This started as a response to grover’s excellent fanpost on ** and thread but it outgrew the Reply-stage and became its own thing. Nonetheless, grover’s fanpost is a must read because it’s excellent and serves as a primer for what you’re about to read here. I’ll quote the relevant points from the previous post so it will do justice to gover’s work.
The issue of the declining draft bonus expenditures is somewhat misleading. Three years does not a trend make, but since 2009 the A’s have spent approximately $70 million annual on the combination of big league payroll and draft/international FA signing bonuses. In 2008 they spent approximately $60 million, with $48 million designated for the big league roster. 2007 had a minimal international flavor yet the A’s still spent approximately $84 million ($4 million in the draft) on player personnel. So if you believe in stealing from Peter (’08) to pay Paul (’07) economics than over the past 5 years the A’s have averaged approximately $70 million annual on player salaries and signing bonuses. This figure obviously doesn’t factor in minor league salaries but that should stay fairly constant year-to-year. Yet $70 million seems to be the budget the A’s have to work with given their current economic situation.
So there’s some validity to the theme that the $5 million spent on Fuentes this year could/should have gone towards over-slot bonuses and/or international signings. The flip side to that is last year’s 81-81 finish with a relatively young team offered the potential for a winning season in 2011. Texas looked to have holes in their rotation and Anaheim had finished a game behind Oakland. The A’s had pitching and defense but were in desperate need of offense. Beane made some shrewd moves to acquire DeJesus and Willingham, and then signed Matsui. (Who, it must be pointed out, has out-performed Cust in every facet of baseball this season.)
A few crucial points: I projected the A’s to win between 76 and 84 games this year, with a sub 500 record being likely. Â The A’s were not 1 WAR of bullpen use away from being a winner. Â The A’s were not a 1 WAR upgrade from Sweeney to Willingham away. Â The A’s weren’t acquiring DDJ and his projected 1.5 WAR upgrade over Davis away. Â The A’s were not a 2 WAR bullpen upgrade away.
The A’s were between a rock and a hard place as they had only one player that could have reasonably been projected to be 3 WAR or more offensively.  Their pitching was slightly above average with a huge propensity to collapse due to injury reoccurred from Anderson (elbow), Braden (foot related), Harden (everything), McCarthy (shoulder), Ross (throwing motion).  The A’s didn’t have a team that could have reasonably been forecasted to put up anything close to the 42 WAR that a team needs to be competitive.  The problem is that once again just like 2009, the A’s management decided to push in on a shitty hand and has not shown that they know how to recognize when in fact they have a viable shot at the division.  You can blame the poker player who pushes all in with off suit 3s and 7s, it’s a stupid idea.
Furthermore, grover, if you intend on giving Beane credit for choosing Matsui over Cust as a success despite preseason projections that showed it a lateral to negative, you have to give Beane the blame for the other acquisitions working out poorly.
Because really, what better way to spur MLB and Selig into making a fucking decision about the stadium issue than to field a winning team? Maybe there was some pressure from the Lodge to have the payroll in the mid-60’s, but a solid season from Fuentes would make him a potential trade chip come July if things didn’t go as planned in 2011. And would we really be griping about Fuentes’ salary if it was the A’s 6 games up over the rest of the AL West right now? I doubt it.
Actually, grover, there were many people, including yours truly and a ton of ** and FK who thought his acquisition was an unmitigated disaster waiting to happen before the season even started.  The year before, Fuentes couldn’t get traded for anything better than a 25 year old AA reliever who walked more batters than he struck out, making arguments about falling back on his trade value specious.  At the end of the day the A’s will always be in a small market team and the binding principal of the market is that small market franchises that do not successfully and gainfully invest in the greatest return for the dollar will fail.
Furthermore, intimating that the A’s winning 86 games (their most optimistic projection) gets Selig to suddenly grant the A’s a whole new territory, seems to border on silliness. Â Lets say the A’s did really well, went to the playoffs and won the whole shebang, is Selig going to ok a move after the A’s just got a lot more popular in Oakland? “Congrats on winning guys I guess its ok to move to San Jose!” Â How plausible is that? Lets say they did ok and challenged the Rangers for the division, is a better than average year going to get something off the ground that hasn’t been moved in two years?
Beane made the decision to go for it in 2011 and emphasized his spending towards the now rather than invest in later. And a strong majority of AN supported Beane’s decision to acquire talent that would help in the immediate. Shit happens and we’re all profoundly disappointed in this season. Hindsight is 20-20 and all that.
