It’s too bad Billy Beane couldn’t have waited a week to trade Kirk Saarloos. The A’s Fan Fest is coming up on Saturday, and it would have been nice to have Saarloos around. Last year, of all the people who appeared in Q&A sessions, Saarloos was probably the most entertaining of them all. The dude may not have a sharp fastball, but he does have a sharp wit.

I have plans to attend Fan Fest again this year. If anyone else is going, and wants to meet up, let me know.

This is apparently the perfect way to impress a future spouse with opulence and luxury…

I was just thinking last night that maybe Billy Beane had ceased to actually exist. He hadn’t made a trade involving a major league player since the Juan Cruz-for-Brad Halsey trade back in March 2006. Where’s he been?

Responds Beane, “I trade, therefore I am.“

Who the heck is David Shafer? Never heard of him. PECOTA doesn’t think that much of him; it gives him at best a 50% chance of being nothing more than a scrub. Kevin Goldstein doesn’t bother to mention him in his Top Reds Prospects article, while John Sickels ranks him as the Reds 18th best prospect, calling him a “useful bullpen spare part.”

So basically, this was a salary dump. Saarloos just hit arbitration status, and his mediocre production, while valuable at minimum wage, isn’t so valuable at higher prices. Plus, I think the A’s had about 13 pitchers who were either too good for the minors, or were without any major league options left, so someone had to go.

From the Reds point of view, I suppose a ground-ball pitcher like Saarloos would have more value in a home-run launching pad like Cincinnati than elsewhere. My call: a good non-deal for both sides.

Continuing the popup theme…it’s a pretty neat trick to get everyone in this picture except Nick Swisher and the umpire completely out of focus. I wish I knew how I did that.

Call the last photo “How Not To Catch A Popup”. Call this one “Textbook”.

Darin Erstad is not going to join the A’s, as previously rumored. This is probably a good thing, for my sake. I seem to have an unhealthy obsession with the dude, even when he was the enemy. Who knows what I would do if he were on my side?

Now I can still appreciate all his web gems, without having to suffer through a gazillion foul outs in the process.

To conclude our thoughts about the Man On Top (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), TangoTiger backed up my scouting report with some strong statistical evidence for Barry Zito’s prowess against right-handed batters:

That’s right, while Zito’s career BABIP against LH is virtually exactly league average, he has a BABIP of 42 points less against RH! Zito has 3200 BIP against RH, meaning one standard deviation would be 8 points. His performance is FIVE standard deviations from the mean. That is about as significant as significant gets.

There’s also some vigorous discussion of the articles going on here and over here, which might be quite illuminating if you can read Korean, which I can’t.

As for the Man Underneath, I got nothin’, except that he’s currently serving as the punchline over at Humbug.

We completed Part 2 (Part 1 here) with the question, is Barry Zito really an exception to the rule, a pitcher who can reduce batters’ batting average on balls in play? If so, how does he do it, and what makes him different?

I’m just a fan, not a scout, but I have watched a lot of Barry Zito, so I think I have some idea of how Zito approaches batters.

Zito’s approach is a lot more complex now that he has five pitches instead of three. I think it’s useful to go back to 2000-2003 when Zito had only the fastball, curve and changeup, and study his basic three-pitch approach. To narrow it down further, we’ll focus just on right-handed batters.

So here’s the plan. It all starts with the curveball.

The Curveball

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One of the groups I split my season tickets with is dropping out. We need a replacement. The view in the photo above is roughly the view we have. If you’re interested in all or any of these seats let me know. Details below the fold:

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Just to clarify: this is the phone that got the calls to tell Dennis Eckersley to get prepared to do the Phone-Enduced Dramatics (PEDs) that eventually got Dennis Eckersley a certain phone call that Eckersley’s twice-teammate Mark McGwire is not going to get today.

Personally, I do not believe McGwire’s dramatics were phone-enduced, but what do I know? I never really thought that McGwire was phone-call worthy while he played in Oakland, partly because he could never stay healthy or slump-free long enough to put together any long stretch of dominant play, and partly because I don’t think he was all that great a relief pitcher.

Whether or not McGwire gets the phone call today, I don’t feel required to have an emotional reaction. We’ll leave that job to the Cardinals fans.

Goose Gossage, on the other hand, was a great relief pitcher, did get calls on that phone, and although those particular calls didn’t produce the most dramatic moments of Gossage’s career, I’d really like to see him get one more phone-enduced dramatic moment. Although Yankee fans would deserve the emotions far more than I, I plan to steal a little bit of the joy or disappointment for myself and my fellow A’s fans. Call me selfish.

