This hasn't been on AN at all! According to everyone's favorite journalist Ken Rosenthal, the A's have placed a bid for Iwakuma. It's not exactly clear what the A's bid was or if they have a real shot at posting Iwakuma, but it's exciting nonetheless. It's also exciting that Rosenthal notes that the Rangers' bid may have been too low. This doesn't mean they are absolutely out, but it's a good sign for us. The last thing the Rangers need is any help at all.

Discuss!

New link!: Well not exactly new, but Rosenthal suggests that the Brewers are a potential trading partner (if the A's land Iwakuma) if the Brewers are willing to part with Casey McGehee.

I'm not big on a 3B upgrade as McGehee wouldn't be the upgrade that would push the A's over the edge. He is however under control for the next 4 (?) years and is definitely a good looking player. Your thoughts?

Greetings AN. What does one do when he is home from college for the summer, friendless and jobless? He writes fanposts at ridiculous times in the night, of course. I'll probably do this in two or three different parts.

Let's begin:

Sacramento has gone 4-7 in the month of August. Overall, they're 64-55 good for second in their division, sitting two games behind first place Fresno. That's the Giants team if your wondering. Do you hate the Giants? Cause I do.

For each player, I'll give you their overall stats, and stats from their last ten games. Why ten? Cause it's easier and I'm lazy.

Hitters

Travis Buck: .439/.500/.610 in his last ten games, .301/.393/.452 overall in twenty games with Sac. Side note: If Brad Pitt is playing Billy in a movie, who would play Travis Buck? Is there anyone pretty enough for that role?

Steve Tolleson: .395/.435/.442 in his last ten, .332/.412/.503 overall and recently promoted!

Eric Sogard: .326/.420/.442 in his last ten, .300/.387/.390 overall. Does anyone watch that show whale wars? If you don't congratulations. But if you do, you know that guy Peter, he's like the first mate or something like that on the Bob Barker and he has facial hair like a Chia Pet? Apparently he doubles as an infielder for our AAA affiliate. Seriously, tell me they don't look alike.

Wimberly: .262/.404/.381 in his last ten, .288/.371/.351 overall. Fun fact that really isn't fun of the day: Wimberly has only had a slugging % higher than OBP once in his career. That'd be neat if you're getting on base 50% of the time. Not that cool when you simply have no power.

Jeff Baisley: .235/289/.559 in his last ten, .305/.371/.490 overall.

MichaelTaylor: .205/.262/.282 in his last ten, .269/.345/.394 overall. Yikes. I still believe, but man is he having a rough year.

Dallas MacPherson: .364/429/.750 in his last ten, .266/.323/.502 overall.

Anthony Recker: .406/.457/.531 in his last ten, .251/.324/.400 overall. Great name for a baseball player. Also, a pornstar.

Adrien Cardenas: (WOOHOO). Played 3 games so far with AAA in his lastest stint, and is 6/14 with a double. The ultimate small sample, but before when he was called up he was atrocious, so it's nice to see. Playing second base.

Donaldson: Hasn't played since the third, and since he's in the A's system I'm assuming he's having Tommy John and both arms, legs, and neck. Seriously though, anyone know what's going on with him?

Pitchers

Clay Mortensen: 4-3 in his last ten. I'm not giving you any other stats then W-L. Just kidding. ERA of 3.48 in his last 67.1 innings. 48/15 k/bb, 55 hits, 6 HR, and a tidy little 1.85 GO/AO (ground outs/flyouts). Overall he's got an ERA of 3.89 with 97 k's, 40 bb's, and a tidier 1.92 GO/AO.

Graham Godfrey: 1-2 with an 8.08 ERA in his last ten. That spans 31 innings. Apparently coming out of the pen now. Anyway you slice it, that's not good. 5.59 ERA overall, 87 k's in 106 innings. There's more to this ugliness, but you get the picture.

Kyle Middleton: 4-3 with a 4.15 ERA in his last ten, 6-8 with a 3.77 ERA overall, only 69k's in 102.2 innings. He's old, and not that good, but good for him for putting together a decent little season.

John Halama: 38 years old. Whatever.

Travis Banwart: 6.34 ERA in his last ten, 6.34 overall. The good news is he has increased his k rate since being promoted to triple A. The bad news is well, everything else. 56 hits in 44 innings. Lots of walks.

Brad Kilby: Still hasn't pitched since May 26th. Anyone know what's going on here?

Travis Blackley: I have no idea who this is, but putting up some nice stats (at age 27). 30 k's in 27 AAA innings, 23 hits and 13 walks.

Jared Lansford: 14 innings so far in Sac, 14 k's, 4 walks, 17 hits allowed, but an ERA of 5.79. He was putting up a nice 2.43 GO/AO in AA before his promotion, hopefully he can get back to that. Former 2nd round pick, hopefully he can make the bigs at some point.

Tyson Ross: Uh oh. Diagnosed with elbow explodeditis. Or something like that. Hopefully it's not too serious, but let's be honest. This is the A's we're talking about. He's looked just great in AAA other than the injury thing. Started 6 games with an ERA of 3.55. 30 k's in 25.1 innings, 22 hits and 13 walks. It'd be nice to see fewer K's, and non sore elbows. He's putting up a 4.25 GO/AO ratio.

Jamey Wright: Yes, that Jamey Wright. He was on our AAA team?

Brett Tomko: 94.5 ERA.

Midland hitters:

Corey Brown: Still tearing it up in AA. Still needs to be promoted to AAA. .467//610/.766 in his last ten. .335/.432/.452 overall. Great numbers, nothing left to prove, and he's getting sorta old. Will be 25 in November.

