SB Nation User Blog: Philip Christy

A's talking to Giambi's agent

Philip Christy — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 02:52:01 -0000

This article from Susan Slusser talks more about Crosby's place with the A's, and includes quotes from Crosby, but far more interesting than that is this:

The A's are poised to begin talks with free-agent designated hitter Jason Giambi, who was named the American League MVP while playing in Oakland in 2001. General manager Billy Beane chatted with Giambi's agent, Arn Tellem, this week, and the sides could begin discussing a contract early next week. According to sources close to Giambi, he is looking for a three-year deal, but Oakland is not likely to offer more than two years and perhaps an option. Giambi will turn 38 in January.

Take that, Giambi haters!

DLD 12/17/07 - Your laziness = my first DLD

Philip Christy — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:28:56 -0000

Here's a great graph detailing all the A's on the 40 man roster, plus some prospects who aren't, and the A's extended control over them, courtesy of Ken Arneson over at Catfish Stew. Very helpful for visualizing the future of the team for the next 8 years.

The guys over at Hardball Times think the A's did pretty good in the Haren trade, although without adding any real insight into any of the prospects. I think the general consensus is that...no one knows if Beane came out ahead or behind on this deal. I guess we'll all just have to wait 2 to 3 years and see.

That's all I've got really, I've just been dying to add that graph of A's players all day, and no one could help me out, so I did it myself. Nyah!

Poll

What is the meaning of life?

"To live"

5 votes

Once you figure that out you'll have no reason to live

8 votes

42

27 votes

I don't know, God never said it at the end of that Simpsons episode

2 votes

To follow the A's

5 votes

Other (please explain!)

7 votes

Peaches and strawberries

1 votes

For the A's to win the World Series

14 votes

To find your place in it

4 votes

To watch the Angels get swept in October again

1 votes

74 votes | Poll has closed

A's should trade for Pujols!!!

Philip Christy — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:28:38 -0000

Now I know what you all are thinking how the heck can Beane swindle Pujols from the cards???? But we all know that the cards gm Jocetty can be had easily as evidenced by the Mulder deal. We got 3 great players for nothing!!!! Mulders arm fell off within two years!!! if we can do that to St Louis than we can do it again.

Now all we have to do is in my opinion trade a few prospects. Even a good one like Darin Barton but i think it will be worth it. The cardinals are looking for pitching this year just like everyone else so I say we trade Halsey as well. He's just not that good so we don't need him but the Cards could use another starter. Then if we throw in a prospect like Shane Komine we don't need the Cardinals would probably take it. They would be getting Barton back and two good starters and we would be getting the best firstbaseman in the game!!!!

Billy Beane, I really think you should make this trade!! It would give us the offensive guy we really need for this team plus we would not be really hurting ourselves for the future. I know Pujols makes a lot of money but if we can trade away Kendall and start Jermey Brown then we can afford it. We also need starting pitching, so if we can trade Kendall and two young prospects we can get Roy Halliday!! Plus I think Kotsay is taking up too much money so we should trade him, Joe Blanton, 2 prospects and a bucket of shit for Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez and Billy Wagner from the mets.

Our lineup would look like this:

2B Ellis
RF Bradley
CF Beltran
1B Pujols
LF Swisher
DH Piazza
3B Chavez
SS Crosby
C Brown

and our rotation would be

SP Halliday
SP Martinez
SP Harden
SP Haren
SP Loiaza

and the bullpen would be

CL Street
RL Wagner
RL Duke
RL Calero
RL Embree
RL Gaudin

This would be the most awesome A's team ever!!! I really think you should make these trades Billy!!! now I know that this would be kinda hard to pull off
but if theres any GM in the game that can do it it's you Billy!! Please make my Christmas this year a good one!!!!!

Dellucci to Indians: 3 years, $11.5 million

Philip Christy — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 20:13:40 -0000

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2678135

Seeing as there's no link dump yet, I thought I'd start a diary.

