There's always next year...ah, the life of an A's fan.

1. Aaron Cunningham to have an everyday job from opening day and be given a long leash.

Cunningham is a good prospect who has nothing left to prove in the minors. He's a good bet to be average and has a decent chance of being a minor star as one of those guys that's above average at basically everything.

I do think he'll start the year in the outfield. My worry is that if he sucksfor a few weeks, he'll be benched. No matter how badly he plays, Cunningham should get at least half a season next year to show what he can do.

2. Ryan Sweeney to platoon with somebody.

Sweeney is actually a pretty good player. I doubt he's as good as Fangraphs WAR thinks he is this year (which is solidly above average) because his UZR is so different from last year, but he's still probably around average. He's a horrible hitter against LHP though, and since we have two other guys in Davis and Hairston that are at about his level and are of the opposite handedness, a platoon makes perfect sense.

In a shocking turn of events, I think I lean to the Nico camp over the PaulThomas one here, and think Hairston should be the one on the short end of the platoon. He's just an atrocious hitter against RHP (.288 OBP), and while this is certainly not Davis' true hitting level, he doesn't have much of a platoon split, and I think his very good defense ultimately makes him more valuable than Hairston (even with Sweeney probably losing a little value moving from CF to COF). 

Unfortunately, I doubt this will happen because we never have platoons because...I have no freaking clue. I understand that when a platoon effectively takes up two roster spots, that's a problem. But that is not at all the case here. Hairston, Sweeney and Davis (assuming they aren't traded) are all going to be on the team NO MATTER WHAT, and all have value as bench players/defensive replacements. Why in God's name wouldn't you put out the player most likely to hit against the starting pitcher?

3. Rajai Davis to be traded.

This would kind of conflict with the whole platooning Sweeney thing, I suppose, but I've come around to the idea that it's the right decision. There's just no way that Davis is this good, and if we can get a couple decent pitching prospects to help replace all the depth we've graduated recently, I'd be all for it. That said, Davis is a reasonably good player and shouldn't be given away either.

If we do trade him, though, I'd love to see us make a lowball offer for the Rays' Fernando Perez, and not just because of his poetry. He's completely superfluous to the Rays, there's a non-zero chance that he's a star-level defender with acceptable OBP skills (basically that he'll be Davis this year at his peak), and at worst he's a great bench player with options left. Don't give up anything significant of course, but it's worth a shout. 

4. Trevor Cahill, Chris Carter, Brett Wallace, Sean Doolittle, and Adrian Cardenas to start the year in AAA. 

First, for everyone: service time, service time, service time. We're probably not going to win anything next year, and none of these players are likely to be THAT much better over a couple months to be the difference between the playoffs or not anyway, so it's really an imperative for a team in our financial situation to hold off on starting arbitration clocks for as long as possible.

Cahill: He's been just awful this year. Of course he's been rushed, and there's still reason for optimism, but for both service time and development reasons, Cahill needs to go back to minors next year. It makes no sense to send Cahill out there to suck it up when we have guys like Eveland/Mortensen/Tomko/random guy from scrapheap who are perfectly capable of sucking it up with out doing any developmental damage. I'm also open to the idea of Mazzaro going back to AAA too, though that seems less necessary.

Carter: Not ready. Had a great year, but needs to learn to play a decent LF or 1B (I'm betting on LF), and to work on hitting breaking pitches (I'm just trusting the scouts on that one). Give him at least half a year in AAA.

Wallace: AAA performance still hasn't matched the scouting profile. Let him hit like he's supposed to in AAA for a few months.

Doolittle: Try staying healthy for half a season first. 

Cardenas: I think it's obvious that he's not ready yet, but I thought I should mention it anyway.

5. Daric Barton to start the year as the everyday 1B. 

Why is it that when Barton has a horrible year in the majors at 22, everyone gives up on him, but when Cahill, at 21, is arguably even worse, everyone thinks he should just walk into next year's rotation?

