This is a 12 team mixed league, 6x6 (5x5+OPS and K/9) roto scoring. I'm currently in first. Mostly pretty happy with the team. Strong pitching and above-average hitting. There's only three categories where I'm out of the top half: Runs, Steals and Saves. I have a glut of starting pitching (Halladay, Carpenter, Peavy, Duchscherer, Liriano, Kazmir, Hughes and Pavano,) really more than I need. For shortstops, I have Asdrubal Cabrera with Jhonny Peralta on the bench. Another team offers me the following:

• Rafael Furcal
• Stephen Drew

in exchange for:

• Francisco Liriano
• Jake Peavy
• Ryan Franklin

I'm tempted to take this, given Drew's hot start. I could slot both shortstops in as starters, and put one of the OFs in my 2 Util slots (currently have Hawpe and Kubel there) on the bench, but I'm pretty undecided. I think Liriano could return pretty much all the way back to his pre-injury form, I think Peavy's better than he's shown, and without Franklin, I'd be left with only Broxton as a closer. (About the only setup man with a decent chance of closing available for pickup is Tyler Clippard.) The big fear is that I'm trading guys with upside for guys who are already pretty much producing at their pick, and shooting myself in the foot in saves to do so.

What do folks think?

With 3 games over an 8 day stretch against Bayern Munich and Chelsea, I'd expected Sir Alex would take this game to rest a few players. The big name missing will be Wayne Rooney. It was widely reported that he'd limped from Old Trafford to his car after the win over Liverpool. Clearly SAF wants his striker on fresh legs for the next week+. England captain Rio Ferdinand will also be out. Neither is on today's squad, even as a sub.

Man United XI:

-------------Van Der Sar-------------
Neville----Vidic----Evans----Evra
------Fletcher-------Scholes-------
Valencia------Giggs---------Nani (not actually sure if it's Giggs or Nani on the left wing)
---------------Berbatov---------------

subs:

Kusczak
Park
Carrick
Rafael
Macheda
Gibson
De Laet

Van Der Sar in goal of course. Rafael will NOT get his wish to get another crack at Ronaldinho, as Sir Alex goes with Neville at right back. Ferdinand, Vidic and Evra round out the back four. With Carrick out, Fletcher, Scholes, and Park all start in the middle. Nani and Valencia on the wings, and I forsee Park going forward quite a bit to help Nani out. Rooney, much to everyone's relief, starts up front. United have Kuszczak, Berbatov, Rafael, Evans, Obertan, Gibson and Diouf on the bench.

AC Milan decide not to repeat their mistake from before and put Beckham on the bench. Abbiati in goal, a back four of Abate, Bonera, Silva, and Janjulovski. Flamini, Pirlo, and Ambrosini in the midfield. Huntelaar, Borriello and Ronaldinho in the fore.

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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From the AP via Yahoo.

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As a native Chicagoan who hasn't switched his sports loyalties in any sport other than baseball, I'd just liked to say: WHOO! GO BEARS!

For non-Bears fans: You should probably avoid all ESPN programming for the next couple weeks, otherwise you will learn to hate the Super Bowl Shuffle.

While I'm not as big a fan of any sport as I am of baseball, it's kinda nice to have something to cheer for in the baseball dead-zone that is January.

While imagining what free agent we might try to sign or Devil Ray we might try to trade for is interesting enough, it's speculative in the extreme, and unlikely to be particularly accurate (who saw us going after Bradley 12 months ago?) So let's take a look at where things are likely to stand six months from now, always remaining aware of the caveat that I have little idea who Billy's going to see as undervalued out there.

First, these are the players we have under contract for 2007, and how much they'll make. This includes players that haven't yet reached arbitration eligibility.  It occurs to me that I don't actually know what the 2007 minimum salary is. I'm gonna round them all to $350K. The minimum will likely be less than that, but given that some pre-arb players will be making slightly more than the minimum, it's probably close enough.

Jason Kendall: $8M (His salary's $13M, but this is the year we get $5M from Pittsburgh)
Mark Ellis: $3.5M
Bobby Crosby: $2.5M
Eric Chavez: $9.5M
Mark Kotsay: $8.03M
Esteban Loaiza: $7M
Rich Harden: $2M
Dan Haren: $2.2M
Dan Johnson: $350K
Nick Swisher: $350K
Antonio Perez: $350K
Joe Blanton: $350K
Huston Street: $350K
Chad Gaudin: $350K
Brad Halsey: $350K

There are others, such as Flores, but these are the ones I'm reasonably sure will be on the 25-man roster next year. That's 14 players at a cost of just over $45M. (It's 15, but given his performance last year and the likely return of the Crosby/Ellis combo up the middle, I don't see Perez as necessary, and assume he'll get sent down to Sacramento)

Next, the players who have reached arbitration. This list is going to include the player, last year's salary, what year of arbitration the player is in, (service time has a big effect on a player's salary in arbitration. It's why Joe Kennedy made $2.4M while Kiko Calero made $850K,) and my guess as to what the player will go for.