They thought that the Holliday deal was great, they thought that signing Zombie Giambi was awesome, they thought that  AJ Griffin was the best pitcher since Strausberg too. Looking to them to effectively judge whether Beane made a correct decision is like asking Standard and Poor to come up with a national credit rating sans $2 trillion errors, its just not going to happen.
I’m not a Beane apologist… I’ve always refused to blame Beane for not having more money to spend.
Its about spending the money well. Â I don’t care that Beane can’t nice afford things, but I can say that choosing to spend your meager funds feeding your kids chips and coke, rather than a balance diet isn’t the sign of a good parent.
He knew that by committing so much money to his big league payroll he would be limited when it came to the draft and thus picked accordingly. There’s something to be said for the strategy of drafting a whole bunch of high-ceiling, pre-college talent that you have no intention of signing… it’s the ultimate in amateur cockblocking! But that can build a lot of bad blood really quick between the A’s and those amateur players, their agents and the other teams in baseball. Not to mention, drafting a dozen guys you know you can’t afford means you’re denying yourself the opportunity to draft players who you can sign and could eventually help the team.
I think grover is over billing how the late round blocking strategy affect the player team relationship. Â Surely neither of us would have enough data on this practice to make accurate conclusion, however, I would argue that the blocking strategy is a fairly common and accepted behavior. Â However, lets say grover is right and blocking is a problem then how do you explain this:
9 Jace Fry, LHP HS Southridge HS / Beaverton, OR
24 Robert Kuhn, SS HS Zionsville Community HS / Zionsville, IN
31 Nicholas Kuebel, LHP HS St. Louis Univ. HS / St. Louis, MO
34 Alfredo Unzue, LHP — No school / Ciego De Avila, Cuba
36 Brenden Farney, SS HS Vacaville HS / Vacaville, CA
37 Eric Wood, 3B — No school / Oshawa, Ontario, CAN
38 Alex Blandino, SS HS St. Francis HS / San Jose, CA
40 Nic Coffman, 3B HS Wilson HS / Portland, OR
41 Brett Bittiger, SS HS Pius X HS / Saylorsburg, PA
42 Brett Geren, C HS San Ramon Valley HS / Danville, CA
43 Adam Frank, LHP HS Williams Field HS / Gilbert, AZ
45 C.J. Jacobe, OF HS Vacaville HS / Vacaville, HS
46 Nathan Esposito, C HS Granite Bay HS / Granite Bay, CA
47 Jeriel Waller, OF JC Grossmont College / San Diego, CA
48 Travis Feeney, OF HS Pinole Valley HS / Richmond, CA
49 Charles Sheffield, OF HS The Pendleton School / Columbus, GA
50 Travis Pitcher, RHP JC Cypress College / Yorba Linda, CA
Those are the A’s unsigned players. That makes up the vast majority of the A’s players that they would eventually be able to draft again. 85% of their HS bats didn’t sign, for example. It doesn’t seem like grover’s take them and pay them strategy holds true for these players.  Furthermore, the A’s only signed 9 players after the 25th round which shows an unsuccessful attempt to get players into the system, not the we picked them because they would sign mentality lauded by grover.
Oakland’s 2011 draft class doesn’t feature a bunch of misfits no one else wanted and who were willing to sign below-slot deals [like the Moneyball draft]. They didn’t draft only high-polish/low-upside college players. They went after (and signed) some athletes with tools and upside in Bobby Crocker, Dayton Alexander and Xavier Macklin. B.A. Vollmuth has a chance to stick at 3B and has very good power potential. They drafted a lot of college arms that hit 93-94 MPH. Sure, there were draft picks who are more grinder than All-Star but sometimes those are the guys who turn into Mark Ellis or Dallas Braden. A good farm system features that kind of balance; a blend of what could be and what there is. The A’s have done a very good job in changing their scouting mantra from polish to projection and they deserve credit for that. They didn’t spend a lot on their draft picks this year but they took some chances on projects with good upside. If Oakland can develop that talent than 2-3 years down the road this $3 million draft class could help the A’s win ballgames. And that is how you ultimately judge a draft class… by the wins they create, not the size of their signing bonuses.
Looking for a market inefficiency is difficult work.  However, these are a bunch of misfit toys to be sure, they’re just broken in different ways.  Jeff Slackman, for example, specifically warned about drafting Bobby Crocker because of his strike out rate.  I have seen no evidence that suggests that raw college players turn out, that strike out problems in college are correctable enough to warrant drafting a lot of these players, or that the A’s have a minor league system that can develop hitting talent.  Saying that the A’s have done a very good job changing their scouting system from polish to projection strikes me a both being untrue considering:
3)Â Michael Choice, OF, Grade B: Â .287/.381/.561 with 28 homers, 54 walks, 118 strikeouts in 401 at-bats for Stockton. Lots of power, as expected, and will draw walks, but strikeout rate is high enough to be concerning.