I doubt Barton will ever be a whole lot better than average, but there's nobody ready breathing down his neck (if you say Tommy Everidge I'll scream), and there's no reason not to give him another half season audition. It seems like some AN'ers take it personally that Barton played so badly. Maybe he doesn't "deserve" another shot, but there's no one else that's worth throwing out there to start the season, and Barton still has genuine upside. 

Also, I don't know what to do about shortstop, but I'd sure like somebody to do something. Oh, and can we have Jack Hannahan back? I really hate that trade.

Fernando Perez is the kind of player I easily fall in love with. He is one of the fastest humans you'll ever see, plays incredible defense, and is one of those marvelous slap hitters with little power that scamper all over the place to get on base. 

Of course, until today, he was more the kind of player I'd fall in love with and nothing more. After all, I haven't actually seen him play since last year's playoffs.

Now, as a baseball player, I think he actually might be pretty good and worth going after from the A's perspective. He's already the perfect 5th OF, the way Rajai was at the beginning of the year, and he's shown enough OBP ability in the minors that he could be a younger version of Rajai or maybe even the next Franklin Gutierrez. He does after all have a career 94.5 UZR/150 in 120 innings in CF--no regression necessary! And, after all, with uber-prospect Desmond Jennings coming up next year, and Matt Joyce, Sean Rodriguez, the Gabes and Zorilla all capable of play RF too, it's not like the Rays are in desperate need of another speedy, great defensive outfielder. 

But that's not the point of this fanpost. No, I want instead to tell you why, today, I fell for Fernando. Start by taking a look at this. (H/T Neyer.) That, my friends, is a wonderful prose poem written for the Poetry Foundation by Mr. Perez himself. I quote: 

I write from Caracas, the murder capital of the world, where I’ve been employed by the Leones to score runs and prevent balls from falling in the outfield. At the ankles of the Ávila Mountain amongst a patch of dusky high-rises, the downtown grounds of el Estadio Universitario packed beyond capacity are ripe for a full-bodied poem. A mere pitching change is an occasion “para rumbiar,” and the purse-lipped riot squad is always on the move with their spanking machetes swinging from their hips. The game isn’t paced necessarily by innings or score. It’s marked by the pulsating bass drums of the samba band that trail bright, scantily-clad, head-dressed goddesses strutting about the mezzanine. The young fireworks crew stand mere feet from flares that don’t always set out vertically, sometimes landing in the outfield still aflame. “The wave” includes heaving drinks into the sky.

It was exciting to learn that Doug Glanville could write well thought-out op-eds for the New York Times, and even more so to discover that Brian Bannister reads and understands Bill James, but none of that, for me, approaches learning that Perez is a poet. 

I like baseball very much. It is not my passion. The A's are far lesser influences in my life than the writing of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy, and their work is a lesser influence still than my own writing. Perhaps it is surprising to learn that someone so consumed with literature would be so statistically inclined when it came to game of baseball, that most poetic of American pastimes. Am I strange? I won't argue.

And yet I have been at times that stereotype of the stathead buried in his computer, who won't pull his head out and WATCH THE GAMES. In a lost season such as this one, I take more pleasure from reading asyouwish's minor league updates than from watching the games themselves. I do not apologize for this. 

But still, reading a baseball player write poetry about the game, I was reminded of all those beautiful accidents and beautiful routines in a baseball game that I have been missing. When I watch soccer, my favorite sport, I never forget that I am watching a beautiful game. I watch for that flowing Barcelona move that starts with Xavi and ends with Messi, or that fairytale, laces-out half-volley by Steven Gerrard almost as much as I watch to see Liverpool come away with three points. 

I don't watch baseball the same way. I fade in and out. I read on my computer at the same time. I fall asleep. Perhaps I will always do these things one way or the other. But baseball is beautiful too.

Today, because Fernando Perez has unknowingly asked me to, I will turn myself to the moments that make baseball worth following. Of course it would be a fourth outfielder, slap-hitting pinch-runner that would remind me that there is more to even sports than winning and losing. 

Today, I remember Ryan Sweeney's home-run and game-saving catch against the Rangers and am grateful that he is an A. 

