Measuring defense is really, really hard.  One can criticize any of the popular defensive metrics. In fact, I bet you spend a lot of time on AN doing just that.  But you know what, I'd rather have a scout's opinion of a player's defense.  Wait scratch that.  I'd rather have a dozen scouts' opinions.

Now here's the dirty little secret: you're a scout.  I am too.  We watch every A's game, which means we watch Mark Ellis go to his left, Daric Barton do the splits, and Jack Cust lumber after pop ups more than any professional scout.  By putting our honest observations together, we can come up with a consensus scouting profile on any player.  And I'm asking you to tap into that potential.

That's what the Fan Scouting Report is all about.  Every year, Tom Tango asks thousands of fans to give their scouting reports by rating fielders in a variety of categories.  Says Tom:

What I would like to do now is tap that pool of talent. I want you to tell me what your eyes see. I want you to tell me how good or bad a fielder is. Go down, and start selecting the team(s) that you watch all the time. For any player that you've seen play in at least 10 games in 2010, I want you to judge his performance in 7 specific fielding categories.

And best of all:

And, most importantly, do not, absolutely do not, look at any numbers. Don't look at his fielding percentage, range factor, zone rating, UZR, or anything else that someone else is telling you. I just want you to rely on your eyes. You are the scout. I need you to rely completely on your own observations.

Tom's been doing this every year for over five years now, so we're starting to get good historical data.  In some cases the fans agree with the numbers.  In other cases, they disagree.  It's all very useful information, because it gathers our collective experiences to tell us what the numbers might not.  The more opinions the better.  As usual, the A's have one of the smallest response pools in the Fan Scouting report.  For every evaluation of an A's player, there are a zillion for the Mariners and Red Sox and Yankees!

Read the instructions first...

...and fill out the Fan Scouting Report for the A's!

But this is important: be honest in your evaluations.  This isn't a ballot-stuffing contest. (For those of you who have been around AN long enough, we're not trying to beat blue-grey sky here.) This is an attempt to use the collective knowledge of the best-informed baseball fans our there to help us identify fielding skill.  Thanks for helping Tango out in his project, which I think is the most creative and informative collective-wisdom projects in the blogosphere.

Projecting performance is really, really hard.  There a bunch of projections out there, some of them good, some of them not so good.  You've got Marcel, CHONE, PECOTA, ZiPS, Oliver, and a bunch more.  The projections actually do a pretty decent job with the rate stats like OPS and ERA. 

But, their biggest limitations is that they do a really crummy job and projecting playing time.  Playing time is a function of team construction, platoon issues, bullpen leveraging, injury history, etc. It's almost a certainty that fans who pay attention to their team can beat an algorithm when it comes to projecting playing time.

That's why Tango needs your help:

As I did last year, I am using the Wisdom of Crowds approach to determine how often each player on your team is expected to play. Unlike my past surveys, this one is available in real-time! Select your team, then choose how you think each player will be used.

Your results will be used as an input to the Marcel The Monkey Forecasting System (aka The Marcels), which is going to compete with all the bigshots out there in another project I am conducting. Who knows more about whether a pitcher will be in the starting rotation or the bullpen: an algorithm or a true fan? Who knows more about the number of games an injured Joe Nathan will play in 2010: an algorithm or a Twins fan? There are certain human observation elements that are critical for forecasting. That's where you can come in, and why you are here. Thanks for helping.

It's really easy: just go to the survey and give your opinion on how many innings a pitcher will pitch or how many games a position player will play.  It's broken down into categories, too, so you don't have to guess exactly "75 games" -- you can just choose "bench player" which encompasses 30-89 games.

As it turns out, Oakland fans have not turned out in large numbers to fill out this years survey.  So it would be great if A's fans could turn up and give their opinion.  No knowledge of statistics is required.  You just have to be a knowledgeable A's fan, which, if you're reading this, you already are!

Information like this helps us stat-nerds bombard you with new and better information every year.  Thanks for your help!

Measuring defense is really, really hard.  One can criticize any of the popular defensive metrics.  UZR, PMR, RZR, and TotalZone all have their warts (and don't even get me started on FRAA).  Additionally, because both the sample sizes and the ranges in defensive skills tend to be small, the numbers for even the best defensive systems have to be taken with a grain of salt (that is, sabermetricians have to regress pretty heavily to the mean).

At the risk of bringing this entry down to Urban-esque levels of belligerent stupidity, we do need to get our noses out of the proverbial spreadsheets and watch some damn games.  That's why we have scouts.  But did you know that you're a scout, too?  You watch every A's game, which means you observe the players more often than a scout does.  And while your opinion by itself might be flawed or biased, we can put our opinions together and begin to come to a consensus.  Our collective opinion is almost certainly better than our individual opinions.  And there are lots and lots of A's fans hanging around here whose opinions are untapped.

And that's what the Fan Scouting Report is all about.  Every year, Tom Tango asks thousands of fans to give their scouting reports by rating fielders in a variety of categories.  Says Tom:

What I would like to do now is tap that pool of talent. I want you to tell me what your eyes see. I want you to tell me how good or bad a fielder is. Go down, and start selecting the team(s) that you watch all the time. For any player that you've seen play in at least 10 games in 2009, I want you to judge his performance in 7 specific fielding categories.

And best of all:

And, most importantly, do not, absolutely do not, look at any numbers. Don't look at his fielding percentage, range factor, zone rating, UZR, or anything else that someone else is telling you. I just want you to rely on your eyes. You are the scout. I need you to rely completely on your own observations.

Tom's been doing this every year for over five years now, so we're starting to get good historical data.  In some cases the fans agree with the numbers.  In other cases, they disagree.  It's all very useful information, because it gathers the collective experience of you and I - the most experienced scouts of A's players in existence - to tell us what the numbers might not.  The more opinions the better.  As usual, the A's have one of the smallest response pools in the Fan Scouting report.  For every evaluation of an A's player, there are *10* for the Rays. The Rays!

