Goodbye, Esteban Loaiza. Thanks for last August (4-0, 1.48) and 2006 ALDS Game 2. I’m not sure it was worth the $13 million the A’s paid you for that, especially considering the 2006 ALCS Game 2, and the DUI, and all the time spent on the DL, but what’s done is done…

I suppose saving the $8 million remaining on Loaiza’s contract is a good thing. The A’s filled in quite nicely this year without him for a lot less money. I’d hoped that the A’s could get something in return for Joe Kennedy and Loaiza except salary relief, but I guess that’s not how things work these days.

If the days of unloading veterans for prospects are over, you have to wonder what methods are left for the A’s to rebuild. Suck for a few years, so you can get some top draft picks? If that’s the case, maybe dumping salaries is the thing to do. It will be an interesting winter of Beane-watching, for sure.

My baby daughter turns two months old today. For the first six weeks of her life, she didn’t do much of anything; she was like a cute little simple robot that was programmed to just eat and sleep and fill her diapers. Lately, however, there have been signs of sentience. If I sit her on my lap, she will stare intensely down at her own bare feet, studying them as if they were the two most interesting things in the universe.

* * *

I woke up yesterday morning and found my seven-year-old daughter in a state of hunger. Of course, she didn’t tell me this, I had to deduce it from her attempts to pick a fight with her older sister. When she’s hungry, she gets cranky and loses all ability to reason. She feels like nothing can ever possibly make things right (save food, but she’ll never admit that): she’s unhappy, that’s the way it is, and that’s how it always will be, and everyone else around her might as well be unhappy along with her.

Come to think of it, that behavior is not too much different from the two-month-old, minus the foot fetish. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose:

Me: What do you want for breakfast?
7-year-old: I don’t want breakfast.
Me: You need to eat. What do you want?
7-year-old: I don’t want breakfast.
Me: OK, let’s skip breakfast and go straight to lunch. What do you want for lunch?
7: I don’t want lunch.
Me: Dinner?
7: I don’t want dinner.
Me: How about dessert?
7: I don’t want dessert.
Me: You must be sick, if you don’t want dessert. Shall I call the doctor?
10-year-old daughter (sensing an opportunity): I want dessert for breakfast! Let’s have chocolate-chip cookies!
Me: I was kidding. You can’t have dessert for breakfast.
10: What about donuts? Can we have donuts?
Me: We don’t have any donuts, and I’m not going out to buy any.
10: How about chocolate-chip pancakes?
Me (sighing defeatedly, heading towards the kitchen): Oh, all right. I’ll make chocolate-chip pancakes for breakfast today…

* * *

Reason is an elevator to Enlightenment. But Enlightenment is a just a small, lonely bus stop on a long journey to a chocolate-chip beach. Enlightenment is nobody’s final destination. Dessert, on the other hand…

* * *

(You got your loaves, your cheeses, your walking on water, and then the topper–Wow! Look at the front of that bus! What a header! Who was that–Jesus or David Beckham?)

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Thanks to their sweep of the Blue Jays and their victory tonight over the Devil Rays, the A’s are back in a familiar position: as MLB Heavyweight Champions. (It’s like boxing: beat the champ and you’re the champ. See the Catfish Stew sidebar for details.) The A’s will have to stay hot to keep their two-year run as Heavyweight of the Year going. They’re currently seven victories behind the White Sox for first place.

* * *
Is Jack Cust as good at catching the ball as Mark Ellis? If you think so, I suggest you follow in Billy Beane’s footsteps and go watch a sport where people aren’t allowed to use their hands at all. Baseball isn’t for you. If you can tell the difference, however, it’s time for you to go fill out TangoTiger’s annual Fan Scouting Report.

* * *

Interesting that Susan Slusser thinks the A’s might go into major rebuilding mode this offseason, and trade off a bunch of players, like Dan Haren, Joe Blanton, and Eric Chavez. Hard to imagine trading Haren, but on the other hand, starting pitching is starting to get way, way overvalued and expensive. And it will probably only get more overvalued this offseason: as Jayson Stark reports, now that Mark Buehrle and Carlos Zambrano have signed new contracts, it will be a truly awful free agent market for starting pitchers this year. With every other GM seemingly hanging on to every last pitcher like they’re the last piece of gold on earth, Beane might be holding baseball’s two most desired and available commodities. Heck, he might even be able to get something good for Esteban Loaiza, if he keeps pitching like he did on Wednesday.