7) Max Stassi, C, Grade B-: .231/.331/.331 with 16 walks, 22 strikeouts in 121 at-bats for Stockton. Out since May with shoulder problems and was confined to DH role before that.
11) Yordy Cabrera, SS, Grade C+: Hitting .242/.309/.387 with six homers, 30 walks, 92 strikeouts, 19 steals in 310 at-bats for Low-A Burlington. Defense at shortstop needs a lot of work and he faces positional switch without rapid improvement.
16) Aaron Shipman, OF, Grade C+: .233/.358/.289 with 14 steals, 31 walks, 31 strikeouts in 159 at-bats for Vermont in the New York-Penn League. Excellent tools, especially speed, and he draws walks. No power yet.
19) Chad Lewis, 3B, Grade C: Â Hitting .257/.295/.356 with 10 walks, 49 strikeouts in 202 at-bats for Vermont. I received flak for rating him this low, but he hasn’t lived up to the high school scouting reports at this point and might end up at first base.
20)Â Rashun Dixon, OF, Grade C: Â .250/.327/.398 with 11 homers, 43 walks, 109 strikeouts in 392 at-bats with Stockton. Still has the amazing tools, but still doesn’t really know what to do with them
Is a pretty terrible set of results from toolsy players considering that more than half of the A’s big toolsy draftees can’t hit their way out of a “I have an OPS of under .700” bag. Â In short the A’s deserve no such long leash, since they have pretty systematically failed to produce talent positional talent via the draft.
I was being sincere when I praised notsellingjeans’ piece; I don’t feel like your imitation is an attempt at flattery. I have no intention of getting caught up in an all day skirmish over this, so I’ll try to cover everything that needs to be said as simply as possible.
Trying to paint 2011 in the same brush strokes as 2009 is lazy, inflammatory and makes you look like a fucking idiot. In my opinion. If signing Fuentes counts as an unmitigated disaster than I honestly don’t know how to describe sending Huston Street and Carlos Gonzalez to Colorado for Matt Holliday; “unmitigated disaster” is pretty much my max setting for hyperbole. I don’t know if Fuentes has just been unlucky or if there’s something behind his 2.3 K drop in K/9 from last year. I’ve never said he’s been a boon to the 2011 team but I do not believe that his contract is such an albatross that Beane couldn’t unload it if he truly wanted/needed salary relief. I realize it doesn’t make a lot of “cents” but left handed pitchers always have trade value. Pitchers with closing experience always have trade value. Fuentes is both!
So you did consider a mid-80 win season a possibility. Thank you.
When I wrote my piece, Matsui had a 1.1 WAR vs. Cust’s -0.1 WAR per Fangraphs. That’s a 12 run difference in Oakland’s favor. +12 is neither lateral or negative… it is, in fact, a positive. Let me throw more math into the mix…
Per Fangraphs: (2010 total/2011 total)
LF Production: (-0.7/+1.7) Willingham = +1.5
RF Production: (+0.5/+2.3) DeJesus = +1.6
The reality is, the new acquisitions aren’t the reason for the A’s poor 2011. Ellis went from 3.4 WAR to replacement level. (Sorry, Poppy) Kouzmanoff went from 3 WAR to the minor leagues. Barton went from 5.1 WAR to -0.3 WAR. Pennington from 4.0 WAR to 0.9 WAR.
You actually qoute me, so I don’t know how you fucked this up. I said “make a decision”. I never said what that decision would be. Furthermore, winning seasons are not silly. In the late-90’s major league baseball was tlaking contraction and the A’s were on the short list to go away; in large part because of their absolute futility during the mid-90’s. Then the Moneyball teams came around and knocked the piss out of that conversation. The MLB couldn’t shut down a young, inexpensive 87 win team. (This is, admittedly, an abridged version of how everything went down.) A winning season from a young team in 2011 would have only helped matters in Oakland. (Note that I said helped, not fixed.)
Hey… I liked it when the A’s re-signed Giambi. I was just pointing out the fair-weather nature of a lot of fans. You’re flat out talking down to them. How’d that work out for you on **?
As for the draft, you seem to have confused every HS amateur as possessing a high-ceiling. I was actually thinking about the Josh Bell’s of the HS ranks… I wasn’t as in tune with the draft as I have been in the past, could you kindly point out which of those HS players the A’s did draft you consider to be on a similar level as Bell? Oh, I do know something about Alex Blandino so you can skip him.