Read the instructions first...

...and fill out the Fan Scouting Report for the A's!

But this is important: be honest in your evaluations.  This isn't a ballot-stuffing contest.  This is an attempt to use the collective knowledge of the best-informed baseball fans our there to help us identify fielding skill.  Thanks for helping Tango out in his project, which I think is the most creative and informative collective-wisdom projects in the blogosphere.

How do we project players?

Most of you know about projection systems like PECOTA, ZiPS, CHONE, or Marcel that attempt to predict how a player will perform in the future.  If you're a fantasy junkie or a rosterbator, that stuff is a must.  If you like hanging out at AN and discussing who to sign, who to trade, and who to DFA into oblivion, having projections around can be helpful.

Projections typically rely on mathematical formulations, and while each projection system is different, most of them have the same inner workings:

• compile stats from the past few years, weighting the most recent stats most heavily.
• regress to the mean.

Projections systems differ in the details: which stats they use as for inputs, how the weights are assigned, whether league and park adjustments are made, which mean they regress toward, etc. 

There's a second critical bit about projecting player performances: our eyes.  Objective information, even if it is not quantified, can help us make determinations about players.  The classic example is injuries.  Tim Hudson is projected to have a 4.06 ERA in 150 IP by Marcel, but Marcel doesn't know that Huddy just had Tommy John surgery on his throwing elbow.  Sometimes pitchers add a new pitch.  Sometimes batters change their mechanics.  Sometimes these things can change a player's performance level, and sometimes they don't.  It is worth at least thinking about what non-statistical objective information is useful.

That's why I think The Hardball Times 2009 Season Preview is a great book.  In addition to over 1000 player projections and all 30 team projections, you get awesome commentary on players and teams.  The projections are done by smart analysts.  The commentary is written by fans who live and die with their team's every pitch.  Jeff Sullivan wrote the Mariners chapter.  Justin Inaz wrote about the Reds.  It's like an all-star roster of bloggers and fans.

Oh yeah, I wrote the A's chapter.

Here's what the book's editor, David Gassko, has to say:

This is the third year we’ve done this book, and it’s the third year that I can honestly say we’ve surpassed my every expectation. I know my opinion is biased, but our writers have done a fantastic job covering every aspect of the upcoming season.

The projections include all the regular statistics you might expect, plus fielding ratings, three-year projections, a reliability score, projected fantasy values, and depth charts. In other words, no matter what you’re using these projections for, we have you covered.

The book also includes a review of 100 players by an injury expert, commentary on rookies to watch for, and - for the fantasy players - an essay on managing risk in your fantasy draft.  Purchasers receive not only the book, but access to a spreadsheet with over 2600 projections.

So I come to you, hat in hand, asking you to consider purchasing what I consider to be the essential pre-season guide to the 2009 baseball season.  Your purchase supports THT, which - in my opinion - is the best free baseball site on the internet.

If you do want to buy the book, consider purchasing it directly from ACTA instead of from Amazon.  If you purchase it from Amazon, the six bucks you save comes directly out of THT's cut.  If you do purchase from amazon, consider donating part of your savings back to THT from the PayPal link at the bottom right of our homepage.

Continue reading this post »

George Mitchell, the head of MLB's recent steroid investigation, has been named the special envoy to the the Israel/Palestine region.

Shysterball has his take:

I particularly enjoyed the Hamas-Red Sox parallel.

This is the first joke of mine that my then-girlfriend, now-wife laughed at:

Did you hear that Hizbullah is now recruiting women for suicide bombing missions?  Because of their strict beliefs of separating men and women, though, they're spinning off a new organization.  They call is "Herbollah."

Is this humor inappropriate?

Anyway, the news on the baseball front is a lot of the same old rumors, but there were a few good things out there this morning.

Greg Rybarcyk compares wood bats to aluminum bats at a High School Power Showcase.

The small sample size for wood bat homers means that there remains a lot of uncertainty in the “translation factor” from wood to metal bats, but knocking roughly 10 percent off the distance of a home run hit by a high school or college slugger can provide a good rough estimate of how far it might have gone with a wooden bat. For line drives that don’t clear the fence, knocking off about 8 percent of the speed off bat will give a reasonable wooden bat estimate.

John Walsh checks out the best outfield arms of 2008.

Manny's replacement in Boston, Jason Bay, is a terrible thrower, at least he was last season. Curiously, almost all of those negative 8 runs were "earned" in Pittsburgh, Bay was slightly above average in Boston (with 61 opps).

For Juan Pierre there was good news and bad news in 2008. The good: he was nowhere to be found at the bottom of the list of center field arms, a place he had inhabited for several years running. The bad: Juan has now established residency at the bottom of the left fielders' list. I'm not counting Luis Gonzalez, who, as far as I can tell, has been playing with a paralyzed throwing arm for the last several years. Note the Kill+ of zero for these two.

A few months ago, I opined:

That means that signing Giambi and sticking Cust in the outfield will garner us, at most, an extra 2 wins (+25 - 15 - (-10) = 20 runs, 10 runs = 1win) - for which we'd have the pleasure of paying Jason Giambi about $10 MM.

I'm not opposed to paying $10 MM for an extra few wins, but only if a) we're at the cusp of contention, b) there are no better options, and c) the move has some upside.  None of those three criteria are met here.  We're not knocking at the door to the division, there are lots of low key upgrades we might make in the infield, and there is virtually zero upside to signing Jason Giambi beyond what I've outlined here.

In the light of Preparation G's "imminent" return to Oakland, let's revisit that conclusion.  The price has dropped considerably since I wrote the above.  Management believes that we are at the cusp of contention (whether or not you think so is, well, up to you).  It's arguable whether or not there are better options, but I'm of the mind that this move doesn't necessarily preclude others, although space on the 25-man roster is becoming tight.  I think we can mostly agree that there's not a lot of upside to this move, as Giambi is both a known quantity offensively and also an injury risk due (at least) to age.