Whose brilliant idea was it to put an ad for a web site right next to a 404 sign?

Part 1 here.

“Barry Zito is going to start sucking any day now. He’s in decline. He’s been lucky. He’s losing it.”

I’ve been hearing words to that effect from the numbercrunchers for about four years now. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t really believe it now, either.

Rich Lederer described the issue well:

To Zito’s credit, his actual ERA has consistently defied his FIP and DIPS calculations, as well as his PECOTA projections. He is obviously doing something well that isn’t being captured in these systems.

Over at Baseball Prospectus, Nate Silver found that if you use Zito’s past ERA as a predictor of his future ERA, his new contract is actually worth the money. If you use his peripheral numbers, the Giants are paying double what he’s actually worth. Silver writes:

But while ERA is a very useful backward-looking metric — it’s helpful in settling Cy Young Award debates, for example — it’s not such a good forward-looking metric. A pitcher’s peripheral statistics predict ERA much better than past ERA itself.

I’d agree with that 99% of the time, but I can think of several reasons why Zito may be an exception to the rule. Consider:

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OK, this is a Little League photo, not a Major League photo, but I liked the shadows in this picture.

You want a MLB tie-in? OK: I’ll often see SF Chronicle columnist Ray Ratto at these various local youth sports games, because my nephew is the same age as the (son/nephew?) of Ratto. Ratto’s recent throw-away line about a Joe Blanton-for-unmentionable trade has provoked the latest round of rumor discussions. I’m not going to comment on this rumor, except to say I don’t believe it for a second.

“Then you love a little wild one,
And she brings you only sorrow.
All the time you know she’s smiling.
You’ll be on your knees tomorrow.”

A cup of kindness yet.

I’m not a Giants hater like a lot of A’s fans. I’ll never leave my heart in AT&T Park, but if the Giants have an interesting team, I’ll watch and root for them. If not, I’ll ignore them.

The past several years, I’ve been doing a lot of ignoring. Watching a bunch of has-been and never-was old farts play .500 ball doesn’t turn me on. Nor does watching Barry Bonds take four pitches out of the strike zone over and over again.

In recent years, the Giants have had only two players I’ve enjoyed watching–Jason Schmidt and Omar Vizquel. Oh man, I could sit and watch Omar Vizquel play shortstop for hours on end. If we judged players solely by their artistry instead of their statisticry, Omar Vizquel would be the first guy voted in the Hall of Fame. He is lovely to watch.

So I’m actually pretty happy that Barry Zito signed with San Francisco. I love watching Zito pitch, and I’m happy that Giants games have immediately become a little more watchable every five days. Of course, Zito is replacing Schmidt, another player I like, so it’s only a minor improvement on the watchability scale. Ah, if only the Giants had extended Schmidt instead of signing Matt Morris…

* * *

Of course, the pundits all agree that the contract is too big, for too many years. But is it? Is there actually a plan here? There are a few points in the Giants defense:

• How much is too much? We have absolutely no idea how much money the Giants have to spend.
• If you’re going to give any pitcher in the world a seven-year contract in hopes he stays healthy all seven years, Barry “Never Missed A Start” Zito is probably the guy you’d want to give it to.
• This gives the Giants a solid young pitching staff for years to come

.

This actually makes the Giants 2008 starting rotation look quite a bit like 2006 Oakland’s. You’ve got:

• Zito
• The star young flamethrower (Cain/Harden)
• Another hard thrower (Lincecum/Haren)
• A crafty young inning eater (Lowry/Blanton)
• A crafty old inning eater (Morris/Loaiza)

Given that the Giants need to totally rebuild their team over the next few years, and have pretty much an empty farm system, what better way than to start by setting up a young, solid starting rotation? You can build a bullpen out of scrap, and probably find decent hitters under rocks, but good, young starting pitchers are really hard to find.

Now if Brian Sabean can take these old farts currently in his everyday lineup, and trade them in July for younger parts–lather, rinse, repeat–I’ll really be impressed.

* * *

I know the counterarguments. Zito is not an ace. He’s good, not great, and therefore shouldn’t get ace money. The money is better spent on better players than Zito.

I agree with that conclusion about Zito: he’s not an ace. He’s good, not great. However, I disagree with nearly every argument I’ve heard, including many from writers I respect, supporting that conclusion. I’ll get to that in my next (non-photo-outtake) blog entry. Part 2 here.

Barry Zito is staying in the Bay Area. Seven(!) years, $126 million.

Wow.

The A’s will end up with the 10th pick in the second round as a result, as well as a sandwich pick between the first and second rounds.

More later…