Another Way the A’s Might Be Shifting Gears
Nothing’s ever really settled in Oakland. They can’t afford to settle, not if they want to be able to keep up despite their budget constraints. The A’s always have to be trying to think one step ahead, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but Billy Beane, if nothing else, is doubtlessly bold. And he made a bold move the other day, exchanging a very excellent Josh Donaldson for a package of less excellent players. It remains to be seen how Oakland will build out the rest of its roster, but it’s obviously a team in transition. Beane stated as much in saying he wanted to stay away from having a roster in decline.
In terms of just looking at the depth chart, the A’s are shifting gears by bringing in new personnel. But there might also be something else going on, underneath. It’s nothing we can know, and it’s probably nothing we can ask Beane about while he’s still trying to work, but the recent A’s had a particularly distinctive characteristic, and one wonders whether Beane might be moving away from the philosophy. We can observe what might be interpreted as points within a pattern.
At the end of September, I wrote about what I thought to be the three most distinctive team philosophies. Among them, I talked about Oakland’s building a roster of fly-ball hitters to counter the league-wide trend toward pitching lower and lower. I wasn’t by any means the first person to talk about it, but there was little sign of things slowing down. It had been noted in The Book that fly-ball hitters do better against groundball pitchers than groundball hitters, and here are the year-to-year differences between Oakland’s FB% and the average FB%:
2010: 1.0%
2011: 2.2%
2012: 5.6%
2013: 7.4%
2014: 6.5%
You can see a three-year spike. Between 2012 – 2014, the A’s hit 41% fly balls. Second place was about 36%. The average was about 34%. In this subtle way the A’s stood out from the pack, and you can see the effects elsewhere. Over the three years, the A’s ranked third in baseball in OPS against groundball pitchers, according to Baseball-Reference. Against fly-ball pitchers, they ranked 22nd. They ranked fifth in baseball in slugging percentage against pitches in the lower third of the zone, and 27th against pitches in the upper third of the zone. Just last year, they ranked sixth and 28th. The A’s were built to hit the low pitch, and they hit the low pitch, while struggling higher. It didn’t apply to every single player, but it applied to many of them.
That’s what happened. That’s history. Now the A’s are trying to build for the future. The process is currently incomplete, but if I may, let’s try something. Back during the season, the A’s traded Yoenis Cespedes. Maybe that was the only way for them to get Jon Lester, but Cespedes, as it happens, is among baseball’s very most extreme fly-ball hitters. He’s not part of the picture anymore.
Neither will Jed Lowrie be, most likely. Lowrie is also a fairly extreme fly-ball hitter. Free-agent acquisition Billy Butler? He’s a groundball hitter. Eno wrote a little about this at the time. Josh Donaldson is out, and Brett Lawrie is in, and Donaldson is more of a fly-ball hitter than Lawrie is. And then there’s the non-roster element: the A’s lost hitting coach Chili Davis to the Red Sox. Davis was the coach in Oakland for three years, during which the team he coached put the ball in the air with relatively extreme frequency.
On average, hitters are a little bit more productive against fly-ball pitchers than groundball pitchers. Donaldson’s career split is 41 OPS points better against groundball pitchers. Butler’s been 132 points better against fly-ball pitchers. Lawrie’s been 129 points better against fly-ball pitchers. Individually, these don’t mean much of anything, but if they are part of a pattern, it’s interesting. Oakland was doing one thing more than any other team, and coincidentally or not coincidentally, they’ve moved away from that thing, some. And they’ve taken calls on Josh Reddick, and Brandon Moss. We’ll see what else they elect to do with the infield.
As things stand, the A’s, as a team, are projected to hit about 37% fly balls. The roster still isn’t finished. That would still be a higher-than-average rate, but it would be less high than what they’ve posted lately, and it would be hard to turn things around all at once. It also remains to be seen what might happen under the watch of a different hitting instructor. These same players might end up with slightly different swings. I’m not declaring anything to be true. I’m just checking for a possible pattern, given that a different pattern previously existed.
Let’s say that Beane is moving away from fly-ball hitters. Why might that be? Could be, he understands that other teams have come to understand his team. There was that article where the Astros told Collin McHugh to pitch more up in the zone to counter a lineup like Oakland’s. Several pitchers have noted that they’re trying to fold in more high fastballs, as the league has increasingly geared up for pitches down. Alternatively or additionally, there’s the observation that something happened to raise the strike zone around the middle of the year. For a while, the zone had been steadily sinking. If baseball is trying to do something about that, pitchers would pitch down there less, so there would be less to be gained from building a lineup to attack them.
