So, pondering seeing a game in this penultimate series of the season, I was perusing StubHub when I found some comparatively inexpensive diamond level tickets on sale, ($72 vs a face value of $225.) Never having sat there before, I learned a few things.

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So, in the big Cabrera thread, someone pointed out his career .226/.265/.314 batting line at the Coliseum and wondered if we should be worried. Someone else pointed out that this sample was all of 151 plate appearances, and that no, we shouldn't be worried. Then it got into a discussion of just what pitchers it was that Cabrera was facing. The Big 3? Or, since he only joined the AL in 2004, someone else? Out of boredom, I thought I'd look up just who those PA's came against. So, in it's entirety, a list of the pitchers Cabrera has faced in Oakland in his career, how many times he's faced them, and what lines he put up against said pitchers:

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I'd like to expound on this with relevant data from CHONE, UZR et cetera, but all the junk food I've eaten makes me tired, even if very little of it was tryptophan-laden turkey. Still, I'll try to do a good enough job of it to justify a FanPost rather than FanShot. A few things first:

• The A's are a team on a budget.
• To compete, they need to seek out inefficiencies in the market, such as undervalued commodities.
• Moneyball was about this search and not about a love affair with high-OBP sluggers with poor defense.

This should not be news to anyone reading this site. What is also likely not news is that high-OBP sluggers with poor defense seem to be the undervalued commodities of the season. What might be news is that the best way to improve the A's right now would be to sign another high-OBP slugger with poor defense.

We've discussed improving our shortstop position. Cabrera would be expensive, and would, in many people's opinions, not provide enough improvement for the cost. Outside of Cabrera, there don't seem to be a lot of options. Tejada has been mentioned, but he'd be even more expensive, and again it's questionable just how much improvement we'd see there. Also, Houston's front office appears inclined to continuing to pretend that they're a competitive team.

We've discussed improving our starting pitching. The problem there is that there just aren't a lot of great options. Sheets, easily the best pitcher left, will command a high price despite his injury history. The rest of the options seem to be various shades of mediocre, and for a team that places a premium on dollar value, free agent pitchers are about the least efficient way to improve your team.

So what's left to improve on? How about center field? There's no consensus that Sweeney, Denorfia or Cunningham are likely to be particularly good in 2009, nor is there anyone out there on the FA market likely to be any better. What is out there are guys like Dunn and Abreu, quality bats with lead gloves. This is the part I'm flaking on in this post, where I try and project the math, but what we'd lose in defense by dropping from Sweeney to Buck and from Buck to Dunn or Abreu, seems like it could be more than made up by the increase in offense that comes from Abreu or Dunn vs Sweeney. Off the top of my head, it seems like a 1-2 win increase in total.

Or that could be all the Ruffles talking. This make sense to anyone else?

So, A's fan here. Over at AN, one of the most frequent discussions as of late has been how to improve at SS. Some of the options have of course been the earlier effort to sign Furcal, potential efforts to sign Orlando Cabrera, or simply not playing anyone there and having Chavez and Ellis cheat over towards the hole. One name that popped up a couple times in these discussions has been Tejada's. My first thoughts were 'too old, too expensive, declining offensive and defensive skills', but it was looking up the latter that got me wondering. As Astro fans know, he was actually a bit above average with the glove, and while his hitting dipped, it still wasn't bad for a shortstop, (though it was kinda bad for $13M.)

Having done that, I then looked at the Astros moves for this offseason, what players they were signing, etc. I'd imagine Astro fans don't need to be reminded of the less-than-spectacular set of acquisitions they'd made, nor would I be blamed for assuming that the Astros are not expecting to contend this year.

With that in mind, I thought I'd ask Astro fans what they think the likelihood is that a Tejada trade might happen. Since you don't have a shortstop yourselves, (and there ain't much out there on the FA market, believe me,) presumably we would send Crosby back. He's not, y'know, good, but he's at least average defensively, and he saves you $8M versus Tejada. Also, he's not totally without upside. He's a right-handed pull hitter, so a power spike in Houston isn't entirely out of the question.