I remember Eric Chavez's perpetual honesty. The Rajai Davis Experience. Gio's orbital curveball and Mark Ellis' quiet excellence and Trevor Cahill's flat-brimmed hat.

Today, I remember Michael Wuertz's slider, the most unhittable pitch in baseball. Mazzaro World. The joy of watching Brett Anderson grow into a star. Discovering that Chris Carter is black :-)

Today, I am grateful to be an A's fan.

Baseball. It's a beautiful thing.  

First of all, despite the title of this fanpost, I'm not trying to refute anything that bobnothing suggested in his post. Such pieces of art cannot be debated.

That out of the way, we can get down to business. Players like Jack Cust that are fat and strikeout a lot tend to breed a lot of both love and hatred.

The old-guard sports fan that loves the RBI, the stolen base and the productive out and abhors the strikeout cannot tell you how much they cannot stand Jack Cust. Swing at a freaking pitch already! You should never strike out looking! Speed never slumps!

The more stathead type (of which I certainly am one) will often point to his excellent on base and power numbers, and tell you about what a great hitter he is. Back when this statistical revolution was in its infancy and decent defensive stats didn't exist, players like Cust were the target of the most support from the stathead community because he provides the one, most tangible thing that is often overlooked by the old-guard (OBP), and his major perceived weakness (striking out), isn't really a weakness at all, and a lot of us still have a soft spot for those three true outcomers today.

The problem is that Jack Cust just isn't very good. Not because he strikes out too much, and certainly not because he can't run, or doesn't swing often enough, or never makes a productive out. He isn't very good because he's merely a good hitter, rather than a great one, and provides significant negative defensive value.

Yes, we all know Jack sucks at D, but I don't think we often acknowledge just how damaging that part of his game is. Per Fangraphs, Cust has provided a career 4.8 wins above a replacement player (WAR) in 453 games. That's mediocre at best. For comparison, Ryan Sweeney, widely agreed to be nothing better than a 4th OF, has 3.2 WAR in about half the PAs and Travis Buck, perennial dog house resident, has 3.1 WAR in 1/3 of the games (!). Maybe Buck doesn't surprise you, because he had that one excellent year, but it has to be a little bit of a kick in the teeth that batting-practice-power Sweeney is a third again as good as Cust by rate because of position and defense.

To be fair, Cust's value unfairly takes a hit because he's been regularly played out of position (that being any position), and I do have a hard time believing that DHs really deserve the enormous hit they get in positional adjustments (-17.5 runs) considering how few teams get excellent production from their DHs.

That said, for his ML career, Cust has a .361 wOBA (yes, I have been converted from OPS+). That's very good. Unfortunately, to be anything more than "eh" as a player without a position, you really need to hit like David Ortiz or Travis Hafner circa 2004. Otherwise, you're merely okay. Even in Cust's superb (and unlikely to be equaled) 2007 season when had a .390+ wOBA, he only provided about 3.5 WAR/150, which is really good, but not earth-shattering--for comparison, Ben Zobrist should finish the season with double the WAR but with only a little better wOBA.

Now, I'm not saying DFA Cust, or give him away or anything. He's still worth more than we're paying, and probably will be again next year even after arbitration. But if we get a decent offer, we should certainly consider it, and we definitely should not resign him for even what he gets in the last year of arby after he hits free agency.

One last thing: before anyone responds that he's the best hitter on the team, and therefore we need him, I'll at least bring up my biggest pet peeve, and possibly the subject of a future fanpost.

We should not be targeting players of a certain type. We should be targeting good players.

Yes, Cust is our best hitter, and he's a good enough hitter that that's not especially embarrassing to say. But he's not even close to our best player. As noted above, the perpetually disappointing Ryan Sweeney looks to be at least as valuable. People will often clamor for more power hitters, or a leadoff hitter, or Everidge at 3B over Hannahan because at least he would hit, or something similar.

All of those things are desirable, and I understand the mindset. Yet the differing shape of a players production does not matter. A shortstop that adds ten runs with the glove and loses 10 with the bat has the same value as one that gives you 10 with the bat and loses 10 with the glove. A hitter that hits 35 HR with a .370 wOBA has the same value as one that steals 50 bases with a .370 wOBA.