Thanks to Chone Smith, we have projections for next season at our fingertips. For the purposes of this post, I'll just assume about 150 games of playing time for everyone - that obviously won't be true, but it will give us a starting point.

Prior to signing Giambi, I think we would have seen an outfield of Holliday, Sweeney, and Buck.  With Giambi, there are two options.

First, send Buck to the bench (or the minors), run Cust into the outfield, and let Giambi DH. Cust versus Giambi at DH is a wash - both project to about 20 runs above average over 150 games.  So the exchange here is Buck in a corner OF spot for Cust in a corner outfield spot.

Buck is projected to be a slightly above average hitter and if you assume above average defense (+7 runs), you're essentially talking about an average player.  That's +2.5 wins above replacement for a full year.  Cust is a far superior hitter, but if you consider his outfield defense to be very bad (-10 runs), he comes out to...+2.5 wins.  No gain, although given Buck's injury history I would guess that Cust in the OF will be worth more than Buck+replacements in the OF over the millions of possible future trajectories.

Second option is to bench (or option) Barton and live with Giambi's awful defense at first base.  Barton projects as Buck's equal with the bat.  Throw in some slightly above average defense (+5 runs) and you've got yourself a +2 win player.  Giambi, like Cust, is far superior with the bat but a butcher in the field (-10 runs).  Put it together and you've got a +2.25 win player.  Slight gain, although it's essentially a wash.

Prior to the Holliday trade, a Giambi signing might have made some sense, as pushing Cust to the outfield would have replaced a truly putrid hitter.  But with Holliday in the fold, we're pushing out a guy like Buck.  And replacing Barton with Giambi is also a wash.  Defense counts for something in this game, and Giambi doesn't have it.

As for depth, Giambi (by proxy) adds injury insurance to 1B and corner OF.   That's good, considering that Buck is never healthy and Barton's head might lose an battle with the bottom of a hotel swimming pool.  The depth is nice, but this team's major injury concerns are at 3B and 2B, where the potential replacements for our projected starters are...well, let's just hope that Chavez and Ellis can play.

So, for $6 MM or whatever it is, this move doesn't really improve the team, doesn't add a missing skill, probably inhibits the development of either Barton or Buck, and results in the loss of a roster spot (the likely casualty is Rajai Davis). Thumbs down.

This is a team with a whole lot of "average" around the diamond, with premium players in LF and 2B.  SS (and possibly 3B) will be the only sucking wound, and we need to fill it in a bad way.  At this point, an overpay for Orlando Cabrera might actually be a good idea.  Hey - does anybody know what David Eckstein's health situation is?

 Not to trample all over Taj's excellent prospect-watching story from this morning, but feel free to use this as your all-purpose "Matt Holliday traded to the A's" freak-out thread.  John Heyman files this report:

The Oakland Athletics have acquired star outfielder Matt Holliday in a trade with the Colorado Rockies, SI.com has learned.

I'm scared.  My hands are sweating.  Hold me.

Updates as they happen.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 2:32 PM EST ] DKNJ and TroyNeelorBust broke the news on AN first.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 2:35 PM EST ] Oh yeah: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 2:46 PM EST ] For those of y'all that wear fanny packs, a few numbers: Holliday was 54 runs above replacement last year (52 offense, 8 fielding, -6 for position), between Brian Giles and Jose Reyes in the NL.  A quick projection gives me about +40 for offense next year (although I didn't adjust for park) and Sean Smith projects him as +8 fielding in a corner and +0 in center.  That's a good player, folks.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 3:03 PM EST ] Robothal reports:

Over the weekend, the teams discussed A's outfielder Carlos Gonzalez, left-hander Greg Smith and reliever Huston Street, according to one source, but it is not known if any or all of those players will be included in the package for Holliday.

...

The A's are not acquiring him with the intention of flipping him or even trading him in July. The team is in position to increase its payroll to as much as $80 million, and plans to contend next season.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 3:31 PM EST ] Yahoo's Tim Brown is reporting Street, Smith, and CarGon.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 4:08 PM EST ] Beat-writer extraordinaire Susan Slusser says the same. 

The A's are working to complete a trade with the Rockies that would bring Matt Holliday to Oakland in exchange for reliever Huston Street, starter Greg Smith and outfielder Carlos Gonzalez, major-league sources said Monday.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 4:10 PM EST ] Hey Geren, thanks for killing Huston's trade value last year.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 4:11 PM EST ] Oh yeah.  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

It's not official yet, but it appears that the gold glove winners in the AL will be:

P - MIKE MUSSINA - YANKEES
C - JOE MAUER - TWINS
1ST - CARLOS PENA - RAYS
2ND - DUSTIN PEDROIA - RED SOX
3RD - ADRIAN BELTRE - MARINERS
SS - MICHAEL YOUNG - RANGERS
OF - TORII HUNTER - ANGELS
OF - GRADY SIZEMORE - INDIANS
OF - ICHIRO SUZUKI - MARINERS

At least Dustin Pedroia isn't the worst pick of the lot; that honor belongs to the statue-eque Michael Young.  The longer the rangers run Young out to shortstop, the better it is for the A's.  Keep the gold glove, sweetheart.

The gold gloves aren't based on statistics, nor should they be.  They are based on the impressions of the electorate, which in this case happens to be managers.  They watch games, and tell us what they see..

In Tango's Fan Scouting report, fans do the exact same thing, but instead of the votes of 14 managers, you get the votes of dozens of fans.

Those fans - including Red Sox partisans - rated Ellis as superior to Pedroia in the following categories: instincts, first step, speed, hands, release, and accuracy.  Fans rated them as equals in arm accuracy.  Fans rated Pedroia as superior in: .  Oh, there's nothing on that list?  Huh.

Anyway, we've got Mark Ellis and nobody else does.  That counts for something, right?  Here's to you, MaEl:

via farm2.static.flickr.com

Most of you know that Ellis is a very good defender. Can't hit much, but he's good with the glove. What a lot of you don't know is that Ellis is not just "very good" with the glove, he's one of the best defenders in the majors, and his defense is worth a whole heck of a lot.