As for trading Chavez, he’s kinda in the same boat as Rich Harden: he’s an attractive talent, but unless he comes back and has a monster September to prove he’s healthy, he’s not going to bring much back in a trade. Check this out these 2007 stats from the A’s third basemen:

Eric Chavez:   .240/.306/.446, $11 million.
Jack Hannahan: .241/.333/.448, Minimum wage!  Hee-yah!

Which would you prefer?

You know the old saying, first you get back to .500, then you think about how to get to the playoffs.  OK, the A’s are back at .500 with their sweep of Toronto; how’s the playoff picture look?

11.5 games behind the Angels in the division.
9 games behind the Mariners for the wild card.
7 games behind the Yankees for second place in the wild card.
5.5 games behind the Tigers for third place in the wild card.

Nope.  Too many teams ahead of the A’s, too many games back.  I think we need another saying.  First you get back to .500, then you get to within 5 games of the lead, then you think about how to get to the playoffs.

I shall now return to my relaxing summer, free of the stress of playoff worries.

I went to the A’s-Royals game yesterday. Unlike the other game I went to this season against a team from Missouri, which had the fingerprints of the visiting team’s manager all over it, I didn’t find any evidence of Royals manager Buddy Bell at all. I was a lovely day, after all, he’s retiring soon, the Royals had already won the series, so why make any fuss? He probably scribbled his game plan on a napkin at breakfast, set the team on autopilot, laid back and took a nice afternoon siesta.

That’s the only way I can think of to explain how the Royals essentially gave the A’s a free victory yesterday. In the top of the sixth, with the A’s up 2-0, the speedy Joey Gathright led off the inning with a single. Jason LaRue, he of the .147/.229/.287 batting line, was due up next, with the top of the order to follow. Good chance for a big inning, so you’d expect a pinch hitter, right?

Nope. LaRue hits. Not only that, but he bunts. When down by two. With a guy on first who could probably get to second base on his own if that’s what you think you really need. A total waste of an at-bat, of an out, and, as it turned out, of an inning.

Then, in the bottom of the sixth, Kyle Davies, who had thrown 99 pitches, was replaced on the mound by John Bale. The A’s were not fooled by Bale for a second, and smacked him around for two consecutive innings, scoring three in the sixth and another in the seventh. Not once in those two innings did the Royals get anybody up in the bullpen. Apparently, the plan was for Bale to pitch two innings, no matter how much he stunk, and if it cost the Royals a chance to win the game, who cares?

At least the A’s were trying to win. But even with the A’s, a feeling of resignation was in the air, as I looked out on the field and saw a lineup with only three players who played on opening day. It felt like I was rooting for an expansion team, instead of a team that made it to the LCS just last season. Who are these guys? Is that Dave Telgheder I saw out there? Patrick Lennon? Damon Mashore?

I took the usual assortment of photos, but the game just didn’t seem worthy of photos. But my seven-year-old daughter said she wanted her picture on this web site, so I’ll put this one up:

Last year, we were rooting hard for the glory of the A’s winning the World Series. Now we’re reduced to hoping against hope (and Placido Polanco–not him again!!!) that Mark Ellis finally wins a gold glove. It’s not quite the same thing.

Check out the 2007 organizational stats for these two Oakland A’s relievers:

Outstanding numbers, and eerily similar. Is it a trick question? Are they from the same guy? Nope…

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As a fan of a Moneyball-type team, there’s something deeply unsatisfying about watching your offense at work. There’s always a sense as a fan that something is missing from the attack; we grasp at straws trying to figure out what this something is. Sabermetricians pooh-pooh our doubts, patronizing us as if we just silly little children talking about imaginary monsters underneath our beds.

I try to be brave, but I keep hearing noises. It keeps me awake, and as I lie there trying to tell myself that there are no such thing as monsters, my mind ignores my own advice, and keeps looking for proof that monsters really, truly exist.