This is not basketball where the mix of abilities really matters, where you need a shooter to complement your burly center and your quick point guard. Baseball is essentially a series of individual encounters of hitter vs. defense. Maybe all else being equal, a groundballing staff should focus more on good defensive infielders, and a team with lots of power should look for more high OBP guys etc., but then you're only talking about a few runs on the margins.

What we want are valuable players, however they provide it, and Jack Cust, as much as I love him, just isn't all that valuable.

Hi, everybody, I've been a lurker around here for a while, but there's something that I've seen repeated enough, that I'm coming out of hiding to set things right.

I keep reading something like the following: The A's should hold off on moving Adrian Cardenas to 3b because he's a much more valuable prospect at 2b.

This belief comes from a combination of conventional thinking and the fact that there are far fewer quality 2b prospects in the minors right now than 3b prospects. In reality the answer is quite the opposite--Adrian Cardenas is much more valuable to A's at third--for a couple reasons.

1. The assumption that it is more difficult to play 2b than 3b is wrong, or at least very debatable. In the era of VORP, we've been taught to think of value relative to average offense for the position, i.e. since 2b as a whole hit worse than 3b as a whole, we assume 2b are better defenders. This has more to do with a combination of an excellent generation of 3b and a tendency for modern managers to tolerate worse hitters at 2b than a difference in difficulty between the positions. There's a different skill set required--2b need more range, 3b need better hands and a stronger arm--but 2b isn't really any harder than 3b. 

Probably the biggest innovation we saw this year among the sabermetric community was an emphasis on positional adjustments based on difficulty in playing the position over relative-to-average-hitter-at-position adjustments, like VORP. Mostly pioneered by Tom Tango, position adjustments conclude that 2b and 3b (and CF) are equally difficult to play. So, assuming that Cardenas is an equally good defender at 3b as 2b (admittedly a big assumption), then he's equally valuable at either place in an absolute sense.

2. The A's, unlike virtually every other team in baseball except for those lucky enough to have an Utley or Pedroia, are much better off at 2b than 3b.

Mark Ellis may continue to have injury problems, and he's not a great hitter, but he's signed to a very reasonable contract for a while, and is such a good defender that even when he's hitting as badly as he was last year, he's an average player. We all know about Jemile Weeks, who is currently tearing it up in high A, and he looks like a decent bet to be the 2b of the future once Ellis steps out of the way. In addition, they have Patterson*, Petit and Pennington in AAA, all acceptable short-term fill-ins.

And, as you may have realized by now, there's not much at third. Chavez isn't walking through that door, Garciapparra is held together with duct tape, and Hannahan, well, I think Hannahan gets a bad rap around these parts--he's a good enough defender that he's far from a sink hole--but you'd much rather have him as your Plan B (or C) in AAA than someone who has to play 120 games a year. 

*I think Patterson is also very undervalued around here. He's showed he can hit AAA pitching well enough to play a corner outfield spot there, and that's good enough to be fringe-average at 2b in the majors even with poor defense. He hasn't looked great in his couple chances, but give him time to settle in, and he'll do just fine. He's much better than Petit. 

The A's situation at 3rd is so dire that people are salivating at the idea of Neil Walker, Josh Fields and Allen Craig (hint: those guys suck). If Cardenas is the 3b of the future, then we don't have to worry about only targeting a 3b in a possible deal for Holliday (not that that would be a good idea anyway) and turning down a chance to get someone like Austin Jackson, Jordan Schaefer, or whoever the most talented player available is. 

Moreover, 2b are generally undervalued, so it's much easier to find a decent one for cheap than a 3b if Weeks doesn't pan out and/or Ellis doesn't get back to his old self.

Basically, every fact about the current situation in Oakland says we're fine at second and in desperate need of a third baseman, and it's not like we're talking about moving a SS to 1b to fill a need. Instead, it's more like moving a LF to RF. Taking all of this together, Adrian Cardenas should be the A's 3b of the future. 

Now, if only we could find  a shortstop.