Well first I'd like to thank Manny for putting steroids and performance enhancing drugs back in the news today.  I had originally planned to do more analysis on the franchise's ability to develop young players, but I was really too lazy to try and find the right mix of players, collect the data, and then get it in the right format.  Plus, I don't have access to forecasting metrics like PECOTA, and didn't feel like spending hours on end doing all this work only to be refuted for the same reasons as in the first post. 

Continue reading this post »

You see it in the game threads and recaps every day; Crosby strikes out three times while chasing pitches that were never in the strike zone, Ellis hits an infield pop-up with two on and no outs, Chavez watches strike three go by with RISP, ___ fails to lay down a bunt.  For the last 5 years  I feel like I've been reading the same game recaps every single day.  Maybe thats why I was so impressed by Cust for the first couple of weeks of the season.  He seemed to legitimately improve his approach at the plate. It appeared that he had shortened up his swing, was making more consistent contact, and wasn't striking out so dang much.  This doesn't seem overly impressive at first, that is, until you try and remember the last A's player you can remember making an improvement from the previous year.

Whether it be a player coming in from a trade or a guy that has come up from the minors it just seemed to me like no one ever seems to improve year to year.  Not since the steroid era players of the 1999-2002 teams could I think of a player on the A's roster who had seen consistent improvement from year to year.  Way too often on AN I've made statements like the one above only to be promptly told by the "stat" guys my visual observations deceived reality. So I decided to try and quantify this using some of the statistical software from a Six Sigma quality improvement class I've had this semester.  It's a bit of PITA getting the data in the correct format so thats why I'm a little short on it right now.  What I wanted to do was try and compare the progress of various key players were on the team for more than three years starting after 2002.  A lot of the tests are either a little difficult to apply to baseball stats, or are difficult to understand unless you don't have a strong statistical background, but one I found that provided some cool and clear results were some really basic time series plots. Like I said, since it was a bit of a PITA getting the data in the computer program I just settled on a few guys: Crosby, Ellis, Chavez, Kotsay, Scutaro, and Swisher.

The following tables are time series plots of the BA's, OBP's, and OPS's of the aforementioned players since 2002.

It's easy to see there is a clearly negative trend in every guy on there except Swisher, who was ironically traded.  I took it a step further with averages per year and did a trend analysis just to confirm the negative trend.

When the team is struggling like it is now, it's easy to look at past trades or managerial decisions in hindsight.  We can debate all day why Beane dealt Hudson, Harden, Blanton, and Haren for players that have yet to amount to anything.  We can question why Howe, Macha, and Geren have all seemed to be completely clueless at times. Again though, these are easy assertions to make in hindsight.  I don't have access to some of the premium websites like Baseball Prospectus to get detailed player data to determine if certain guys are underachieving or just aren't that good, but I'm fairly certain Daric Barton and Carlos Gonzalez were sure fire MLB level players.  Travis Buck and Ryan Sweeney's continued inconsistencies are also somewhat troubling.  Matt Murton and Charles Thomas never seemed to pan out.  Kieth Ginter anyone?  I don't even want to touch the guys that have left the A's and have since enjoyed success like Andre Ethier, Jermaine Dye, or Carlos Pena.

Anyhow, I'm beginning to wonder if there is something within the A's hitting philosophy that is messing with the players.  Maybe the guys Beane has been trading for actually had potential, but the teaching philosophy of the organization is getting to them.  Back in the day they stressed patience.  At the rate I see guys on the team take fastballs right down the middle and chase balls away, I get to think maybe they are still placing an excessive premium on patience driving up opposing pitchers' pitch counts.  I see a big problem with this when your team isn't loaded with 5 or 6 guys who are going to tally a double digit home run total for the season.

So what do you guys think?  Is there a problem developing hitters within the organization or are the majority of the guys in the organization just lacking in potential?  Also, if anyone has detailed information or  knows of any changes in the organization that may have happened at the start of the negative offensive downturn feel free to contribute.

Edit:  Ellis's stats skewed the data a little bit because of the absent data from 04.  I missed that when I initially made the graphs, so his data actually goes into 2009.  I purposely left the other guys 2009 stats out because of the small sample sizes, but yeah, Ellis's stats are off by one year, because there shouldn't be a point in 2004.

Ok, there is no denying Cust and Thomas have been disappointing so far. I don’t feel like justifying that observation as I’ve done it in like 10 other threads, but basically Cust has shown no power, very little ability to hit fastballs, and does nothing consistently besides walk and take pitches right over the middle. Thomas is getting old, and while making contact he is not a guy who benefits or helps a team with singles. To help this team out he needs to hit for power, a .220 average is not difficult to replace. The singles should be reserved for Ellis, Sweeney, Davis, Barton, or whoever hits in front of Thomas. HE DIDN’T GET THE NAME THE “BIG HURT” FOR DRAWING WALKS AND HITTING BLOOPERS. Yes, I know he has a decent OBP, but the walks that inflate it are not as valuable as those extra base hits with guys on in front of him (that is, if there is an occasional A on base). 