Lately, my mind has convinced myself that the key to finding the monster lies in the comparison between Dan Johnson and Jack Cust. Jack Cust, as you all know, TOTALLY ROCKS, while Dan Johnson (when hitting without Ryan’s mojo) SUCKS. The thing is, I don’t really understand why. They’re both about the same size: Johnson is 6’2", 225, while Cust is 6’1" 230. They’re both pretty slow, lumbering types. They were both born in 1979. They both have the typical Moneyball approach to hitting: see a lot of pitches, take a lot of walks:

Cust has a slight advantage there, but not a hugely so. There’s nothing there to suggest that the problem with Johnson is that he needs better plate discipline. And while Cust has more home runs, it’s not like Johnson is without power, either. In fact, they both have exact same number of hits (69) and extra-base hits (30) this year; the difference being that Cust turned seven more doubles and triples into homers:

On the other hand, if there’s one thing that’s glaringly different between these two men, it’s the kind of outs they make:

See that? If you didn’t have the middle table in this blog entry, and you were going to guess which guy has more home runs, the guy who puts the ball in the air in 30% of his plate appearances, or the guy who does so in 14% of his plate appearances, which would you choose? If you were going to guess which guy has the better batting average, the guy who puts the ball in play 85% of the time, or the guy who puts the ball in play 67% of the time, which would you choose? You’d think if baseball outcomes were distributed more or less evenly and fairly, Dan Johnson would be better than Jack Cust, but he’s not.

I don’t understand it. Even though their ages and body types and plate discipline are similar, there’s something clearly inferior about the quality of contact that Johnson makes when he swings his bat. Perhaps some smart people out there can explain it to me. Perhaps there is some chart (Plate Discipline on one axis; Quality Contact on another?) that could make sense of this for me. But until I understand how the quality of contact works, how you measure it, and how it impacts an offense, I’m still going to continue to feel like there are treacherous monsters sabotaging the A’s attack.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: to identify the game, players and plays shown in this video:

I was this close to catching Barry Bonds’ 756th home run. Bonds hit the ball almost directly straight at me, but unfortunately, it landed about five miles short of where I was standing in the hallway of my home, as I took a break from cleaning baby bottles to peek into our TV room to watch the at-bat.

Oh well. So I didn’t end up with a valuable piece of memorabilia. I didn’t get to say I was there. But hey, at least I got to hear the fireworks!

The title of this blog entry has been changed from the original, because my two oldest daughters have been calling each other "stupid" and "ugly" for about a week straight, so I just raised the price of using those two words in our home from free to dessert. A parent should require more creativity in the use of language in their households. So in order to have some ice cream myself, let’s just say there that there was a bit of "seaweedity" a lot of "asparagusiness" at yesterday’s A’s-Angels game. Not in the quality of play–both teams pitched well, played solid defense, and put up some good at-bats. It’s just that–well, you have to see for yourself:

In the first inning, this pitch got almost too far inside on Vladimir Guerrero, and nearly hit him.

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The Arizona Diamondbacks have claimed Joe Kennedy off waivers. This is the third player the Dbacks have claimed this week, along with Jeff Cirillo and Byung-Hyun Kim. The A’s get nothing in return but salary relief. I suppose that’s good, if Kennedy wasn’t going to generate a draft pick in free agency, but it’s also quite unexciting. I’m not exactly an A’s fan for the accounting ledgers.

Another reason for the A’s not holding a fire sale, besides the ones I listed last time, is that the A’s are not really all that far from contending again. While the A’s are currently seven games under .500, they have actually outscored their opponents on the season. And if you go even further, and adjust their runs scored/runs allowed by strength of schedule, things look even better. According to BP’s Adjusted Standings, the A’s ought to have the best record in the AL West, and should be just one game behind Detroit for third-best in the entire American League.

When a team’s actual record falls far below its projected one, it’s usually a sign of two things: 1) a bad bullpen, and 2) a bounceback to come. This is essentially what happened to Cleveland in 2006–they outscored their opponents by 88 runs, but finished 6 games below .500, thanks to an atrocious bullpen. They stabilized their pen in the offseason, and in 2007, they are contending again.