That’s making an awful lot of an awful little. That’s taking an acorn of an idea and storing it away to be the whole winter’s feast. There are little theories and big theories, and while I do expect the league to at some point do something about the sinking zone, there’s no proof that Beane is making these moves for any reason other than they seem like they’re okay to him. In isolation, he’s lost some guys, and he’s brought in some different guys with talent. It’s a hard job that he’s got. You can never see a pattern looking at one move at a time. Usually, there aren’t patterns to see. Yet the A’s are run anything but usually.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
I dunno about all this. From all accounts, it was the Blue Jays who went to the A’s about the Donaldson trade, not vice-versa. I suspect the A’s MO is much more meta than any sort of deep dive like this article. They just churn their roster. A lot. They feel there’s inherent value in churning more than their competitors, not least because the chances of someone blowing up and producing lots of wins on a pre-arb salary are higher if there are more people coming in and out. Donaldson in fact is the perfect example. So now they cash him in for four guys and hope that one of them blows up on the A’s watch. I think really that’s the whole thing.
Not to discount your broader point (maybe Billy Beane is reading this thinking “Damn that IS a good idea!”), but this was about much more than the Donaldson/Lawrie swap.
As noted baseball scholar Auric Goldfinger remarked, “Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action.”
I’m not really buying that the A’s were ever targeting flyball hitters to such an extent. I think it might have been primarily a fluke. This is such a tiny tiny detail in the evaluation of any one player – tough to believe that this stat would be driving the acquisition of so many players. If there were another version of Josh Reddick or Stephen Vogt or Chris Young or Alberto Callaspo or Jed Lowrie that was a superior hitter but had a higher GB%, are we to believe that the A’s would have bypassed him in favor the the flyball guy? Or are we to believe that it was such a significant market inefficiency (I feel dirty using that term) that the A’s were always right to choose the flyball guy?
Honestly, I think that the A’s guys probably pass articles like this around the office and have a chuckle.
Totally with you.
I can’t believe the extent to which some are contorting themselves just to figure out the Beane angle in this trade. The reality os that there is no “there” there.
The closest thing I’ve seen to a legit reason is Donaldson’s escalating salaries by his 3rd and 4th Arb years, but that still doesn’t explain why they had to deal him 2 yrs prior to that. Answer: they didn’t have to.
This is a “Beer or Tacos” situation. The A’s are in a situation where they can select from among multiple options that are have similar value, but differ in profile and how they produce that value. They then can decide how to maximize synergy among those players. So don’t ask “best players or synergistic players” – “both, you fool!”
You honestly think the As guys are doing very little, not running numbers on every player to determine what potential value there is and how it can be used, and just saying “Cheaper! Go for it!” Then laughing when other people suggest that they have actual full time jobs, because in reality they totally don’t.
That’s … a great theory. What do you do for living, by the way?
As a lifelong A’s fan and stat geek, I’m telling you right now that Beane & Co. absolutely sought out fly-ball hitters.
A’s hitters had a 41.1 FB% in 2014. The next highest teams in MLB were the Cubs and Orioles at a 37.1 FB%. When one of Beane’s teams hits 10.8% more fly-balls than the next highest-team in the league, there is no way that’s just a coincidence.
Agreeing with AK7007, good hitters and fly-ball hitters are not mutually exclusive. The A’s most likely determined at some point they wanted to pursue fly-ball hitters, determined who those hitters were, then sought out the best ones of the crop that fit in with their roster/budget/etc.
Ironically, Chris Carter was traded for Jed Lowrie before 2013 (I think the A’s liked Carter a lot, but he was expendable and they needed a middle-infielder), and Carter had a monster 2nd half of 2014 (.368 wOBA) while Lowrie and almost the entire A’s offense struggled at the same time. Carter’s FB% in 2014? 51.4%, highest in the league.
Carter also had the highest K rate in the league. How about just trying to add the best hitters whether that means FB or GB…?
…because of exactly what the article said? The trend of pitching was to go for ground balls, which fly-ball hitters were shown to be more effective against. Worked pretty well for the A’s the past few seasons considering they’ve had one of the top offenses while playing in a pitcher’s park.