I've heard people on AN say that the A's need more offense, not defense. That's such an ignorant statement it makes me cringe. A run saved is a run saved. The balance between offense and defense is overblown. You win games by scoring more runs that your opponent runs. You can do that just as well by preventing runs as you can by scoring them.

Okay, let's get down to numbers. According to MGL, Ellis has saved 23, 12, 26, and 21 runs with his glove from 2005-2008. Based on this, it's not unreasonable to guess that Ellis is worth +20 runs with the glove alone. Almost no players are actually that good with the glove, so let's say Ellis got lucky and that he's actually +15 with the glove.

Ellis wasn't much of a hitter last year, and his endless parade of popups was positively Byrnesian. But his Marcel projection suggests that he will be an exactly league-average hitter going forward. (Those of you who say, "but he hit .233 last year!" will be subject to Nico and his goat. Staturdays are for intelligent discussion, and if you can't keep up then I'd rather you not participate.) Ellis is positively average with the bat.

So, offense and defense combined, Ellis is +15 runs compared to all other players, or +1.5 wins. But that's not all: Ellis is a secondbaseman. I've talked before about positional value before, so I won't rehash it again, but that adds another 0.25 wins to his ledger. And I've talked about replacement level before as well, which adds another 2.5 wins. That means that, all told, Ellis is worth about 4.25 wins above replacement over a full season.

Now, Ellis is coming off surgery and he's getting older, so let's say that his defense and offense both fall off and he misses time next year. Knock over a win off that 4.25 figure, and you get 3 wins above replacement. I'm kicking him down a lot of notches, but I'm being pessimistic here.

Players who were worth about 3 wins above replacement this year: JD Drew, Jack Cust, Miguel Cabrera, Derek Jeter, Justin Morneau.

The A's just signed Justin Morneau to a two-year contract for $11 MM. And, if it works out, the A's have an option for a third year at $6 MM. And I'm being pessimistic about Ellis's future performance. What a ridiculous steal.

Did you know that the going rate for a win on the free-agent market is about $4.8 MM dollars? The A's should be tryin to pay less than that, obviously, since they keep a small payroll. Let's say the A's want to target $3.5 MM per free agent win. They should be paying Ellis at least $10 MM next year.

Assuming Ellis gets worse every year from here on out (to the tune of -0.5 wins per year), assuming no salary inflation over the next three years (almost certainly untrue), Ellis would be worth at least $36 MM on a three year contract in the open market. The A's got him for less than a third of that, and hedged their risk by making the third year a team option. This is almost unfair to Ellis.

How could this go wrong for the A's? Well, let's find the breakeven point. I'm already assuming that Ellis is a +15 run fielder instead of +20, and that he's -5 runs as a hitter instead of +0. So, starting from this pessimistic viewpoint, let's assume that Ellis is even worse.

Knock his fielding for 2009-2010 to +10 and +5 (from +15 and +10). Knock his hitting down to -10 and -15. So, by 2010, he's one of the worst everyday hitters in the majors (like Willie Bloomquist bad) and just barely above average with the glove. That gives the A's 4.5 wins above replacement for two years. Now say Ellis misses a third of the games the A's play. That's now 3 wins above replacement over two years. That would cost, on the free agent market, $14.5 MM, or about $7 MM per year - less than what the A's signed Ellis for.

So - if Ellis is terrible with the bat, sees his fielding fall off a cliff, and misses a third of each season, the A's come out even.

One final thing. There was discussion that the A's have depth at this position because of Cliff Pennington, Eric Patterson, Adrian Cardenas, and Jemile Weeks. The former two are ready for the majors now, but don't project to be anything close to Ellis as a player. Ellis is a star player. Even at the major-league minimum salary, there's no way that Pennington and Patterson are worth playing over Ellis. Cardenas and Weeks are no locks to stay at second base, and while both might be stars like Ellis one day, that day is certainly not until 2010, after which the A's have the option of terminating MaEl's contract.

To his credit, Ellis likes it in Oakland, apparently likes the fans, and is showing loyalty to the organization that stood by him while he rehabbed a potentially career-ending injury. He's throwing away tens of millions of dollars to do that. Whether it's because he's stupid or noble, I don't know. All I know is that A's fans get to benefit.

I'm so happy that I'll get to watch Ellis for the next few years, and you should be too.

Another evening, another Sox pitcher tattooed.  Another evening of Red Sox fans streaming out of Fenway in the middle innings.  Another evening of Rays hitters taking the ball over the monster time after time.  Another evening of the Red Sox looking old, tired, frustrated, and outmatched.

Another evening of this, and we'll the Rays - yes, the Rays - in the World Series.  One more to go, boys.  The whole country is rooting for you.

David Ortiz BJ Upton, postseason clutch god: .303/.378/.818.

This is no ordinary ALCS.

This is your ticket to baseball heaven.

Sometimes, it feels like you have to be a baseball blogger in order to open a game thread.

Luckily for you, I am one.

Don't be fooled: in their last two trips to the ALCS, the Red Sox rallied from 3-0 and 3-1 deficits.  That's not to say that they have an uncanny ability to win with their backs against the wall.  It's just that Red Sox teams of recent vintage have been really, really good.  This series won't be over until the final out is recorded.

LET'S GO RAYS!

Hey, I finally figured out how to put the lineups in the story.

Just for your reference, the losers are on the left and the winners are on the right.

Also, it's a little scary how quickly the commercials go from FloMax-Viagra-Sprint-John Hancock to "PediPaws."

...so finally I told the mouse "Look, just win the damn game."

And then the mouse was like, "Well screw you, I don't care if you have to get up early tomorrow."

But then the second mouse forgot how to pitch.