Jemile Weeks: Oh boy. .105/.239/.184 in his last ten. .273/.363/.403 overall. At least he's healthy and playing again?

No other hitters at Midland are doing anything exciting. You can check out the stats here. Do it on an empty stomach.

Pitchers:

Carlos Hernandez: 3-1 with a 5.91 ERA in his last ten. Overall, posting an 8-2 record with a 4.61 ERA in 109.1 innings. 78k's, 42 BB's, and GO/AO of 1.43. I have no idea how a guy can post numbers that bad, on a team with an offense so anemic, and still have an 8-2 record. Guess it just says something about W-L.

Anthony Capra: 1-4 with a 5.52 ERA in his last ten, overall he's 6-10 with an ERA of 4.34, 105 innings, 100 K's, 71 (!) BB's and 98 hits. There's been some Capra discussion lately (mostly by me), and bottom line is he needs to learn to throw strikes. If he can learn to do that, he'd be interesting to watch.

Ryan Edell: 5-3 with a 4.07 ERA in his last ten. Overall he's 7-4 with an ERA of 3.15 and 60 K's, 14 BB's and 105 hits in 91 innings pitched. Just looking at that line, I imagine he's been remarkably lucky.

Pedro Figueroa: Hasn't pitched since June 15, and had hideous numbers before he went down. Not sure what the deal is. Didn't BA rate him highly?

Mickey Storey: Overall he's put up a line of 5-3 with an ERA of 3.48 in Midland. 56 K's in 66 innings, along with 18 walks and 48 hits allowed. Had a brief stint with Sac, where he struggled a bit but at least managed to strike out guys at a decent rate. Looks like his magical 2009 was somewhat of a fluke though. Hopefully he can repeat.

Matt Wright: Overall AND his last ten games (same thing): 4-2 with a 2.66 ERA. 50.2 innings pitched, 58 hits, 30 k's and 4 BB's. That lack of walks is pretty neat.

Justin Friend: 2-2 with an ERA of 3.38, all relief appearances, Has struck out 42 in his 45.1 innings pitched, while walking 27 and allowing 53 hits.

Justin Souza: 2-2 with an ERA of 3.34. 49 IP, 45 k's, 20 BB's and 35 hits allowed.

Jeff Lyman: ERA of 7.94. Who are you, and how did you get on our 40 man?

FDLS: ERA is ugly at 5.82, but he's striking guys out at a ridiculous rate. 36 k's in 21.2 innings! 10 BB's and 19 hits allowed. If he can tone down the walks and stay healthy, I think he can be an elite reliever.

Arnold Leon: Hasn't pitched since April 16. Still 21, but that kinda sucks.

Updates on the lower minors coming soon!

I'm doing just about anything to avoid writing my paper, so I thought I'd take a look at Jack Cust. Keep in mind its nearly 5 am when I write this, so I apologize in advance for any part of this that may suck.

Jack Cust's 2008 numbers contrast quite a bit with his 2009 numbers. Let's take a look.

Last year, Cust put up a line of .231/.375/.476 for an OPS of .851. He walked 18.5% of the time, and struck out in 32.9% of his plate appearances.

This year, Cust has put up this gem: .239/.335/.431 for an OPS of .766. He is walking only 12.3% of the time, and is striking out 25.2% of the time.

Let's take a look at what has changed:

According to Fangraphs, Jack Cust's plate discipline and patience has decreased significantly since last year. This season, he has swung at 5% more pitches outside the strike zone (15.3% last year, 20.3% this year), 7.6% more pitches inside the strike zone (62.8% last year, 70.4% this year), and 5.3% more pitches overall (38.3% last year, 43.6% this year).

It seems that Cust made an effort to cut down on strikeouts (training his eyes, swinging earlier/more often) while increasing his batting average. While he succeeded in cutting down the strickouts!!!!11, he has failed (so far) in his effort to improve his BA.  

Cust increasing the amount he swings was something that was pondered numerous times here at AN. Many people wondered if Cust chose to be less picky with his pitch selection, would his average and homeruns increase while is k's decreased. As of now the answer looks like a resounding no.

Let's look further:

While Cust is swinging at more pitches outside the strikezone, he is making contact with them less frequently (42.2% contact on pitches swung at outside the strike zone last year, 36.3 percent this year). This is probably good for Cust (except in cases of 2 strike hitting), as making contact with a bad pitch usually ends poorly. Cust has increased his contact rate on pitches swung at in the strike zone (71.1% last year, 83.2% this year). He has also increased his overall contact percentage from 65.1% last year, to 71.5% this year. While this may seem like a good thing, it could be very telling for Cust's decrease in OBP this year. He is swinging more, and probably at worse pitches than he did in the past.

So to me a few things seem pretty obvious: Jack Cust will never hit for a high average, and much of his value is in his ability to take pitches and walk. So Jack, if you read this, take more pitches and swing less often, and revert to your 2008 form. Pretty please?

this has been discussed to some extent here and somewhat here, but after reading an article that uses plays per game (wtf?) as a defensive metric, ive decided i still don't know defensive metrics/decided to make a fanpost on it.

let me sum up what i know about defensive metrics: i don't know shit. i've read that metrics are unreliable and inconclusive and there's no way to tell with any precision how good a certain player is defensively. which makes me wonder: how do we know that mark ellis is a premium player because of his defense?

so AN, i ask you: which defensive metric (if any) do i trust? i want all the information you have on the mysterious topic that is defense.