Your continued hard-on for Jeff Slackman’s work has been noted.
Michael Choice’s monthly K% (K/AB) from 2010 through his July leg injury:
.413
.358
.325
.232
.225
While playing CF as a 21 year old in High-A during his first full professional season.
What’s really ironic about the list of A’s prospects you so thoughtfully provided, is that aside from Michael Choice (who is/was considered a rather raw college talent) every one of those players were drafted out of high school! They were guys who were all about the projection when they got drafted. You just don’t have any patience to wait and see if these guys develop.
In short, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. And the next time you decide to quote me so much, provide a link so people can go read my stuff in its entirity if they wish to do so. It’s called common courtesy, learn some.
First a couple of things:
1. The opening paragraph was meant to be humorous. I did not mean to push buttons there. I thought that your work was thought provoking.
2. I thought that I quoted the entire piece so it wasn’t necessary to provide a link. If you prefer one, here.
To the meat:
Fuentes: No it is not as bad as Holliday. I didn’t say that it was, implying that I did is disingenuous. His xFIP was better than his 2011 ERA 5 of the last 7 years. Predicting that he would be this bad was not rocket science. His trade value was Loek Van Mill aka nothing. He could get rid of the contract if he ate money, its true, but why are you setting yourself up to eat money?
Stadium: The A’s put together sustained winning. Not 1 year of 86 wins. That was my point. Beane didn’t go out and build a winner here. He built a team that could stumble to 86 wins and if everything went wrong for Texas, they could luck into something. Beane didn’t get long term answers for the OF that would be needed. Going into next year, even if the A’s had everything going to plan, they needed to fill three starting OF jobs, a DH job, and their 2b job, with internal replacements for maybe the 2b job and one OF spot. That doesn’t make the A’s a contender that can build the kind of good will in the lodge to move the A’s one way or another.
Willingham/DDJ/Matsui vrs other causes: You are missing my point. In this season a myriad of things went wrong. My suggestion was not that Beane’s mistakes relying on Ellis, Pennington, Kouz, and Suzuki, weren’t problematic. My argument was that if you are giving Beane credit for what at the time looked like a negative move working out well in Matsui v Cust, then you cant say well the DDJ and Willingham looked like a good idea… oh well it didn’t work out. It is a double standard, good moves get praised, bad moves get “well you can’t win them all” passes. It is a poor way of judging the moves. Never confuse luck with competence and vice versa.
Most people don’t know what the fuck they are talking about and thus are very fickle. Sorry, its the truth. Everyone misses, you, me, Beane, and everyone else. Its not about that. Its the fickle nature of most fans who do very little to understand whats actually happening.
On Bell/HS Tools: No none of those players are even close to Bell, because guess the fuck what, Bell had top 15 talent/tools in the whole draft. Yes saying that those players don’t necessarily have tools is true. However, that wasn’t the point I was making. The point that I was making was that your claiming that they A’s picked players they could sign didn’t hold water.
Previous draft: Choice is doing ok. Way Way Way too many strikeouts. Great power. Were not going to know anything about him till he hits AA or AAA, because the ability to change speeds dramatically increases at those levels. Also remember the guy I wanted to draft is a catcher who out hit Choice while walking more and striking out less in a harder to hit league, Yasmani Grandal.
Scouting: If you are saying that the A’s are good with toolsy college players you also have to explain the failure of Dusty Coleman, Corey Brown, Myrio Richard, Grant Deseme, Richie Robenett, etc. Im saying the A’s aren’t good at judging/developing toolsy players.
You should always provide a link to referenced material; that’s pretty basic.
You keep compounding the same mistake. You say DeJesus and Willingham are a failure… per Fangraphs DeJesus has been worth $7.3 million and Willingham worth $6.6 million. Both outfielders are earning $6 million this year… the A’s have gotten surplus value out of both of them. Admittedly, not as much as they were hoping for but still, they’re in the black. Yet you call them misses. The numbers say they’ve earned their keep and have been (to this point) a 33 run improvement from what the A’s got last year from their OF corners.
You want long term solutions to the outfield, but last year the only FA options were at the limits of the A’s price range and unles Swisher unexpectedly has his option declined by the Yankees there isn’t really anyone available in next year’s FA class you satisfy the team’s long term needs. Willingham and DeJesus bought the A’s a year to see how Taylor and Carter developed, plus now you’ve got Green in the OF mix as well. I personally think the A’s have a greater chance to re-sign either Willingham or DeJesus than they would have had to attract them as FA off the street. But that’s speculation on my part. So yes, the A’s still have questions about who’s playing in the OF long term but they have more options now than they had a year ago.
