says that Barton’s bat would be 7 runs worse than Carter.
For his career (3900 innings), Barton has a UZR/150 of 9.5 at 1B. I’m not going to try to use Carter’s UZR, because of the small sample, but no one is suggesting that he is an above average defender, right?
That projection says that Barton would provide more value than Carter as a full time starting 1B. (Yes, I realize that Barton has been an *awful* hitter for the last two years. But this is what one projection system says.)
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So happy Steamer and Oliver hit FG finally!
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Me too. Steamer is uniformly more pessimistic on all three, so the same analysis holds.
Carter .335
Moss .324
Barton .323
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Somewhat related. David Appelman is really providing ton of value for the readers, as well as paying his writes, researchers. Fangraphs is completely free, but one way of donating is subscribing for FG+, where you get additional fantasy tidbits, but basically just say ” having this content is worth $5 a year for me”
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This is my second year subscribing, I bought a t-shirt too last year. ;)
They messed up Lowrie’s blurb though, he’s still 27.
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Awesome
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Addendum: when I said “more value than Carter”, I should have said “it’s a wash”, because that’s really just a 2.5 run difference. Also, I just saw that Oliver does a fielding projection and they have Barton for just 5 fielding runs, in which case it’s still a wash, but this time in Carter’s favor.
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I don’t really buy into the numbers for defense. More accurately, I don’t weigh them nearly as much as I do offensive numbers. Not because I see one more important than the other, but I see one more accurate than the other. I think it’s fair to say Barton’s above average and Carter’s below average defensively, but by how much that separation is actually worth, not so sure it balances out.
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What do you think is the actual difference in fielding runs above average between a good and a bad 1B? 5 runs? 1 run?
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Wouldn’t even want to put a number on it. I suspect the numbers are closer to what the projections say they than what I’d ever think they are. I take a more more subjective approach to say if the overall numbers balance out, I’d take the one with higher offensive projections over the one with higher defensive projections. If one guy is overwhelmingly better than the other, it doesn’t matter so much whether they’re both higher or if one is lower.
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Has a 1Bs ability to scoop errant throws or stretch/do splits been quantified at all yet in defensive stats?
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That’s what I think is overrated about Barton’s defense. I think his stretching hurts him as much as it helps him. Doing the splits makes it harder to adjust to hops.
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Barton nice splits in that sense.
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Barton’s SplitsRuns(TM) are off the charts!
More seriously, I don’t know. I looked up Pujols, since he is a good fielding 1B who has played a lot (sample size is >3 times bigger than for Barton). His career UZR/150 is 6.9, which suggests that 5 certainly isn’t flukey high (though maybe 10 is?). I realize that this doesn’t address dmoas’ complaint about UZR.
Breaking down Pujols career UZR (71.6 total), the vast majority comes from “range” runs above average (59.4), with small contributions from “double play” runs (4.5) and “error” runs (7.8). Based on my understanding of UZR, I don’t think that scooping balls would be counted in range runs. It would show up a little in error runs, since he would be charged with an error for good throws that he didn’t catch. It probably also contributes to double play runs, since the ability to stretch and scoop will help for turning close double plays. But it does seem like a lot of good scoops would show up only as fewer errors for the other infielders.
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That’s kind of what I suspected. A good 1B will make the rest of the infield look better defensively, sorta like a really good defense might make a pitcher have a deceptively low ERA.
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I’d imagine it would have more of effect on the rest of the defense’s numbers than his own.
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Also, I hope it goes without saying that I wouldn’t want to throw out defensive stats like UZR and TotalZone. They’re certainly the most valuable numbers to look at when evaluating defense. It’s just a lot easier to make objective evaluations on offensive numbers than defensive numbers. My main complaint is mostly the higher margin of error that (should) be associated with defense based WAR calculations.
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Yeah, but my point is that the difference between Carter’s and Barton’s offensive projections is basically consistent with the difference between “good fielder” and “bad fielder”. Taking a skeptical view of my projection, I am much more uncertain about the offensive side of things, because Barton was *so* bad for the last two years.
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and injured.
HE’S GOING TO BOUNCE BACK THIS YEAR AND HAVE A .400 OBP AGAIN AND BE 6 WAR AND YOU GUYS WILL SEE. HAH.
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I will be very happy if that happens.
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I’d think it’s more above average field vs. meh fielder, but your point still stands. It’s just as possible for it to be a wash as it is for Carter to batshit crazy with the bat. Probably.