Two mice fell into a pitcher of cream.  One mouse resigned himself to his fate, and drowned.  The other mouse struggled and struggled so much, he churned the cream into butter and was able to climb out safely.  Also, the second mouse remembered how to hit a goddam baseball, which helped a lot.

Let's go Rays!

Another feature in this increasingly misnamed series.

I have heard "Bring back Jason Giambi" ideas floated around AN a lot recently.  What a silly idea.

We already have the exact same player, only better.  His name is Jack Cust.  Perhaps you've heard of him: big guy, strikes out a lot, running for mayor of Oakland in the next election cycle.

Cust is a left-handed hitting DH who won't hit for average but will draw lots of walks and hit for power.  Giambi is a left-handed hitting DH who might hit for average and will draw lots of walks and hit for power.  Cust is a bad baserunner and a bad defensive outfielder.  Giambi is a worse baserunner and so laughably bad in the field that he would DH on my softball team.

We will pay Cust something like $3 - 5 MM in arbitration next year, at the most, and will be under control, at no risk to us, for two years beyond that.  Giambi will cost between $7 MM - $14 MM per year, probably on a one-year deal, after which the team will have to pony up extra cash if they wish to keep him.  Cust has been basically injury-free in the last few years, save minor wear-and-tear.  Between his back, knees, and pituitary gland, Giambi could go down with a serious injury, one that causes him to miss time or be ineffective at the plate, at any time.

Pretty much entire suggestion is predicated on the assumption that Cust is not as good a hitter as Giambi.  That's simply untrue.  After weighting and regressing their hitting stats using the Marcel algorithm, we would project Giambi to hit something like.245/.375/.475 next year.  Cust?  .240/.380/.470.  Practically the same.

The only possibility that might make sense is to sign Giambi and play Cust in the outfield full-time.  Cust the DH versus Giambi the DH would be a wash in terms of production, so we'd have to compare Cust the LF to whoever's spot he's taking.  Travis Buck and Ryan Sweeney are almost locks to make the outfield, and I'd be shocked in Carlos Gonzalez isn't there as well.  Aaron Cunningham will likely be ready sometime next year.  Eric Patterson might see some time in the outfield.  Rajai Davis may or may not be tendered a contract. Forgotten men Mike Matt Murton and Chris Denorfia may get shots as well

Over 650 PA, Cust will be something like +25 runs with the bat.  Even if he replaces an outfielder who is, oh, -10 runs with the bat (someone a tick worse that than Emil Brown), Cust is probably -15 runs in defense compared to most of the guys listed above.  That means that signing Giambi and sticking Cust in the outfield will garner us, at most, an extra 2 wins (+25 - 15 - (-10) = 20 runs, 10 runs = 1win) - for which we'd have the pleasure of paying Jason Giambi about $10 MM.

I'm not opposed to paying $10 MM for an extra few wins, but only if a) we're at the cusp of contention, b) there are no better options, and c) the move has some upside.  None of those three criteria are met here.  We're not knocking at the door to the division, there are lots of low key upgrades we might make in the infield, and there is virtually zero upside to signing Jason Giambi beyond what I've outlined here.

I quick little mid-week Staturday for you.

After yesterday's mini-explosion, Daric Barton is hitting .223/.315/.339.  That's pretty much awful for anybody, much less a guy who was talked as a pre-season contender for rookie of the year.  But, as is usually the case for guys who hit this poorly, Barton has run into a little bad luck.  Allow me to explain.

Daric Barton is hitting line drives in 20.2% of the time he puts the ball in play.  Other guys who hit line drives with that kind of frequency are Evan Longoria, Ichiro Suzuki, and Justin Morneau.  Those are good hitters.

Line drives are good; they tend to turn into base hits.  In fact, a decent way to figure what a player's batting average for balls in play (that is, for plate appearances that don't end in a walk, homer, or strikeout) is to take his line drive frequency and add 0.12.  That figure is slightly higher for groundballing speedburners, and slightly lower for flyballing leadfoots, but it's a pretty good guess.

For Barton, you'd guess he'd be hitting .202 + .12 = .322 when he makes non-HR contact.  In reality, that figure is .269.  That's a big discrepancy.  There are a few reasons why this might be:

1. Bad luck - he's hitting line drives where they ain't ain't.

2. Bad scoring - someone is categorizing some of his hits as line drives when they are really soft flyballs.

3. Bad hitting - he's hitting really soft line drives.

Assume, for a moment, that this is due to bad luck.  If his batting average on contact were actualy .322, his batting line would look a lot better.  How much better?

Barton has had 440 PA, 154 of which have resulted in a walk (or HBP), strikeout, or home run (or sac bunt).  So he's made in-play contact in 286 PA. If he were to hit .322 on these balls in play, that would give us 92 non-HR hits.  Add back in his 8 HR, and that's 100 hits.  In 381 at bats,  that puts his batting average at .262.  In 440 PA, and combined with his 50 walks and 2 HBP, that's an OBP of .345.  If ALL of those extra hits were singles - which is a somewhat conservative estimate - then his slugging would jump to .378.

So, if his liners turned into hits like we would expect, Barton would have a line of .262/.345/.378, a .723 OPS and a 98 OPS+.  That would make him clearly worse than only two other hitters on this team, Big Frank and Jack Cust.  He'd be about equal to Ryan Sweeney and Kurt Suzuki.

Barton's not a superstar masquerading as a terrible player due to luck. He'll have to hit a lot better than a .723 OPS to be an asset at first base.  He needs to make contact more often, and he needs to develop more power.

But it isn't a stretch to say that Barton has been roughly a league average hitter running into some bad luck.  If he really is an average hitter at age 22, then he may yet turn in a pretty decent career as an Athletic.

Wait, what?  This is "Staturday," not "Wednescout."  Even if you hate Staturdays, you can skip the text and go to the second-to-last paragraph, which contains an important link that I know you'll want to click.