And the thing about sustained winning is that at some point you need to actually have a winning season as a starting point. There was a legit opportunity for 2011 to be that start.
Choice is doing better than OK, he’s shown the ability to adjust and reduce his strike outs while playing CF and closing on 30 HR. Deal with it. I also said the A’s didn’t go out and draft a bunch of high-ceiling HS talent that they had no intention to sign; they spoke to at least a couple of the high schoolers you listed to feel them out. Obviously, there wasn’t much in the way of common ground to be found. Oakland has always drafted from the high school ranks, what they did this year was part of that pattern. But the difference between the quality of those amateurs and the truly high-end guys is obvious and I made it a point to emphasize that in my original piece. The A’s did not draft a bunch of HS talent that they knew would take 7 figure signing bonuses to land in an effort to block other teams.
The A’s get a mulligan for Desme joining the priesthood. Coleman shattered his wrist. Brown turned into Willingham and maybe 2 draft picks. Richard is still moving along, albeit slowly. Besides, I said the A’s changed the focus of their scouting from polish to projection. I never said that they’d proven to be experts at developing said projects.
To be fair, there’s somewhat of an informal/joking avoidance of linking to ** here.
Which is why I didn’t say anything about the ** piece over here. But if someone is going to copy half a write-up and post if on FK than at that point, a link isn’t crossing any new lines.
Isn’t the whole point of attribution that people know where the work came from and can look at it if they so choose? Do you really believe that these FKers aren’t able to find your fanpost on **? I don’t get why youre getting so upset about this. I purposely used large blocks so people would get the context of your quotes.
Also, and I’m not taking sides AT ALL in this, DFA responded here, grover, because he can’t over there, so there is that.
That said, carry on.
[places short swords and bucklers into center of arena and slowly backs out]
You don’t need to be signed in to copy and paste a link.
oh, no, buddy, I mean that’s why he’s making the argument here.
I’m aware of his ** banning.
DDJ/Willingham : Both are a failure when compared to preseason projections and when you incorporate the value of the assets that Beane reqlinquished for them, their WAR/$ ratio turns negative.
OF: Actually the A’s have less options since they got rid of Rajai Davis. Carter in the OF is a disaster, Taylor isn’t out hitting the COF positional adjustment in AAA, and Grant Green needs another year anyway (plus I think it is pretty dubious to take your long term SS solution and convert him to the OF and call that a good thing). The A’s have to come up with 3 Starting level OFers next year. How the fuck are they going to do that?
Winning: Winning at the expense of the future is something that should be undertaken only when the team has is good and has a chance to be great rather than when a team is meh and has a chance to be good. The A’s were upgrading from an almost average team to try to be a almost above average team and luck into things. Planning on luck is the first sign of management failure.
Choice: He was the 10th overall draft pick. Hes suppose to not suck. He has Ked way too much. Further its disingenous to put up a month by month and not include this months 35% K rate so that it looks like there is a trend that doesn’t exist.
Draft: So were still not signing players and were not getting any of the benefits of cock blocking. Can you explain the upside to me here? Also didn’t we cockblock Crocker and he still was willing to sign with us. I think this is your weakest point by far.
Toolsy College players: They get a mulligan on every college toolsy guy they have taken? Hmmmmm thats awfully convenient. Richard is terrible in A ball. Brown never got his Ks under control. Why would we praise the A’s for reorienting the draft strategy if they reorient it to something they aren’t any good at?
Willingham’s preseason hitting projections:
Marcel wOBA: .356
ZIPS wOBA: .348
Bill James wOBA: .352
Willingham’s current wOBA: .350
I would say he is hitting just as projected.
Also, the assets that Beane gave up for Willingham are Corey Brown and Henry Rodriguez. Brown is in AAA and Henry Rodriguez is on FanGraphs pace to produce $1.4m against his $0.4m salary. Willingham is on pace to produce $7.4m against his $6m salary. If one considers 2011 alone, that’s a slight absolute positive. If you figure that Rodriguez will repeat his performance in 2012 before he hits arbitration, it’s a slight negative. I do not consider it being a failure in either case.
I think the point, though, is the marginal increase from Sweeney to Willingham eats a lot of that upside.
Why do I enjoy watching Pig more than I enjoy watching H-Rod pitch?
because willingham doesn’t walk anyone
oh, that makes sense.