Now before the season, I think Billy had a little bit better hunch that this team would be successful than he led on to.  It wasn’t going to be that hard to top the offense last year, or for the last few years for that matter. It’s not like Kendall, Kotsay, Stewart, Scutaro, Swisher, and Johnson were tearing up the league; plus having BoCro healthy would help as well.  The addition of Thomas was a great idea given the teams fast start, but if the team begins to peter out here over the next few weeks I could see a total revamp of the outfield coming up. Ironically this team’s success over the next couple weeks will probably correlate heavily to whether Thomas and Cust start doing what they are on the roster for, hit for CONSISTENT power. If they don’t I’d be willing to bet Davis, Thomas, and Cust will be the first to go in favor of a younger core and starting outfield of RSweeney/Denorfia, CarGon, and Buck. If the team still continues to struggle, and Barton and Suzuki are showing no signs of improvement then it's likely that Brown and MSweeney will probably be gone as well. At that point the front office can go back to saying it was a rebuilding year, and no one outside of Athletics Nation will even really notice.  It's not all bad though...

I'll be the first to say I’ve been a little more antsy with my critiquing of Cust and Thomas lately. Mainly because living on the east coast, I wanted to see one of the more exciting guys in Buck and CarGon get called up for the ATL series b/c I’m not sure when I’ll get to see this team play again. Plus, the one time I did see Buck was the July 24th game in Anaheim last year, where he absolutely dominated. The thing to keep in mind is that guys like Barton, Buck, Hannahan, and Suzuki are supposed to struggle.  They are all going to have tough stretches this early in their careers. Just look at how the god of all rookies, Evan Longoria, has been faring as of late. The things to not accept or try and justify are the guys who are supposed to be performing consistently, but actually playing like rookies. There is no justification for what Cust and Thomas are doing right now, they have been flat out terrible. Hopefully they come out of it, and play to their abilities, but if not…well, the team will still be ahead of where everyone thought they would be, and we’ll get to watch some young guys bust their butts and have a lot of fun.

First let me just say this; this post isn't meant to compare and contrast players by picking apart every little statistical category, so lets not go there.  You'll understand in a minute.

I've been reading a few comments today about the A's hitters' development and organizational approach, which got me thinking. When I casually take a look around the league, or watch *gasp* Baseball Tonight there are tons of budding offensive stars out there that can carry a struggling team, and flat out dominate the opposition.  These guys can change the whole complexity of a game. I'm not referring to veterans like Vlad or Pujols,   I'm talking about guys that have only been in the league a few years like Matt Holliday, Jeff Francoeur, Justin Morneau, Ryan Howard, Miguel Cabrera, Chase Utley, Mark Teireira, Alex Rios, Hanley Ramirez, David Wright and Prince Fielder.  There are plenty more, but I don't want to list guys like the Upton bros, Evan Longoria, Troy Tulowitzki, and Alex Gordon, that havn't really had any time to prove themselves.  

When I look at our A's, I don't see any of these guys.  I see a lot of very average players in Crosby, Buck, Denorfia, Sweeney, Hannahan, and Barton.  These guys are still young and I have a lot of hope, especially for Buck, Barton, and CarGon.  But this still doesn't change the fact we haven't had a real star come along for about 6 or 7 years, and even then, Giambi and Tejada's success is somewhat tainted due to the steroid allegations.  For so long I wanted Chavez to be that star for us, but he's never really seemed to get much better than he was in his first few seasons.

From these observations I've come up with a few questions, and I figured it would be interesting to get AN's opinion.  First, from the guys I previously mentioned, would you credit their success more to their natural talent, or their franchises development and coaching?  I didn't have the time to see if these guys were traded around or stayed with the same organization until they were called up, but that would be some interesting information to know.  Expanding on this, would it be wrong to blame Beane and the organization for not finding the talented players in the draft, or improperly handling our organizations talent as it moved through A ball?  In other words, could someone like Buck, Barton, or Crosby be a better player if they came up through the Rockies, Marlins, or Twins organizations?  When I see Crosby making the same mistakes year after year, or Chavez not really getting any better than he was in 2001, I tend to think so. 

I really enjoy watching the 2008 A's.  Probably more so than any team since 2003.  It just seems like it will be hard for this team to compete for a championship in 08' or the coming years without a real offensive star.  Regardless of the new guys, the offense hasn't been anything but average for about the last four years anyway.  Nearly every World Series champion this decade has rode some dominant hitters there, minus the Dbacks and CWS, who had some exceptional pitching.  Hopefully Barton, CarGon, and Buck can play a part in that, but only time will tell.