So, my questions are, is this a possibility? How much more in terms of prospects would it take?

So amidst the Cabrera discussions (still: no) and the Michael Young discussions (hell no), Tejada's name kept popping up. My first thought was somewhere between Cabrera and Young, (i.e., between still no and hell no,) but looking more closely, I'm not so sure he's any worse of an option than Cabrera, maybe even a little better.

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No, I get that Crosby's bad, I do, I certainly understood (and supported) the desire to replace him with Furcal. For the price the Dodgers got him for, I can also certainly see why we passed, assuming we were ever a serious consideration for Furcal in the first place. But once Furcal was taken off the board, it seems like a large segment of the population of AN decided that Cabrera was the next choice, and the reasoning for that eludes me.

Crosby doesn't hit well, that's established, but Cabrera's BEST season with the bat was 2003 in Montreal, when he hit .297/.347/.460, and that was pretty clearly a career year. His second best year was 2001, with a line of .276/.324/.428. Does the phrase "his best days are behind him" seem appropriate? Since 2003, the highest single-season OPS he's had was .742. Last year he had a .705 OPS in one of the better hitter's parks in the American League.

What about his defense, you say? Well true, UZR had Cabrera as 14.2 runs above average at shortstop last year, which combined with the marginal improvement over Crosby in hitting would account for 2-2.5 wins of improvement, but IF and only IF his defense stayed at exactly that level. Is that a guarantee? Not remotely. Here Cabrera's UZR ratings over the past 7 years:

• 2002: 1.4
• 2003: 6.4
• 2004: -1.5
• 2005: 24.6
• 2006: -1.6
• 2007: 9.7
• 2008: 14.2

In every one of those seasons, Cabrera played at least 141 games at short. Over this span he's averaged 7.6 runs above average, and the plain fact is that at age 34, he's going to be older and probably slower than he was in all of those seasons. Even if there's no drop-off due to age (not at all a guarantee), it's more likely to expect 1 win of improvement out of Cabrera's defense than 2, and it still leaves us with a hole in the batting order. Explain to me why that's worth paying millions and giving up a draft pick?

We're going to see the return of a familiar name to the mound this Sunday. It's a name everyone on this site is exceedingly familiar with. I am writing this post to humbly urge everyone not to use that name!

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So, out of morbid curiosity, I thought we'd let's take a quick look at a list of everyone who has been on the A's 25-man roster so far this season:

Starting pitchers: Dan Haren, Joe Blanton, Rich Harden, Chad Gaudin, Joe Kennedy, Dallas Braden, Colby Lewis
Relief pitchers: Huston Street, Justin Duchscherer, Kiko Calero, Alan Embree, Jay Witasick, Jay Marshall, Lenny DiNardo, Connor Robertson, Ron Flores
Catchers: Jason Kendall, Adam Melhuse
Infielders: Dan Johnson, Todd Walker, Mark Ellis, Bobby Crosby, Eric Chavez, Marco Scutaro
Outfielders: Milton Bradley, Nick Swisher, Shannon Stewart, Bobby Kielty, Travis Buck, Danny Putnam, Ryan Langerhans, Chris Snelling, Hiram Bocachica, Donnie Murphy
Designated Hitters: Mike Piazza, Jack Cust

So, 36 so far, with two more names coming onto the list soon in Kotsay and Loaiza.

Is there some sort of record for number of player's on a team's 25-man roster before a certain date?

Kotsay: So once my back is better, then they're going to fix my left arm, my right leg, both knees and elbows, and I should be back in the lineup in no time.
Bradley: That's great, Mark...
Piazza: Okay folks, gather round. It's May 15th and that's rookie card day.
Swisher: What?
Piazza: Rookie card day. It's when you have to show everyone your rookie card.
Swisher: ...you're serious?
Piazza: Oh yeah, all the veterans know about it. Right guys?
Stewart: Definitely.
Loaiza: Si
Chavez: Yup.
Kotsay: Huh?
Bradley elbows Kotsay
Kotsay: Ow, I mean, yeah, totally. (Dude, you pushed my rehab back...)
Piazza: Ok, I'll start.

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