I don’t think that’s true though. Sweeney has had a significant amount of playing time, including about 2/3 of the available at bats against righties, and has been barely better than replacement level. The marginal value of more Sweeney at bats, which would have to be most against LHP, would be zero.
Great, you used less time, fewer words and brought the point across better than I did.
there is also what sweeney was projected to do. He was coming off one knee surgery and declined the other knee. His value in 2009 was influenced heavily on his defense. How well he would respond was a wild card at best.
I understand that Willingham also had injury issues, but his defense was already shitty, so I think it was less of a risk.
Willingham had equally shitty health Willingham is posting the worst UZR/150 of his career
And the impact on his overall value (based heavily on his offensive production) is very little compared to the impact on Sweeney’s value (based heavily on his defensive production).
his defense is totally in line with his past performance.
yes he is an injury risk, but his injury is more likely to sap value by preventing him from playing, not preventing him to do well what he has done well in the past.
Whereas with Sweeney, there was a significant possibility that his injury would prevent him from duplicating his past value. And his is at risk to be shut down because of the non surgery knee (as well as a non insignificant possibility his repaired knee was not better)
Its lower actually at -16/150. I haven’t seen any evidence that bad players don’t collapse with injuries more than good players.
it was -25 uzr150 in may.
I don’t know that really tells us much.
Fair enough.
I guess that we first have to decide whether we are judging these moves by what was projected for the players involved or by how they really performed. I am the fan of the former, but in the first point of his comment DFA opts for the latter, so let’s stick with it for this exercise:
Sweeney is on his way to barely earn his salary in 2011 ($1.4m) in what will amount to be roughly a half a season worth of at bats. However you can not extrapolate that to assume he would have made double that had Willingham not been around – he had an EXTREMELY high portion of his PA against righthanders (217 vs 36! – that’s 86%). Playing him every day would mean that you are basically adding lots of “value” from the pot that says .591 OPS (even though that needs to be regressed some). In other words, the PA that he missed were only 39% vs RHP – that would be pretty ugly.
So, adding Willingham basically only subtracted from “bad Sweeney’s” at bats.
Im not a fan of the former or the latter, my comment was just that Beane should be judged by one or the other, not a mixture of both. Essentially, giving Beane credit for Matsui while absolving him from blame for DDJ.
I think that you also have to look at the value of the prospects that were traded and monetize them. According to Victor Wang Corey Brown was .5m and Henriguez will be worth about 2 free wins at 4.5m per compounded in half to acount for the time difference of wins, which means Willingham isn’t worth what we paid for him (fangraphs says hes worth 6.3m so far).
DDJ is the real disaster Willingham is Meh.
Further, Willingham has taken 296 AB against RHP and he and Sweeney have the same wOBA vrs RHH so there is some value lost to replacing Sweeney for those AB. I would also argue that Sweeney would be b etter against LHP if he got to face them more.
Sweeney can only be in the lineup once per game. Our full time players (Crisp, Matsui, Pennington) each have about 330 PAs against RHP. Sweeney has 217. And some of that gap is not because he was blocked by Willingham, but because he started off the year at less than 100%.
I agree that DDJ is the real disaster.
He started the year on the bench. That was the problem for him, not that he wasn’t healthy.
He was (sensibly) considered the 4th outfielder, but also wasn’t fully healthy.
right Im not saying that he should have been played. I am saying that my pre season prediction that Brown Rodriguez and 6m for a 1 to 1.5 WAR upgrade was a marginal move at best, was an accurate preditiction.
what about draft picks?
Depends how you want to asses them. Giving him A value ( not assured) is overly generous, while B is less so. Basically it was a push move considering draft picks and the fact that it committed team resources to a less than great source of WAR. If you look at the WAR from draft picks and you factor in the internal replacement level you have a push.
and the wild card of if beane will fuck it up too
but added value for more fun when talking about the 2012 draft!
yup
Also with the new CBA it might not exist. So valuing it more than ever is difficult.
NINE SWEENEYS!
One cup.
Id project 4.5 based on the previous production of cups by 2 girls
As for AB vs RHP, basically what andeux said and repeating what was written before – if Sweeney played more, his RHP/LHP mix would have been considerably worse and so would his production. I agree that his abysmal showing against the lefties is probably not his true level of talent, but even if you regress his 400 PA against lefties with 1000 PA of average lefty/lefty production, you are left with a sub .700 OPS player.
I was not implying that you were a fan of either, but that you started this specific exercise as a “what happened” one and I’m sticking to it. So, that means if Willingham turns out to be a Type A (where he was on August 15th and has played well since, too) it’s not overly generous, it’s just what it turned out to be. Also, Rodriguez is not worth what Vang projected him to be, but what he actually contributed – and that is much less than one WAR this year.