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After lamenting Vernon for 10 min or so, that was my greatest concern…
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The A’s could also go with 13 pitchers:
Anderson
Parker
Milone
Griffin
Colon/Straily
Scribner/Norberto/Figueroa
Blackley
Resop
Neshek
Blevins
Doolittle
Cook
Balfour
I think Scribner’s deserving of a bullpen spot but of course, there’s little use for an 8th guy in the bullpen. In any case, your point stands. If it isn’t hard to imagine Barton making the team when everyone is healthy, then his chances of making the team are actually pretty high considering injuries.
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That bullpen does not include Rodriguez either.
Having slept on it, I really think that the evaluation of this trade depends on what you think of Chris Carter, more so than any of the other four players.
If you think that Carter is the player he was last year, this is probably not a good trade. But here’s the thing – the odds of Carter repeating last season are really, really low. And by that I don’t mean what he did in the terms of a final result, more as a how he got there.
Last year Carter had wOBA of over .360 and K% of over 31%. Do you know how many players had a qualifying season like that in last 50 years? Four. So, I guess the question is, which one do you think represents his skill more, K-rate or wOBA. And if I had to guess, I’d say K-rate. First because it stabilizes much faster than wOBA, and second, because his high wOBA was fueled by ISO of .275, better than anuything he’s done in Minors, save for 2008.
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Speaking for myself, I was happy to have a player with legit power, that rare monster power, which has been absent from our lineup for a long long while, not to mention we had a full 6 years of it.
Sure he had some flaws but for some reason management didn’t believe in him enough to give him the steady couple of months of AB’s that other rookies have frequently seen in the past couple seasons.
We’ll likely never know what happened, but let’s just hope he doesn’t figure it out during home games I’m at.
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From fan/entertainment perspective, his were the ABs that I never wanted to miss
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Not to quibble but he had an ISO of .271 in 551 PA’s(AAA) in 2010, and posted .310 in 596 PA’s in 2008 (A+), so is not out of nowhere exactly.
His 31% K rate is difficult to ameliorate but his 15% B rate is above average.
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True. But normal development is for stats to deteriorate in MLB, not improve
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Moss just had a .402 wOBA and a 30% K rate
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Yeah, that one scares me. He’s going to have all kinds of scary regression. But at least we have Carter to back him up when he pumpkins out. Oh wait…
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Not in a qualifying season. Also, I am taking 5:1 bets he won’t have one in 2013
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That’s kind of my point. He’s only had one qualifying season since 2007, and now he’s the everyday 1B.
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If your point is that both Carter and Moss are very probably due for a decline, I agree
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I think Moss is, very much more than Carter.
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One thing no one has mentioned yet to my knowledge is that Carter is entering peak years, Moss is exiting.
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Yeah, that one scares me. Especially with Barton now #2.
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Barton has been #2 for a while now…
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Truf.
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Zing!
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Curious what would the value be, say increased by the inverse value of his expected deterioration, look like for him in AAA to be plausible in the majors, .290-.300 in 500 PA’s, or is it too small a sample?
Sorry if this is difficult to parse.
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What the fuck man, I’m still trying to figure out Primer.
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win
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It goes on before the final coat. Duh.
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Not sure I completely understand, sorry
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Sounds like he’s asking what his AAA numbers would have had to have been in order for his MLB numbers to appear accurate for his potential.
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Yes, thanks for making sense.
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No worries, I explained it poorly.
What percentage of decrease in ISO would one usually expect from AAA to MLB.
I was curious what his totals in AAA would have to be in order to make .275 plausible.
I understand the initial conversation was concerning wOBA so this is a tangent.
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That’s actually something I would like to know myself. If anyone knows a way to import/parse minor league data, I would be thankful
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I’d love to see this as well. I’m sure David Appelman would know since fangraphs now has milb data. Maybe he would reply to an email. Otherwise, I’m at a loss.
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Good point. I know David, and can ask him
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I spent like 1000 hours this winter making a spreadsheet by manually entering numbers, but it’s really really far from complete.
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Carter has a career 32.3% K-rate in the bigs. Yet his big league career consists of 384 PA spread over 3 seasons. His 2012 K-rate comes from 260 PA.
Question: Are those sample sizes sufficient to determine if his current K-rate is indicative of his true level?
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Related: his 2012 HR/FB rate was 25.4% on 63 flyballs. If anyone knows how long that rate usually takes to stabilize, it would be awesome.
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I don’t think it will be that high forever but I don’t think it’ll drop a whole lot.