Let me tell you a little something about defensive stats: when it comes to evaluating a player's contributions, they're shaky. You might have already known that.  But the dirty little secret about defensive stats is this: when it comes to judging what a fielder's true fielding skill is, they're almost worthless.  Well, worthless is an exaggeration.  But we have to be very careful when coming to a conclusion about a how good a defender a fielder is. 

And it has nothing to do with how good the defensive metrics we use are.  Why? Regression to the mean.

If you're too lazy to re-read my primer on regression, then I'll give you the Cliff's Notes version: we must always regress to the mean when figuring true player skills, and the amount we regress is based on 1) how much performance data we have and 2) what the spread in skills are among the general MLB population.  This is independent of how good the defensive metric we are using is.

Let's start with the first issue: how much performance data we have for defense.  A full-time shortstop might have 500 opportunties to field a ball in any given year.  A centerfielder might have 400.  Every other fielder will see fewer than that.  Those numbers are smaller than the number of PAs a player gets in a full season.

The difference between the best and worst hitters, over the course of a full season, is something like 100 runs - think Albert Pujols versus Tony Pena.  Imperfect as our defensive metrics are, they give us a pretty decent idea of how many runs the best and worst fielders are worth over the course of a full season.  A guy like Mark Ellis might save 20 runs on defense, and a guy like Manny Ramirez might cost 20 runs.  Let's tack on five runs on either end to get 50, a nice, round number.  The spread in fielding skill is, generally speaking, about half of much as the spread in hitting skill.

So, to recap: smaller sample size than hitting, smaller spread in talent - ergo, more regression to the mean.  Even if you had the perfect defensive metric.

And that's why we need scouts.  But here's the other dirty little secret: you, too, can be a scout.  Why not?  You watch lots of baseball.  So do I.  And if we put our opinions together, we might start getting there.  Two sets of eyes are better than one.  And a thousand sets of eyes are better than two.

And that's what the Fan Scouting Report is all about.  Every year, Tom Tango asks thousands of fun to give their scouting reports by rating fielders in a variety of categories.  Says Tom:

What I would like to do now is tap that pool of talent. I want you to tell me what your eyes see. I want you to tell me how good or bad a fielder is. Go down, and start selecting the team(s) that you watch all the time. For any player that you've seen play in at least 10 games in 2008, I want you to judge his performance in 7 specific fielding categories.

And best of all, for you statophobes:

And, most importantly, do not, absolutely do not, look at any numbers. Don't look at his fielding percentage, range factor, zone rating, UZR, or anything else that someone else is telling you. I just want you to rely on your eyes. You are the scout. I need you to rely completely on your own observations.

Tom's been doing this every year for about five years now, so we're starting to get good historical data.  But if you look at the number of ballots cast for each player, you'll find that the Red Sox and Mariners players get tons of evaluations, and the A's players very few. 

That's embarrassing to me, and it should be to you, considering that we have a group of knowledgeable and dedicated fans right here on AN.  So what are you waiting for?  Submit your evaluations of the A's fielders.  Think Mark Ellis is criminally underrated?  Can't stand to see Jack Cust commune with his glove?  Then say so!

But this is important: be honest in your evaluations.  This isn't a ballot-stuffing contest.  We're not trying to beat Blue-Grey Sky.  This is an attempt to use the collective knowledge of the best-informed baseball fans our there to help us identify fielding skill.

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I used up all my words on this subject over at THT.

7 IP, 1 H, 3 K, 1 BB, A's win 16-0

9 IP, 2 H, 8 K, 0 BB, 86 pitches

7 IP, 4 K, 2 BB, 15 GB outs, one very memorable pickoff

8 IP, 4 H, 8 K, 2 BB, an awesome ending

8 IP, 1 H, 11 K, 1 BB

A scary day

Good luck Rich.  See ya 'round.

Channeling The Dogfather :

via cache.gawker.com

Channeling Jeff Sullivan:

Also, some UZR defense numbers:

Oakland is +6 so far this year, which is nice, but the Angels are an incredible +24 runs.  What's remarkable is that while Oakland was projected to be this good (+12 if you weight the projection by actual playing time), the Angels were not (-2).  The Angels are playing out-of-their-mind defense right now.

Ellis handily leads all 2B at +28 runs/150 games.  Jack Cust is at -28 in LF, Crosby is at -21, Buck is at +34 in a very small sample.

It's getting impossible to overstate just how underrated Ellis is.  Think about it this way: if the current defensive numbers hold up (which they won't), there would be a 6 win difference between Ellis and Cust in terms of defense.  Throw is some regression and call it a 4 win difference.

Cust has 35 runs created so far this year; Ellis is at 27.  If we pro-rate that for the rest of the year, those numbers are 90 and 70, which implies a 2-win advantage for Cust.

When all is said and done, it is likely that Ellis will have been a more valuable player at the end of the year than Jack Cust, assuming that Cust's lead feet and glove keep running out to left field.

Look, I know that not all of us like Lew Wolff.  He's done some good things for the franchise, and he's done some bad.  He'll likely do some more good things and some more bad things.  These issues aren't black and white, and there are complex politics, both internal and external, at force here.  Plus, we're fans, so we're going to be emotional about these things, particularly when many of us regard the A's fondly for experiences we've shared with our fathers and mothers and sons and daughters.

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Marty Lurie confirms that Chavvy will be DH'ing today.  Looks like Frank's injury and Chavvy's hot hitting forced Beane's hand.  Details as they emerge.

Welcome back Eric.  You're still my favorite player.

LET'S GO OAKLAND!

[Note by salb918, 05/29/08 3:06 PM EDT ]
Super confirmed:  Gameday shows Chavez batting cleanup.  Now why would the A's bat a guy with a .000 average in the cleanup spot?

When you think of monkey-robot hybrids, you usually think of cute little creatures like this:

via www.gadgets-weblog.com

No longer.

Monkeys with sensors implanted in their brains have learned to control a robot arm with their thoughts, using it to feed themselves with fruit and marshmallows the tattered remains of the scientists foolish enough to embark on this research.

More details on the website of the academic journal Nature .