Milton Bradley: $3M. 3rd year. (Actually his 4th, but he's missed enough time to injury that his service time isn't enough for free agency) Had a good year, but missed time to injury. Playoff performance may add to his price. $4.75M.

Joe Kennedy: $2.4M. 3rd year. Like Bradley, had a good year, if a short one. Being a reliever will keep his price from going to high. $3.2M

D'Angelo Jimenez: $750K. (his starting salary with the Rangers. I imagine that Oakland paid him whatever the minimum was) 3rd year. I don't know what 62 PA with a .601 OPS and being the guy called in to play in the postseason because 3 other guys are hurt gets you in arbitration, but I don't think it's going to matter since I doubt the A's will offer it to him.

Bobby Kielty: $1.85M. 3rd year. In 2005 he was a 4th OF with a league-average OPS, and that got him a raise of $1M. In 2006 he was a 4th OF with a league-average OPS. Call it another mil. $2.85M

Adam Melhuse: $700K. 2nd year. Kendall's suspension and the A's clinching brought Melhuse 30 more at-bats than last year. I can't see how else he's going to justify a raise. $750K. And if it's any more than that, why not just bring in Jeremy Brown? It's not like this is a position we need to be spending more money on right now.

Kiko Calero: $850K. 2nd year. Had a very good 2006. Value will be limited by being a reliever. $1.5M

Justin Duchscherer: $344K. 1st year. Was in the top 10 relief pitchers in baseball. That plus 2005's selection to the All-Star team ought to lift him up to $1M, rather high for a relief pitcher in his first year of arbitration, but obviously worth it.

Hiram Bocachica: $327K. 1st year. It's taken him 7 seasons since his rookie debut to accrue three seasons of service time. There's a reason for that. $550K, and it wouldn't surprise me if he were let go or traded for someone else no one wants.

Kirk Saarloos: $354K. 1st year. Has a weird line of 7 wins, 7 losses and 2 saves for 2006. I want to digress just a bit here and point out something from Saarloos's numbers this year.

As a starter: 89.1 IP, 4.94 ERA, 1.75 WHIP, 3.72 K/9, 15 HR
As a reliever: 32 IP, 4.21 ERA, 1.40 WHIP, 4.21 K/9, 4 HR

Saarloos is a much better reliever than he is a starter. He's not truly that great of a relief pitcher, but there's value to be had in having a guy who, when one of your real pitchers goes down, can give you better-than-replacement-level innings, unlike such replacements as Windsor and Komine. This is not to say he shouldn't be on the team next year, but plans should definitely not have him in the 5-man rotation rather than as an emergency backup.

That said (and back to the point here), he did start, and that's going to drive up his price in arby-land. $1.2M

Marco Scutaro: $340K. 1st year. Has basically been an everyday player the last few years, albeit not by anyone's choice. He's definitely gotten more selective at the plate. That and his occasional gap power actually gave him a 97 OPS+ last year, de-emphasizing the 'light-hitting' portion of light-hitting middle infielder. $750K

If I'm right about who we're keeping (and close to right about what they'll make) that's 8 more guys and sixteen million more. If you're counting along, that's 22 spots filled and $61M spent. Last year, the opening day payroll was $63M vs $60M the year before. I'm thinking $67M is about right for this year. While less overall tickets were sold, Wolff has claimed that profits were up a notch due to closing the 3rd deck and not having to pay to feed/clean/secure those stands. Plus we'll get some added revenues from the playoffs. Let's take a look at what we need to fill out the roster:

Catchers: Kendall, Melhuse.
Infielders: Swisher (1b/of), Johnson (1b), Ellis (2b), Crosby (ss), Chavez (3b), Scutaro (2b/ss/3b)
Outfielders: Kotsay, Bradley, Kielty, Swisher (also 1b)
Starters: Harden, Haren, Loaiza, Blanton.
Relievers: Street, Duchscherer, Calero, Gaudin, Kennedy, Halsey, Saarloos.

So what's missing there? A 5th OF, a 5th starter, and a DH. You might argue a 1B/OFer, but I think we've already got that in the system. Kielty should obviously play against lefties. Who to partner him with? Dan Johnson. Even in this year where he couldn't seem to do much at all, he still had a .735 OPS against right-handed pitching. I think he can do better, and Swisher's 1B/LF swapping will pay off as we allow these two hitters to play to their matchup strengths.

First: The Designated Hitter. Frank's coming back. Frank wants to come back, Wolff wants him back, and while Billy Beane may think he can do well at this spot for less money, he knows Barton's at least another year away, and he's not going to fight this all too hard, (though he might argue for the sake of trying to say it'll strain the payroll, for the purpose of convincing Wolff & co to raise said payroll. We'll see how that works. The reported offer Oakland made was for 2 years/$6-8M. Frank's response was along the lines of 'we're not there yet'.

Basically, Frank's our free agent signing this year, barring us somehow trading Kotsay or Kendall. Payton's gone. No money to sign him. Witasick's gone too, not that he's needed. While this doesn't bother me much, it does mean that those last two spots on the roster are going to be filled on the cheap.