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I’m also not qualified to be taken seriously
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You have some answers here
I don’t at all agree with the concept of stats “becoming reliable” at any given point. You always have to regress, the question is only how much. But it does show, that given the same sample size, there is more truth in K% than in ISO, or wOBA or HR/FB
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HR/FB is one that I’m still trying to figure out, I mean I understand it, but trying to see a trend in the data.
Totally digging the ongoing story at FG right now even though some of the statistical work is difficult to follow ( I have a fine arts degree).
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It is somewhat of a metric of how far you hit your fly balls.
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I love baseball stats foremost, it maybe what attracted me to baseball – I loved to keep score w/ games as a kid.
Nowadays I also have more of a fantasy interest in it, I know I know – nerd.
The past couple of years I’ve been looking especially at LD, FB, and FB/HR rates combined w/ contact % for hitters, but there seems to be a ton of noise or variance between years, with younger players it seems almost hopeless.
Likewise I’ve been concentrating more on Fstrike, GB rates, and SwStrike for pitchers.
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The problem with LD versus FB is that, unlike most of the other ones you mention, they are subject to interpretation, so the datasets are (somewhat) biased by who inputs them
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What attracted me to baseball was having past life memories of being Connie Mack when I read my first biography of him when I was 6.
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shouldnt that be “my first biography of me when I was 6″? Or first autobiography..
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Yeah, I’m with you on the inexactness of the idea that a stat is unreliable if you have X-epsilon PA but suddenly reliable once you have X+epsilon PA because it “stabilized”. It would be awesome if someone would publish something like Fisher errors for various metrics, which you could just scale by sqrt(PA) or whatever.
Heading to Berkeley. Gregoire for lunch? Or should I try something else?
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Their pastry folds are fking excellent.
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Do they have excellent’s consent?
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They take what they want, creme fraiche is forgiving.
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Gregoire is delicious, and he’s a good guy too!
Why aren’t we still talking about how we miss
BrandonAmanda McCarthy?up
as the waitress?
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beat me to it
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Is that an observation, or a request?
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Yes.
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Um… if you go… can I come?
A couple side notes:
1) The Astros also have Brett Wallace, and signed Carlos Pena (at $2.9 Million, their second-highest-paid player). That’s a lot of 1B/DH. (All former A’s prospects too). Carter could still find himself on the short end of a platoon. Or do they move Carter back to OF? Or Wallace to 3B?
2) On our end, does Miles Head move back to 1B? Not much else in the system there, beyond the aforementioned Shane Peterson. Sickels says Matt Olson is a B-, but he’s 18 and in low-A, so a few years away.
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Sean.Doolittle.
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Dan Johnson or Jack Cust, hrm….
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Dan Johnson is a Yankee and I has a sad.
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How much practice playing 1B in AAA is Head likely to need before playing the position in bigs, I wonder. If he sort of has the position down already I’d like to keep him playing third until he proves he can’t do it. Even if he eventually makes it to the bigs primarily as a first baseman, whether because Moss bombs or because Josh Donaldson is the new Mike Schmidt, it would be nice to know whether he could play third in a pinch.
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Reasonable enough. Also, last year Sacramento had a bunch of players who rotated among different positions, and probably will again this year, including Head, Peterson (1B/OF), and Green (2B/SS/3B/OF)
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This is pretty much exactly what I was going to say. He only has half a season of AA under his belt, so I don’t expect him in Oakland this season. If he’s unlikely to be relevant to the 2013 A’s, then let’s not worry about our current positions of need. If the 2014 A’s still need a 1B, then they could move him there.
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Wallace to 3B and Carter to OF didn’t work for the A’s, but I guess the Astros have less to lose at this stage.
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Or Wallace to 3B and Carter to 1B and Pena to DH.
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Carter to SS, Wallace to CF.
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Carter+Wallace at SS. If they help each other out, they might add up to one competent fielder.
Kay-bait.
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IOKIYAP
Sounds like a good candidate for Opus Dei.
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I don’t think this is quite what the church had in mind when they preached restraint from temptation.
In seriousness though, I get that they’re covering their asses here since the church certainly doesn’t need another sexual scandal and this could easily be portrayed as such, but I don’t see anything wrong with this. I get that it’s not a standard accepted way of dealing with life and stress, and priests aren’t supposed to have any quirks, so it’s fun to poke fun at, but he should be able to do what he wants in his private time. Besides, much better self bondage than punching a parishioner or something.
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I do self-bondage to relieve stress. I built a cage door into my “meditation closet.”
However, I do not do amateur shit like letting myself get into trance and lock myself up before having a meticulous foolproof escape plan and/or play partner to let me out… at least I haven’t in a long time, although I have a couple of stories… one told on ** back in the day.