There was a period in July, while Huston Street, Justin Duchscherer and Kiko Calero were all on the DL, when there was not a single member of the A’s bullpen who was on the division winning team of a year before. The A’s won the division thanks to their pen–their M.O. in 2006 was to play solid, mistake-free defense, keep the game close into the late innings, and then outlast the other team’s bullpen with depth. There were many narrow, late-inning victories on the way to the division crown. This year, the A’s haven’t been able to win those types of games very often.

If Street, Duchscherer and Calero return to health in 2008, and are joined by an effective Alan Embree and Santiago Casilla, the A’s could return to their favorite game plan again. The major tinkering that needs to be done is to purge the team of the sub-.300 OBPs that are killing the offense. Jason Kendall is gone, so that’s one-third the battle. And hopefully, the A’s can find some sucker to take Mark Kotsay off their hands, and hope that Chris Denorfia can take over the job and put up a far more respectable OBP than Kotsay’s. The final and most difficult problem is to find an ABC (Anybody But Crosby). I’ve been watching Donnie Murphy pretty closely this week, and I don’t see any reason to think he’s Anybody.

* * *

Meanwhile, I’m facing a bit of a roster crunch at home. With three kids now, there’s just not enough space around here to keep all the stuff we’ve accumulated over the years. It’s time for a fire sale! I’m doing a major purge of my house this weekend, getting rid of anything I don’t need–clothes, trinkets, toys, games, books, etc. This includes dozens of baseball books. Everything must go! If any of you are in the Bay Area, and might want to take any of this stuff off my hands, email me at catfish AT zombia.com. Anything I have left by Sunday will be headed to Goodwill or CARH.

Well, that trade deadline was boring. Plenty of bait (Blanton, Johnson, Piazza, Kennedy, Stewart, the DFA’d Kielty) but not a single fish caught today. What’s going on here? Two things:

1. The Moneyball effect. There has two subeffects from this:
    
   • There are fewer teams Billy Beane can win a trade from, because more and more teams know how to properly value players
      
   • Beane has acquired so many undervalued players that the fleeceable teams still undervalue them, and won’t pay enough for them
      
2. The changes in free agency rules. With the latest Collective Bargaining Agreement, the team that signs a Type B free agent no longer loses a draft pick of their own, while the team that loses him still gets a free pick. That means there is less risk that a Type B free agent will accept arbitration if offered, because there’s no downside to signing such a player anymore. Type B free agents are worth at least a free sandwich draft pick, so you don’t want to just dump those guys for scraps–the player you get back has to be worth more than the draft pick.

   Nobody outside of MLB the MLPBA and the Elias Sports Bureau seems to be sure what the Type A/Type B formula is, but I’ve heard speculation that Piazza, Kennedy, and Stewart may all end up qualifying as Type Bs. In fact, some of the decisions the A’s made before the deadline may have designed to make these players Type B free agents. What we do know is that the formula is based on the past two years of performance, and you are ranked according to your position. The top 20% at each position are Type A players, the next 20% are Type Bs.

   Outfielders, first basemen and DHs are grouped together for these rankings. Someone like Mike Piazza is more likely to rank in the top 40% if he’s considered a catcher than if he’s lumped in with the huge pool of OFs and 1Bs. He played 99 games in 2006 as a catcher, and 8 as a DH. Before he got hurt, he had played 26 games as a DH in 2007. So if he DHed for 66 more games, he’d end up as a DH for free agent purposes. Piazza was ready to come back and DH in early July, but the A’s asked him to stay on the DL and try to catch. Why? Presumably because Jason Kendall sucked, but I think it’s so that he’d be calculated as a catcher. Eventually, they gave up the idea of having him come back as a catcher, and said, OK, you can DH. When did they do that? When there were 67 games left in the season. Do you think Mike Piazza sat out two games before the trade deadline? You betcha. At most, he’ll now have a combined 99 games as a DH in the past two seasons, same as his number of games as a catcher.

   I’m not quite sure why Joe Kennedy was dropped from the rotation in early July–he had one bad outing, but he really wasn’t pitching as bad as his 2-8 won-loss record would indicate. Unless, of course, the A’s wanted him to be a reliever for free agency purposes, as well. I’m not sure how they determine whether you’re a starter or a reliever–I doubt it’s strictly on games played like position players, since starters only go once every five days. But if Kennedy has a greater chance of qualifying for Type B status as a reliever than as a starter, I’m sure the A’s are all over it.