What do Carter’s strikeouts have to do with anything that has been discussed here? Carter was 2nd in the league in HR and had the 42nd-best wOBA in baseball. Pretty sure most teams would be happy with that production.
1. Because the cost of the player matters too. I’d rather have a 2-win guy at $5 million a year than a 3-win guy at $15 million. If there is an inefficiency favoring fly ball hitters, it could make sense to go for the worse guy if you you get more money value out of it.
2. Because how do you know who the best hitters are? Hitting stats vary widely year to year. In an environment favoring fly ball hitters, you might find that a fly ball hitter has a better projection coming off a hitting season of equal quality to a ground ball hitter.
shit. when exactly did so many people here become so belligerent?
Maybe don’t come in with weak, smartass comments that contain irrelevant points?
I dunno if you know what the word meta means.
I don’t know if this is true, but it is so, so interesting. I can’t wait to dive into every batter’s numbers the A’s are involved with the rest of the offseason.
His home ball park also is better suited for a team that doesn’t depend on the big fly. Even if Oakland eventually moves to San Jose, the effects won’t change. The Pacific coast is a bitch to fly balls.
I dunno…I might be misunderstanding BBG and Jeff, but my take away is what the man said, “if I am looking for ravens and they are black then I miss the possibility of albino/white ravens”…why assume, why not look at possibility…I like the article right or wrong.
I was at the BP event at the coliseum this past summer, and Farhad Zaidi said the second Andrew Koo published that article it ceased being an advantage. That seems evidence enough that the fly-ball ship has sailed out of Oakland.
Interesting. Makes me wonder if the A’s extreme fly-ball tendencies “exposed” their offense in the 2nd half of the season when they really struggled because teams figured out how to pitch to them. They weren’t struggling to put the ball in play, as they had the 2nd-best K% (behind only the Royals), so there had to be something else to it. Their ISO fell from .149 (8th) to .118 (21st) from the 1st to 2nd half. Injuries quite possibly may have been the biggest factor, but I imagine teams knowing how to better attack them played a role.
That’s interesting. I’d like to see whether this narrative is true by seeing whether pitchers really did throw up in the zone more often against the A’s in the second half versus the first. Or, whether they saw more pitches up in the zone than the rest of the league. Or something like that.
Is there anywhere on FG where you can see a team’s heat maps (as opposed to just an individual player’s)? Also, does anyone have any insights into where one might find a heat map generator that allows you to specify dates to look at?
Baseballsavant.com probably has that.
Two links:
From 4/1 to 8/1
From 8/1 to 10/1
it’s really hard to tell, but it looks like there are a few more high fastballs.
Link to a query:
http://baseballsavant.com/pitchfx_search.php?hfPT=ff%7Cft%7Cfc%7C&hfZ=&hfGT=R%7C&hfPR=&hfAB=&ddlStadium=&hfBB=&hfHL=&hfCount=&ddlYear=2014&ddlPlayer=batter&ddlMin=0&ddlPitcherHand=&ddlBatterHand=&ddlVGT=&ddlVLT=&ddlDistGT=&ddlDistLT=&txtAngleGT=&txtAngleLT=&txtGameDateGT=2014-04-01&txtGameDateLT=2014-08-01&ddlPlayerHeightGT=&ddlPlayerHeightLT=&ddlPlayerWeightGT=&ddlPlayerWeightLT=&ddlTeam=OAK&ddlPosition=&hfRO=&ddlHomeRoad=&hfIN=&hfOT=&ddlGroupBy=team&ddlSort=desc&ddlMinABs=0&ddlSBSuccess=&txtPx1=&txtPx2=&txtPz1=&txtPz2=&ddlRPXGT_ft=&ddlRPXGT_in=&ddlRPXLT_ft=&ddlRPXLT_in=&ddlRPYGT_ft=&ddlRPYGT_in=&ddlRPYLT_ft=&ddlRPYLT_in=&txtBAGT=&txtBALT=&txtBLGT=&txtBLLT=&txtSRGT=&txtSRLT=&txtSDGT=&txtSDLT=#results
If this is true, then the Cespedes trade might have actually mitigated the decline, contrary to popular narrative.
Someone on fangraphs demonstrated that the 2nd half A’s downfall had to do with the injury to Jaso, having his replacements in the line-up, and the collapse (most likely due to health) of Moss and Norris. I can’t see why having a bunch of fly-ball hitters on the team would make an individual more susceptible to pitcher attack.