The initial training period was assisted by corrective signals generated by the BMI control program, but the monkeys quickly learned how to generate the brain activity that would produce the desired robot motions without any assistance.

Without any assitance.  But don't worry, I'm sure there's no possibility of this going awry, since we won't equip the monkey-robots with anything dangerous.

Using grids of fine electrodes implanted in the primary motor cortex of monkeys, they trained the animals to generate patterns of brain activity to control an anthropomorphic robot arm that had a shoulder joint, an elbow joint and a claw-like gripper 'hand'.

Except a claw-like gripper.  It's like a bunch of neuroscientists sniffed solvent while watching The Terminator and Planet of the Apes.

Here is a schematic of the robot-monkey hybrids that will soon become our overlords.

via www.nature.com

That monkey-robot hybrid looks seriously pissed.

For those of you at academic institutions, the full text can found here.

We're winning, which is good, and the wins that we've accumulated thus far are in the bank. Can't nobody take 'em away from us. Let's not worry, for the moment, whether we'll continue to win. Let's figure out how the heck we've been this good so far.

Win Probability

We'll start by checking out our win probability added. If you're not familiar with WPA, you can read about here. The basic idea is that every event in the game either decreases or increases your chance of winning. If you record, for each event, how much it increases your chance of winning, and then add up the values for each event, you will end up with the number of wins you currently have. The awesome site Fangraphs records all this information for us. Since the probability of winning any given game starts at 50%, one half of a WPA "point" counts for one win.

WPA is really neat because it captures clutch. When the Angels scored a run off of Dallas Braden in the ninth inning of Wednesday night's blowout, it didn't increase their chance of winning by very much. On the flip side, Jack Cust's tiebreaking single against Brandon Morrow last Sunday was worth a ton because it broke a tie game in the late innings.

So, let's see how the A's have been winning, per WPA (as of Friday morning):

Hitters: -0.38
Starters: +0.98
Relievers: +2.39

Before we start, we do a quick sanity check by adding these numbers. -0.38 + 0.98 + 2.39 = 3. One half of a WPA "point" counts for one win, so the difference is 3*2 = 6. And how many games over .500 are we (as of Friday morning)? Six. Perfect.

Despite the fact that we've scored a ton of runs, the hitters have been slightly below average, registering a net negative WPA. I'm guessing this is due to the fact that A's hitters have actually been not so hot in clutch situations. Yes, it seems like every time we have hitters on that we're driving them in. That's good, but driving in runners isn't the only aspect of clutch hitting - getting on base helps, too. In some of the close games we've lost, we just haven't gotten on base at important times. On the flip side, we may be driving in lots of runners, but how does that really help when you're blowing out the other team?

The starters and relievers have been quite good, with the relievers in particular being totally awesome. Casilla, Brown, Devine, Street, even Foulke have been awesome. Street's occasionally shaky performances haven't really cost us except for the Japan opener. And of course, Casilla, Brown, and Devine have been...well, divine.

Batting Runs Above Average

Remember how WPA records the change in your chance of winning for every event? Batting runs above average (BRAA, also recorded at Fangraphs) does the same thing, but it records the change in your chance of scoring a run for every event. Think of BRAA as WPA, but without accounting for how clutch the situation was in terms of the game situation. So, hitting an RBI single to bring home a man on third with one out is counted the same regardless of inning or score. You can think of BRAA as still accounting for the clutchness of the base situation, but ignoring the inning and score.

And the A's?

Hitters: +5.3
Starters: +19.0
Relievers: +17.4

Let's add 'em up: 5.3 + 19.0 + 17.4 = 41.7. And we've outscored our opponents by...40 runs. Almost spot on.

As we suspected, the hitters do quite well when we ignore the context of inning and score: their contribution by WPA is not as much as their contribution by BRAA. They may not be hitting really well late in close games, but they're hitting well when there are runs to be driven in.

The pitchers account for 36.4 BRAA and 3.37 WPA, meaning their performance in clutch situations has been really good (36.4 BRAA ~ 3.5 wins, 3.37 WPA ~ 6.8 wins). You'll notice, however, that the starters and relievers look much more equal by this measure, for the very basic reason that relievers are used toward the end of games when a lot of WPA points are doled out.

Context-neutral runs

What if we ignore all aspects of clutch, so that we ignore not only the inning and score, but also whether or not there are men on base. You can do this a number of ways, and I won't get into the gory details. I'm going to use a Tangotiger method - those are my favorite since they're always open source. The basic formula is to take all the team's hits, doubles, triples, homers, etc., ignore when they happened and consider only how many there are.

To the numbers!

Hitters: -14.5
Starters: +28.0
Relievers: +19.1

Ugh. The hitters look pretty bad here. We know in our heart of heats that our offense is below average. By ignoring the context in which we hit, we can see it pretty clearly. Our hitters have been -14.5 runs worse than average in a context-neutral setting, and yet they've produced 5.3 runs in a semi-contextual sense (BRAA). That means that we've been hitting out of our minds with men on base: .297/.384/.411 (AVG/OBP/SLG). Is it luck? Skill? Some kind of Ty Van Burkleo pixie dust? Without doing a super in-depth analysis, it's hard to say for sure. Yes, guys definitely change their approach when there are men on base, so we can't dismiss the BRAA number out of hand. But there's also a heavy does of randomness involved. If the team continues to hit the way they've been hitting, we may see an offense that struggles and sputters to score runs.

Our starters have actually been kind of crappy with guys on base, as their context-neutral runs are much better than their semi-contextual runs (BRAA). I'm not sure how that compares to league average, though, since I'm pretty sure that pitchers in general do worse with men on base. The bullpen has been basically even.

If you add up the context-neutral numbers, you get -14.5 + 28.0 + 19.1 = 32.6 runs. In reality we've outscored out opponents by 40 runs, using BRAA our run differential "should" be ~42 runs, and using a context-neutral measure it "should" be 32.5 runs.