BTW. Speaking of judging on performance – Willingham’s season beats the shit out of Crawford’s one
Well aware. At the beginning of the season no one could forsee a 5 WAR drop.
I don’t think anybody could. Still, it’s funny.
Also it could be that his UZR is negatively screwed up by playing in Boston
I am not sure how they go about Boston, but that could definitely be a possibility. Or at least, his talent is not used to the fullest there.
His oWAR has dropped to 0.2 from 5.6 last year and 2.3 previous career average.
His dWAR has dropped to -0.2 from 0.5 last year and 0.7 previous career average.
I have no idea where you are getting these numbers but he lost 40 Runs from last year offensively and 16.7 defensively and 6.2 for base running per Fangraphs. Im not a fan of the baserunning metric so Ill ignore that. But if he had a more normal 1.5 dWAR he would be a league average player with a month to go despite having a huge BABIP related offensive collapse
Baseball reference.
ahhhh i prefer uzr to Tz
Mazzaro’s produced a negative WAR value, so when you factor in the assets DDJ’s value grows.
Lots of big league outfielders started as SS, so it’s not like moving Green to CF is unprecidented.
I kept out this month’s K numbers because he didn’t re-hab in the AZL or SS league prior to getting at bats for Stockton. He wasn’t even playing every day once he came back from his quad injury. He deserves a break for getting back into the swing of things. Unless you’re arguing that Choice’s K-rate in August is something other than shaking off the rust, why not just acknowledge that when given some time and coaching he has shown the ability to make adjustments and reduce his strike out rate?
Myrio Richard is hitting 294/364/422 with 27 SB/10 CS for Stockton. He’s played CF and COF and just turned 23. His 786 OPS is above the Cal League average (based on a rough estimate of the league’s OPS) and his BA and OBP are the 19th best among eligible batters. This is him being terrible?
The A’s were not planning on Luck. They made short term deals that cost them negligible long-term assets. Considering the dearth of FA attractiveness in this year’s anticipated class you can’t even make a legitimate argument that signing Balfour and Fuentes to 2 year deals impacts the A’s ability to sign quality free agents.
Do you know the hidden benefit of drafting tools guys? Other teams covet tools when looking to make a trade. In a time when it seems like almost every team is over-valuing their prospects; being the team willing to part with toolsy projects allows the A’s to acquire under-valued, proven big league talent. Now, sometimes those proven guys don’t work out as great as hoped. (I’m really starting to think that trading for KC outfielders is a doomed proposition.) But no GM can control the actual performance of his players… all we can do as fans is judge whether or not the decision to acquire said players was wise.
There was logic behind Beane’s decisions to acquire Willingham and DDJ. Those moves had a minimal negative impact on the A’s ability to field teams in the future and represented a potentially significant short term boon to the 2011 roster.
The A’s signed 29 draft picks from the 2011 draft. I get it, the A’s didn’t draft the way you wish they did but trying to disavow an entire draft class is ridiculous.
I agree with this almost universally (cf. the electorate). However, it’s a sentiment which dismisses as irrelevant a huge part of what it is, to most people, to be a fan. And the voice of disdain is not at all unlike the way leftists like you and I have so consistently failed to win converts (cf. the electorate).
Maybe, but in an argument between “I thought this was stupid with foresight” and “People thought this was smart at the time” the reliability of “People” is relevant.
I agree with this.
I definitely realize I am far out of the mainstream in terms of what it means to be a fan. Furthermore, I understand why those fans are angry. I use to be one of them and would be furious with the way the club has failed in recent years, especially after the false billing in 2011 and 2009. However, I think grover’s point is more dismissive in that it basically say hey stop bitching about Beane since you thought it was a good idea before it turned out badly.
Link.
Oh wow that turned out big
TWSS
Here, let me give you a hand with that.
thank you
I am enjoying this, and find that both of you are changing my mind frequently. Please don’t take silence as indifference.
What he said.
One point that I think is really important, and which doesn’t get enough play:
Projections like PECOTA, ZiPS, etc? They’re basically useless as far as major league teams go. Why? They represent what we, as public fans, feel is our best guess according to the data we have. But teams? They have access to FAR better data than we do. HITf/x is already out and is available to teams that want to pay for it. FIELDf/x is not far behind at all. Is it so much of a stretch to assume that Beane has access to better information than we do? What seems like a poor move by our standards could look fantastic with a different set of projections.