   In recent years, the A’s have found players like Travis Buck and Huston Street in the sandwich round. Is a 2-8 Joe Kennedy going to land someone with that sort of potential in a trade? Kennedy’s not a bad pitcher, and I’m sure he’s better than some of the dreck that a few contenders I can think of are running out there, but no one is going to send over a potential Buck or Street for him.

So blah, no new prospects to get us excited about the future–yet. We’ll just have to wait for the 2008 draft for our next dose of that kind of pleasure. At least there’s a good pitching matchup tonight to look forward to: Dan Haren vs. Justin Verlander. And even if there wasn’t many happy returns of the day, I shall be thankful at least that I am not a Pirates fan, wondering why my team just took on Matt Morris’ salary for no good reason.

Lohse has been hsipped off to Hpilly,
Hwo hsouldn’t expect a Curt Hscilly
Hsarp pihtcing hsow.
One start he’ll htrow
Blazes; the next start he’s hcilly.

Daniels, your trades leave me terrified.
The Rangers get worse, not new-erafied.
Will Saltalamacchia
And prospects restockia
Better than being Teixeirafied?

Often during the A’s recently concluded 9-game losing streak I’ve felt like ranting here, but I haven’t had–well, not the time; I’ve had lots of time–the hands to do so. Much of my computer time these days is spent with a sleeping baby in one arm, and I’ve held off writing, waiting for a two-handed opportunity on the computer. As I’ve sat waiting, I have officially gave up on two things:

• Two-handed opportunities on the computer
• The A’s making the playoffs in 2007

So here I go, pecking slowly at the keyboard.

It’s a bit of an odd sensation giving up on the A’s playoff chances in July. The A’s haven’t been this clearly out of contention in July since 1998, the summer before Tim Hudson became the first of the "Big Three" starters to make his major league debut.

So here’s one point in support of those who said that Billy Beane’s success has nothing to do with the principles outlined in Moneyball, and everything to do with the good fortune of acquiring Hudson, Mulder and Zito: the A’s streak of contention began precisely when the first of those three pitchers arrived, and ended precisely when the last of them had departed. Interesting that both Bay Area GMs, after many successful years, find themselves this summer having to re-prove themselves by moving past the foundation of their previous success: Beane without the Big Three, and Brian Sabean without Barry Bonds. And each has to start this process this summer with a farm system pipeline that is quite dry, and a trade market that has largely ceased to overvalue mediocre proven veterans. It’s a difficult task, like trying to type a long essay while holding a seven-pound baby in one arm.

It will take all of Biily Beane’s creativity to fix this thing. 10 years ago, a Jason Kendall might have brought in a package of good prospects; now he brings in a guy described as "no one’s idea of a top relief prospect" who six months ago was probably closer to being out of baseball than to the major leagues. Beane is really going to have to dig deep to extract any value out of his tradeable assets. The good news is that if there is one thing that Billy Beane is good at, it’s digging deep and finding hidden value in other teams’ minor league systems. Justin Duchscherer, Chad Gaudin, Lenny DiNardo, Jack Cust, Marco Scutaro–these guys were all acquired without fanfare for next to nothing, and all have provided positive value in return.

Still, those guys are useful role players, not stars. The thing about having a lineup devoid of big stars is that you can’t afford to have any offensive black holes like Jason Kendall and Bobby Crosby suck everything away. Like a tennis player with mediocre ground strokes who gets a lot of free points with a big serve, one star player like Frank Thomas can compensate for a lot of other deficiencies. The A’s have been hurting (literally) in a lot of ways this year, but the biggest hurt this year compared to last has been not having the Big Hurt to hit that three-run homer once a week, that turns a 3-4 losing week into a 4-3 winning record.

In fact, Beane is so good at acquiring talent on the cheap, like finding quality in rehabbing free agents (John Jaha, Frank Thomas, Shannon Stewart) it’s rather stunning to contemplate how bad his track record is at signing mid-level free agents. Mike Magnante? Arthur Rhodes? Mark Redman? Esteban Loaiza? Even his re-signs and extensions have been bad. Jermaine Dye was a total flop in Oakland. Has Eric Chavez been worth all that money? Has Mark Kotsay?