The A's have gotten off to a great, great start. We're scoring runs with very timely hitting, particularly with men on base. We're preventing runs by just plain old good pitching. Analyzing our hot start shows that it's not a fluke - at worst, we might conclude that we've only been good enough to outscore our opponents by 32.5 runs. But even if that's the conclusion, that run differential suggests a team that's six wins above .500...which is right where we find ourselves today (Friday morning ).

Now, that doesn't mean that we're going to continue being this good or this bad. We might get better and we might get worse (probably worse is my intuition). But that wasn't the point of this analysis. The point of this analysis is to show you that our hot start was NOT driven by luck. It may (or may not) have been driven by unexpectedly good performances. But that's not what we're looking at, either. Given the performances we've received from our players, this team has not been lucky.

The A's have been good.

The hell with stats - who needs 'em?  I'll always remember baseball for other reasons.  Why, not even counting my childhood memories of the A's...

I'll always remember when Eric Chavez became my favorite player.

I'll always remember Frank Menechino's 11-pitch at-bat against Saberhagen that resulted in a tie-breaking 2-run single, and big ol' high-five to my dad.

I'll always remember lying on my bed and relaxing to the sound Bill King calling a double-steal.

I'll always remember Scott Hatteberg rounding first base.

I'll always remember my dad and I calling each other simultaneously when Ramon Hernandez dropped his beautiful bunt.

I'll always remember bitching about Arthur Rhodes to another A's fan...in Cairo, Egypt.

I'll always remember Justin Duchscherer abusing Pedro Feliz with a ridiculous curveball to seal this victory .

I'll always remember the time that Mark Kotsay got really pissed, waved off the rightfielder, made the catch, and then gunned down a baserunner.

I'll always remember some random relative coming up to me during the pre-wedding celebration and whispering, "we won. "

I'll always remember Nico's game thread , "On to the 11th in a game you will always remember."

I'll always remember watching Marco Scutaro clear the bases with poetwee, ArakSOT, and some other ANer whose name I can't remember in a Cambridge bar.

I'll always remember my wife saying she had to work late that night and couldn't make it to the bar...and then surprising me by showing up for the last two innings.

I'll always remember Marco Scutaro.

I'll always remember watching Kurt Suzuki's walkoff single in the hospital with my two-day old son in my arms and telling him, "There's more where that came from."

What will you always remember?

(Abbreviated edition)

All stats via Baseball-Reference, through Thursday night's games.

Oakland offense: .235/.318/.339

Bases empty: .218/.304/.308 (Daric Barton: .417 OBP, Travis Buck: .195 OBP)
Men on: .257/.336/.380 (Jack Cust: .227 SLG)
RISP: .292/.372/.425 (Emil Brown: .455/.500/.727)

High leverage situations: .248/.345/.386 (Emil Brown: 6 RBI in 14 PA)

As intimated by LogicRules intimated in his diary, Fernando Hernandez has been D'dFA and Kirk Saarloos has been recalled.

Slusser confirms over at The Drumbeat:

Hernandez had two rough outings on this trip, including allowing four runs at Cleveland on Sunday, and with the A's needing more depth in the bullpen, the right-hander was designated for assignment today and right-hander Kirk Saarloos was called up. Saarloos, a former 10-game winner for the A's and a clubhouse favorite, will be the long man for now.

Hernandez must go through waivers and if he clears, he must be offered back to the White Sox, and they can take him back for $25,000 if they choose. A's assistant GM David Forst said if Hernandez clears waivers, Oakland will have some talks with the White Sox, which means the team might be open to swinging a deal with Chicago to keep Hernandez.

Anyone have the pic of Kirk with the mouse?

General managers are getting smarter.  That's no secret.  Broken-down veterans with little upside aren't getting three-year contracts and promising young players are being locked up after very little major league experience.  Today's transactions increasingly reflect an understanding, conscious or not, of replacement-level talent.  The Billy Beanes and Kevin Towers of the world still have an advantage over the Brian Sabeans and Ed Wades, but the gap is shrinking.  Chalk it up to progress.

Player evaluation is one thing, but GMs are also responsible for team evaluation.  An underrated management skill is the ability to realistically assess the talent of the team relative to the league and choose a corresponding direction.  Knowing an organization's position relative to its competitors is (or ought to be) the primary responsibility of management.  It ought to be so in baseball, too.

I happen to think that this kind of evaluation is a strength of Billy Beane and his management team.  When we were close and needed pieces to get over the top, he took risks on Milton Bradley, Frank Thomas, and Esteban Loaiza.  The trades of Nick Swisher and Dan Haren are defensible from this perspective: we ain't going anywhere with 'em, might as well get something we can use many years down the line.

Whether the rebuilding approach was the right one or not is debateable.  On paper, the Angels are the best team in the AL West, while the Mariners and A's are close.  But the Angels aren't a slam-dunk as many think.  A few weeks ago, devo pulled out his prognosticatin' hat and came up with the following:

(All standard forecasting caveats apply)

One thing that we're just not that good not predicting is injuries.  Hey, if Chavvy bounces back from his 12 surgeries and Rich Harden's bionic arm tranpslant is successful, we could maybe compete with an Angels team that loses a few key pieces...

We don't know about Chavvy and Harden yet, except that the former still isn't ready to play, but we do know a bit more about the Angels: they're a little banged up.  John Lackey, one the most underrated pitchers in the league, won't be sticking his f'ing them out there until Mid-May.  Kelvim Escobar is out for the season.  Vlad's knee is hurting.  Gary Matthews has a sore calf.  Following the Angels lately has been like following the A's, sans the spiritual and emotional fulfillment that comes from being an A's fan.

Nobody is happy about injuries.  But - be truthful - you're a little excited, aren't you?  Down an ace.  Down a number two.  Gimpy legs for one of the premier hitters in the league.  Could this open the door for the A's to make a surprise run in the AL West?

Let's go to the numbers, starting from devo's post a few weeks ago...

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