For the 5th OF spot, this isn't a big deal. Bocachica would do. Doug Clark is an option. Really, there's any number of AAAA fringe players that could be signed for fringe money to occupy a roster spot. The 5th starter, however? Even a below-average starter costs millions on the open market. We're going to have to fill it from within, somehow.

One of the few things we have a glut of are back-end prospects, albeit it they're none of them great ones. Gaudin may be the best option. Great stuff, but he's GOT to bring that K/BB ratio down. You can't pitch in the majors with a sub-1 K/BB ratio, and Gaudin's 143 ERA+ despite that is unusual in the extreme, enough so that it really makes one wonder which is the anomaly, his walk ratio or his ERA?

Other options include Saarloos, (a bad option, as I've mentioned) Halsey, Windsor, Komine, Jerome Williams, Juan Dominguez and Dan Meyer. The new manager's gonna have a lot of fun picking from that crew. I hope he picks well, because this may be the difference between contention and failure in 2007.

In the final analysis, it probably looks like we're "standing pat". Well, maybe, but take into account the following:

I will have gotten at least one crucial element of this completely wrong. Probably more than one. We'll make a trade I've never considered. Maybe we'll be trading for someone I've never heard of. Maybe we'll be trading for someone I never would have guessed was available. Maybe my arbitration guesses are as accurate as the weight of the planet as calculated by the Flat Earth Society. Maybe the A's portion of the proceeds from MLB's sale of the Nationals will go into payroll and not into ownership dividends or a bid to purchase the city of Fremont outright. When I did something like this last year (at http://www.onlybaseballmatters.com/archives/2005/10/23-nathan_around_these_parts_we.php for those who want to verify what I got right and wrong,) I got the Opening Day Salary pretty much on the nose, missed 3 of the 4 guesses on the arbitration-eligible players by $500K or more, and figured that the $7M we'd have to spend on a free agent would go to a high-priced DH while the 5th starter would be Saarloos. (Like we didn't already know Billy was smarter than me.) Bradley, Loaiza and Thomas were the surprises last year. I trust I don't have to remind everyone what the surprises were the year before. It'll be interesting to see what the surprises will be this year, and just how much of it is going to totally invalidate what I've said here.

In the 4/1 open thread, someone was asking about whether someone would need to be bumped off the 40-man roster to make room for presumptive 5th starter Kirk Saarloos.  That turns out not to be the case. Here's the presumed 25-man roster the A's will have either on Opening Day or a few days later.

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Blez said it was alright to do this in a diary, so I thought I'd post a link to a blog I started with a friend of mine, (A poor misbegotten Giants fan he,) Giants vs. A's

Just a couple posts so far, but Charlie and I are hopeful that in due time we can become your regular purveyors of baseball and snark.

Puttering around Baseball Prospectus, as I so frequently do, I was looking in the stats section, comparing the VORPs of two outfielders discussed in another diary (Byrnes' was 33 in 630 PA vs Cameron's 27 in 570 PA, which sums up my opinion of that theoretical trade) and I noticed the stat "Double play rates for batters". Thinking how this might affect lineups, here's some of the numbers from Oakland players current and present in 2004:

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Alright.

Enough already.

This is not directed at anyone specifically, (except perhaps Nico, who prompted this post by implying that our team would be somehow worsened if Eric Byrnes were replaced by Aubrey Huff because Huff is a lefty), but more in a general sense at people who have been complaining about 'right-handed power'.

Is this overweening fixation on left-handed vs right-handed ever going to end?

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The second-most consistently repeated phrase uttered by those explaining why the A's needed to bring back Jermaine Dye was that he was an "RBI machine", (a distant second behind "right-handed power").  Here's a quick glance at why that's not true, and a look at who did bring runners home in the 2004 season.

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Ok, I'm trying to compile a list of A's player salaries for this year.  Obviously there's several players who haven't been offered contracts yet, and several roster slots that haven't been decided, but here's what I know, (or at least what I think we know), a presumably the collective knowledge of AN ought to be a reasonably complete picture.

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More of a prediction question than a "who should start?" question.

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Can we expect more of what we saw last year from him, or is there reason to believe that last year might have been a statistical fluke?

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There's much talk about who is going to be the A's closer.  Obviously the default candidate is Dotel.  There's, I assume, a general belief that Dotel isn't that great of a closer, and thusly the hope that Street is going to be better, and will therefore be our closer.

What's not being understood is that that is the very reason why Street will NOT be our closer.

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Blez: Do you think the A's will be competitive in the AL West next season?

MU: "Competitive" is a relative term, no? They'll compete. Will they contend? I don't think so. The Angels got better and the A's got worse, in my opinion, and the Angels were better to begin with.

They were one game better.  Two games, if you want to argue that they didn't really try all that hard in the last game of the season. But just how much better have they gotten, really?

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I haven't read everyone else's diaries yet, so I apologize if I'm getting into territory that's already been covered, but repeat after me:

The sky is not falling.

The sky is not falling.

Here's why:

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