So judging him by the public projections of the team at the time? Not a slam dunk method either. It’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Beane’s projections had the A’s above 84 wins, even if the team turned out to fall far short of that goal.
Good point. Field F/X is just amazing, btw.
I hope that the gap between the information the clubs have and the information the fans have narrows over the next decade or two.
I still dream of a day where teams aren’t run by GM’s, but by councils of smart fans. I also wish every pro sports team was community-owned like the Packers.
Sure, but once again, Beane was relying on a roster full of chronically injured players. And you can claim that teams enjoy a similar information advantage over fans when it comes to health status, but I think the record pretty clearly mitigates against that supposed advantage.
So what’s the play? You have a projection that includes Brett Anderson for 3 wAR and 160 IP (making up the numbers). Do you just scratch his contributions off the board while building the rest of the roster and make decisions based on the idea 24 players have to be projected to produce X number of wins and then Anderson is a bonus?
Going after Crawford and making a more realistic/aggressive offer to Beltre — or going full reboot.
Sitting here in Mineral Wells, Texas waiting to go fight one of two different fires… the only way the A’s could’ve matched the $34 million owed Crawford and Beltre this season would have meant not acquiring DDJ, Willingham, Balfour, Fuentes or Matsui while releasing CoJak and Kouzmanoff. (Or trading the last two, obviously, if that option was available.) So it might have been doable for 2011 but it’s doubtful the A’s 2011 draft strategy would’ve been different and I’m not sure how you afford the two stud FA’s and pay for Anderson, Cahill and Gio in a year or two. You have holes in RF and DH (Taylor and Carter? A stretch considering last year.)
I’m going back to Yosemite this weekend; surprised to hear they were able to contain the Motor fire without you.
I think it’s definitely Acronym or Beltre, but they really should have gotten one of ’em.
I agree with this. One or the other made sense.
The A’s would have been a much better team if they did that. Worrying about Cahill Gio and BA getting expensive was a hazard of competition just like Huddy, Mulder, and Zito were. The cost of doing business.
The A’s didn’t have to wrangle the Big 3 into a budget that contained two FA superstar signings.
Just one in Chavez
Is that really comparable? Chavez’s salary was big, but not as gigantic as it would have to be to get those two. Quite frankly, the A’s aren’t going to spend beyond their means anymore until the stadium situation is resolved, so even if they had done it in the past, they’re not going to repeat it.
Dye made 1/4 of team payroll in 04 while both Chavez and Kotsay occupied more than 10%
Dye Kotsay and Chavez made up ~ 1/2 of the 04 payroll.
A) Out of what? Without context those numbers mean nothing.
B) My second point still stands.
theyre fractions… that is the context. And they were spending less back then.
No. Context is giving a total. Otherwise I could say player X is the greatest player ever to play since he homers every other AB, conveniently leaving out the important part that he only had 2 ABs. Who gives a shit if a player made half the payroll once if that payroll is a fraction of what it was before. That does NOT mean a team should be winning to put up half the payroll on a new player when they have a bigger payroll.
Why not if inflation in baseball is rather constant? The problem you are having is filling the rest of the roster with good players if one player is consuming the budget. Thats a problem by percentage not total.
$34 million to Beltre and CC would account for 50% of the A’s payroll in 2011.
And just one of them would be in line with what we had previously paid as a proportion of our payroll. Two wouldn’t be that far off.
I made the argument for one back in 2010. Two might not be that far off, but too far nonetheless.
If you give up DDJ Compliant Pig CoJax Godzilla and FUUUUUUUUUU you cover their salaries.
I for one would be much more likely to believe 8 WAR comes from Beltre and CC than from those misfits.
This year, sure. You could’ve squeezed it all in and left just as little for the draft.
Which was another of your concerns.
But in 2012 Suzuki, Cahill, Anderson, Beltre and CC would cost $46 million. Arbitration to Braden, Barton, Bailey and Braden wouldv’e been another $12-15 million. Call it $59 million for 9 players? How would you plan on filling in the rest of the roster AND draft heavy on a $70 million budget?
If your going to go for it don’t do it half assed. If I was going to go for it I would have tried to sign Lee/Beltre and then traded either Braden or Kouz. Used those prospects with Mazzaro + Green + Carter + Marks + Henriguez to acquire a multi season OF solution and spent money on Andruw Jones. So your OF would be LTOF Crisp Jones Sweeney.
Basically there was a reason why I suggested a tear down instead of trying to compete. The team just didn’t have enough to make it feasible over the next three years anyway.
WTF does that have to do with anything?
It wasn’t all bad.