I’m beginning to think that given Beane’s strengths and weaknesses, he ought to forego the midlevel free agents altogether, and go for a stars-and-scrubs strategy. Beane can find the scrubs for cheap better than anyone. Skip having three or four $7-12 million/year players on the team–nearly every one the A’s have had in Beane’s tenure has been wasted money. Blow it all on one superstar instead. Go ahead, Billy, go forth this offseason and spend all your money on ARod.

Then after six or seven more contending seasons on both sides of the bay, we can go complain that Brian Sabean is overrated; he just lucked into that Barry Zito-led pitching rotation, and state that we’ll finally find out how good a GM Billy Beane is, now that he at last has to build a team that isn’t just a bunch of nobodies surrounding his all-time home run king.

…with some cash for catcher Rob Bowen and minor-league LHP Jerry Blevins.

The 6′ 6" Blevins was not on anybody’s prospect list to begin the season. He had a 6.13 ERA last year, but something must have clicked for him in the offseason. He’s had a monster year in 2007. He had a 0.38 ERA with 32 strikeouts against only 5 walks in 23 2/3 innings in A-ball, before being promoted to AA. There, he’s struck out 37 in 29 1/3 IP, against 8 walks, with a 1.53 ERA. He’s been better against lefties than righties, but he’s not just a LOOGY like Jay Marshall; he’s been good against RHB, too.

So I’m very happy. The A’s weren’t going anywhere with or without Kendall this season, so to get anything with even some possible positive value for him is fabulous.

Meanwhile, has anyone seen Ray Fosse?  Anyone?  I’m kinda worried about him…

First, some Zito news, and now this: Newsday is reporting that Rickey Henderson will be the new hitting coach for the New York Mets, replacing Rick Down.

Well, this should be fun.  I’ve always thought that Rickey could be a pretty good first base coach, since he has an expert eye for pitchers’ moves, but I never really thought about him as a batting coach.  He had pretty much the ideal batting approach as a player; it should be interesting to see if he can explain and transfer that approach to others.

Barry Zito’s sky is falling for the seventy billionth time since his career began: Tim Marchman has a column today wondering whether Barry Zito’s contract is the worst of all time.

I guess my three–part series about Zito has made me somewhat of a Zito expert, so I suppose I should respond. Let us summarize what we know about Barry Zito:

1. His detractors over the years have looked at his peripheral stats and conclude he’s not as good as his ERA, because his (luck/big foul territory/good defense) masks his shortcomings.

2. Point #1 is crap.

Barry Zito’s success rests on his proven ability to reduce the BABIP of right-handed batters far lower than normal. That’s what makes him special. It’s skill, not luck (see TangoTiger for more);  it’s not the foul ground (no significant home/road splits), and it’s not the defense (he did this even when he had Ben Grieve, Terrence Long and Matt Stairs in the outfield behind him.)

Against left-handed batters, he’s pretty much been an average ho-hum major league pitcher. But because the vast majority of batters are right-handed, Zito succeeds.

So Zito is having a bad year.  I’ve heard that he’s lost his control, he’s lost his velocity.  Is the sky at last falling?

Um, no.  Let’s look at the important numbers:

If Zito was losing his stuff, he’d be struggling against both LHB and RHB this year. But he’s been just as good as ever against RHB. His bread and butter is still there, and still working just fine.

Zito’s struggles this year are entirely with left-handed batters.  Like his worst season in 2004, he’s allowed an extremely high BABIP against them.  In addition, the word has apparently gotten around about his reverse splits, and he’s facing a higher percentage of LHB this year than ever before.

Zito has had these troubles with LHB before, and fixed them.  I think he can fix them again.  I wouldn’t quite give up on him yet.

My youngest daughter, eleven days old, attended the first ballgame of her life this afternoon. The Seattle Mariners and the Oakland Athletics demonstrated to her, in many ways, what an amazing world she was born into. As a token of my appreciation, I would to sing them a song, and it goes a little something like this:

The colors of a rainbow
So pretty in the sky

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