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And more Kay bait.
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Hey, what ever happened with that philosophical quiz you posted a while back?
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Good question. I’ll have to try to find it to see if they’ve posted results yet.
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Found it. Seems kind of squishy to me but I’ll confess I didn’t read it through all that thoroughly, nor am I a student of philosophy.
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Thanks. The motivation and conclusions seem pretty interesting.
I can definitely see how this kind of experiment would be useful to a philosopher, to understand which of his values are more or less universal (in his intended audience at least) and which require more justification. It might also be interesting for him to give this quiz to his own class, at the beginning and end of semester, to see to what extent the class changes the way people think about these issues.
At the same time, I’m a little bit wary of drawing too many conclusions about how people act (or should act) in the real world based on these abstractions. In particular, it’s hard to take “experience machine” questions seriously.
Another one that stood out for me was question #2, where I agreed with the “authorized answer” but the majority did not. Based on the description it sounds like Norbert is desperately searching for, and not finding, something in his life. But then he is described as “happy-go-lucky.” Should we just assume an omniscient narrator with perfect knowledge of this hypothetical person’s mental state, or should we allow our own experience about how real humans act make us skeptical of whether he is truly happy? The former approach seems problematic, and really not terribly useful.
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I didn’t seem to find the original questions with all that. But I tend toward sslinger’s squishiness based on what they’re trying to do. Existentialism is a very subjective thing with so many influences (and as you pointed may be subject to change simply based on being in that class). Even the qualifier of “good” is subjective and debatable.
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I like the idea of giving the quiz at the beginning and end of the class to see if they’ve been influenced by the topics covered.
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I’m a transhumanist (with counterbalancing luddite tendencies), so I venerate the posthuman, not worry about what its’ effects may be on the unenhanced. I think that a sufficiently enlightened AI/human interface would value human life, although it may force the unenhanced to upgrade and persecute or eliminate those who do not… or maybe ban them from using technology and force humanity to return to more primitive ways of life, turning Earth into some sort of bronze age nature reserve.
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Can i just take a moment to say here that I love this blog.
Can I just say that Slusser totally nailed this one. Props to her.
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Heyo
What part are you referring to sunshine?
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Breaking a rumor a long time ago (though anyone that listened to KG’s podcast could probably suss out that KG loved him) that the Astros wanted Carter. Its the kind of reporting that I criticize her for not doing enough. She did it here, so props.
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In fact, she broke it so long ago that I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to happen because it would have been done already.
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heh
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“Breaking a rumor”
Ahh, journalism.
Assholes
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Wow. That really sends a message.
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Yeah – there are at least three zeroes missing from the end of that fine.
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Is that why he’s never around anymore?
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Maybe they can get on 60 Minutes a second time for that.
Dick gets cut off.
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You can get fired for making a bad prediction? I feel bad for all the football experts who thought the 49ers were gonna win the Super Bowl. Crap, I thought they were gonna win. Then again, I’m no expert.
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Well, in this case it seemed pretty clear at the time that his predictions were made not because his data supported them, but for partisan purposes of trying to avoid Republican voter discouragement. What’s surprising is that this matters to Fox…so surprising, in fact, that I’ll posit the alternative justification that they’re firing Dick to provide cover for retaining Karl Rove.
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Yeah, I’m calling BS on that reasoning too. Plus, they’re saying they “became the scapegoats for liberals” because, you know, damn those liberals!
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You know, if you read “liberals” as “Fox News team,” Fox News makes a lot more says in an incredibly self-loathing kind of way.
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The safe approach is never to make any kind of testable prediction. Most pundits have already figured that out.
That awkward moment when a really good friend who you thought was a moderate lets slip the fact that she’s a birther.
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Did you slap her in the face?
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I should’ve.
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Gotta knock the stupid out of her quick, bud.
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I don’t think it’s possible, sadly. She’s nice, though.
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hate fk?
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Definitely not attracted to her, even before this birther thing.
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What if you turned her around?
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Then it could lead to her birthing in nine months.
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Not if you do it right.
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Still, no thanks. Plus (no offense to anyone here), she’s a smoker. Can’t/won’t kiss a smoker.
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Good call.
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What about pot?
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Yeah, that’s not so bad.
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What dmoas said.
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About the kissing, or the turning around?
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Nadya Suleman?
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Birther, not breeder.
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Haha!
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But everything is more pleasant when uttered in a soft South Carolina drawl.
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No, you’re thinking of that breezy Georgia accent. Charlestonians sound weird, and upstate South Carolinians sound like they’re on their way to a lynching.