David Dellucci was one of the guys I thought the A's should have gone after, but it looks like he's already gone. For that amount of money, this is a very good deal for the Tribe. (You've gotta ask, however: why the hell are the Indians paying more money for offense? Get some damn pitching!) His stat line last year was .292/.369/.530, albeit in only 264 at-bats. The year before, his averages were almost as good with Texas but he hit 29 homers in 435 ABs. I'm thinking 3 years might have been too much for Beane anyway, even at such a good price.

I guess the A's will focus on Cliff Floyd and Mike Piazza now, with a slight possibility of Luis Gonzalez or Trot Nixon.

Poll

If the A's were to sign one free agent hitter, who should it be?

Mike Piazza

18 votes

Kevin Millar?

0 votes

Cliff Floyd

13 votes

Trot Nixon

3 votes

Luis Gonzalez

2 votes

Jose Guillen (Editor's Note: Ugh!)

8 votes

Ryan Klesko?

1 votes

45 votes | Poll has closed

Fun with Win Shares

Philip Christy — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 04:21:17 -0000

You all know what Win Shares are? Bill James invented them a few years ago as a way to express the total production of a player, in terms of the amount of wins his contributions have produced, in and of themselves. I don't really know how he came up with it, but anything that James does is highly significant, as he is one of the top minds (if not THE top mind) in the world of baseball statistics, as well as the game of baseball itself.

A Win Share signifies that that player contributed to one third of a win; therefore, if a player has 9 Win Shares, it means his total production has meant 3 wins for a team. Now I wouldn't exactly consider this statistic gospel, as it's just an approximation, but it's as relevant as any other statistic that tries to translate other statistics into a summary of a player's true value, such as VORP or Runs Created or whatever.

Anyway, Win Shares also has it's own method for defining a player's defensive value: I guess every contribution on the field is given value. So it's more than just an offensive/pitching statistic. This gives an edge to players who actually play the field, and hurts Frank Thomas and David Ortiz and all other DHs. It also benefits players who play up-the-middle positions (catcher, SS, 2B, CF) as they are involved in more plays, and have more value for doing well too.

This was actually a poor description of the statistic; if you really want to understand Win Shares, James wrote a whole book about it.

ANYHOO: over at The Hardball Times (http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/index.php?view=winshares&linesToDisplay=65&orderB y=total&direction=DESC&season_filter%5B%5D=2006&pos_filter%5B%5D=All&Submit=Submit),
they have Win Shares updated through August 29. It's great, all the stats are sortable, so we can see who's the best catcher in the NL, or who's the best defensive shortstop, or who's the best hitting pitcher, etc. Some notes while searching through the stats:

Best player in baseball this year (by total Win Shares): Carlos Beltran, with 34. He actually has the third most Batting WS, but his defensive value is so great he has 4 more WS than anyone else; he's rated as the best defensive outfielder, by far. Players with high defensive value are given their dues by Win Shares.
Following Beltran are Albert Pujols (30 WS), Miguel Cabrera (also 30 WS), Alfonso Soriano (28 WS) and Lance Berkman (27 WS) - making the top 5 most valuable players in baseball this year National Leaguers. Coming in at #6 is Joe Mauer; again, his defensive value puts him over the top of other ALers (although Manny Ramirez and Derek Jeter are right behind).
No A's are in the top 50. Coming in at #56 is our top player so far in 2006: Jason Kendall. That's right, our top player this year (according to this metric) is Jason Kendall. Once again, our top player this year is Jason Kendall. Jason Kendall! He has 18 Win Shares, and in actuality, the difference between Kendall's contributions this year and those of Zito and Swisher (both at 16 WS) is pretty insignificant, but it's still there. He rates so high mainly because...
Kendall is the top rated defensive catcher so far this year. Once again, KENDALL IS THE TOP RATED DEFENSIVE CATCHER SO FAR THIS YEAR. Got that? In case you were wondering, he was nowhere near the top in Defensive Win Shares last year. I believe I read somewhere that defensive Win Shares for catchers depend highly on the amount (and maybe percentage) of baserunners thrown out, so that explains some of it; more of it is explained by the fact that, I'm sure, he's spent more inning s behind the plate than any other catcher, and therefore has had more opportunities for Win Shares. Plus, he's barely ahead of Pudge Rodriguez. Still, they calculate that Kendall is the 4th most valuable catcher in baseball this year. Feeling better about the $10 mil he's getting this year?
On another defensive note, they rate Mark Ellis as the top defensive 2B in the game - awesome! We all knew he was great.
Chavez is (only) the 3rd best defensive third baseman, behind Joe Crede and Mike Lowell. Rounding out the infield, it's unfair to compare Crosby and Swisher to others at their positions, because they haven't played full years there (plus they list Swisher as an outfielder). Our outfield defenders are not thought of highly here. Center fielders tend to get the most defensive WS, but Kotsay is way down on the list, and Payton and Bradley are further down.
Our top hitter: Frank Thomas, at #46 (15.5 Win Shares). Yeah, our offense has sucked this year. Swisher is next at #67 (13.4 WS).
Now the other facet of of secret to winning this year: pitching! The top 5 in pitching Win Shares are Johan Santana (20.8 WS), Roy Halliday, Brandon Webb, Chris Carpenter and Carlos Zambrano, but Zito (16.4 WS) and Haren (15.6 WS) rank 11th and 13th. Street and Blanton are the A's next best, coming in at #s 40 and 42.
Anyway, it's a really fun stat and I recommend checking it out. This stat really reflects how we all seem to feel about the 2006 A's, that it's waaaaay more about the pitching and defense this year than the offense (although I guess that's kind of obvious).

Poll

Oh, fun! A poll! Win Shares are:

Highly useful

8 votes

[Decline to state]

1 votes

Somewhat useful

18 votes

Of little value

6 votes

Totally worthless

5 votes

End-all be-all of statistics

0 votes

I still have no idea what a Win Share is.

6 votes

44 votes | Poll has closed

Does Blez = TRAITOR?!?

Philip Christy — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 18:53:56 -0000

While visting Halos Heaven this morning, to see if all the Angels fans were crying to their mommies yet, I noticed an interesting note left by the Rev himself:

"Props to Blez for the new Halos Heaven Logo."

My god man, what does this mean? Is Mr. Tyler Bleszinski actually WORKING FOR THE OTHER SIDE?!? Has he an elaborate scheme to sucker all us A's fans into...uhm, I don't know...looking like a bunch of suckers or something? I think we oughta start watching out for this guy, he might hand us over to the British or something...

Poll

Blez: What is going on here?

High on ether!

10 votes

It's actually Blez's twin brother!

5 votes

He was kidnapped, and now has Patty Hearst syndrome!

23 votes

No you moron, he was just being friendly to our sister site, stop whining!

57 votes

Traitor! A new Benedict Arnold!

34 votes

129 votes | Poll has closed

Troy Neel

Philip Christy — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 05:08:08 -0000

http://www.oag.state.tx.us/evaders/evader_detail.php?id=42

Anyone see this? (Sorry if this has been posted before.) Apparantly, former Athletic Troy Neel owes almost $500,000 in child support payments in Texas, and has lived in New Zealand, Canada and Japan to avoid paying. Too bad, I'd heard he was a good guy.

A's anagrams

Philip Christy — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 22:42:30 -0000

Apparantly, A's GM Baby Nellie had a nice little offseason for his team, signing Fathom Snark and Estonia Ablaze and trading for Notably Milder, who the A's hope will live up to his name. Now, with Utter Hotness closing games and a hopefully healthy Drench Hair this season, the A's needed little to begin with.
http://humbug.baseballtoaster.com/archives/321248.html