Question: Wasn’t there some research on how having a team that was all great at fly balls or all great at ground balls was great during the course of a season, but had way too much variation in game? I thought I came across something one time about how the overall offensive value gained a fair bit by varying good groundball/flyball hitters, the same idea as having both lefties and righties. Any chance this is a bit of a retool in that direction? Does anyone else remember reading something like that?
Perhaps Beane & Co. are moving toward varying good groundball/fly-ball guys in their lineup because teams figured out how to disarm the A’s extreme fly-ball offense in the 2nd half of this past season…
This is a really interesting idea and I genuinely appreciate the thought behind behind it. I don’t have any idea if this is true or, if it is, if it would work but this is a very thoughtful article. Beane is definitely bold and, unlike most GMs, unafraid to make mistakes. Partial ownership helps, of course, but it’s important to understand that, just because we haven’t figured out what the hell he’s doing, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a plan.
The massive foul area in the Coliseum seems to lend itself to an inordinate amount of foul outs to a team built to primarily hit fly balls, especially with the trend of pitchers pitching up in the zone.
Also, with the emphasis on throwing down in the zone over the past few years, it seems like most hitters are not trained to hit balls that are up in the zone.
That explains why Brandon Moss got so much worse when he came to Oakland. Wait…
Great great observation and article. I only wish commenters were more fair to Beane; his lone measure of performance should be where he finishes regular season in wins rank vs where his payroll is ranked.
I’ve measured– Beane kicks ass. I believe injury prone 2007 was his only bad year and I think he learned from that year about the power of depth flexibility and injury care. It’s a pleasure to watch him work.
There are many many ways for this latest trade to work out. Let’s wait and see
J.
JP, I also think that cost per win is the best metric for GMs, but have been called an idiot by a guy who thinks Cashman is great. On $/W, Billy Beane is a god, as was Friedman before Dayton Moore took his lunch money. Beane probably has earned some benefit of the doubt on his moves.
Agreed, J.P.
What Beane has been able to do during his tenure in staying ahead of the curve and re-shuffling his roster has been truly amazing. I just shake my head when the internet mocks him after he makes another “crazy” deal involving trading away one of his best players… I want to ask: Have you all not noticed the consistent success? He traded his previous 3 All-Stars before the 2012 season, leading EVERYONE to think he was “rebuilding”. He then leads the AL in wins over the next 3 years, making the playoffs each year. And yet, here people are again, saying he’s lost it by trading Donaldson. Come on.
2009 and 2010 were lost due to one bad move – the Cargo/Holliday deal. Add Cargo & Street to that 2010 team that went .500 and you have a contender. His rebuilds (08+11) have lasted one year. How many teams have been rebuilding for years now?
He’s lost and flailing around. Giving up Russell for a pitcher rental was an act of insanity.
Beane took over as GM before the 1998 season; that year, the A’s went 74-88, 4th place in the AL West. Every season since then, the A’s have finished in first or second place…EXCEPT for the years in which Bob Geren was the manager. So Green has got to be in the running for worst manager ever. (Also, Beane is awesome.)
Johnston is a troll. No need to counter his “points”…
I am anything BUT a troll – unless you were in professional baseball somewhere I certainly know more about the game than you do – but you are a disgrace for slandering someone like that over a difference of opinions. I am convinced that the Russell trade was the worst trade since the Fister trade. You want to argue that, then argue. But if all you have is silly insults, keep them to yourself.
Philip: If Beane is so awesome, then why have the A’s made the playoffs less than 50% of the years he was their GM? And why do they have such an incredibly poor playoff record? And, yes, that’s a very serious question.
I would not hold the A’s playoff record against Beane. Stuff happens in baseball games. Had Otis Nixon hadn’t been fooled by Chuck Knoblauch in the 1991 world series, we would’ve been raving much more about the Braves 90’s dynasty and John Smoltz would have been labeled probably the greatest postseason SP ever… well, that until Bumgarner showed up. Dave Roberts stealing 2nd, anyone? Luis Gonzalez broken bat single?
50% is outstanding for a team that doesn’t have a dynasty-building payroll like the Yankees and Dodgers. Every small market team in baseball who take 50% playoff rate in a heartbeat. How about the Royals and their near 30-year drought?
They’ve lost a ALDS series in 5 games 6 times in that time. The data doesn’t show that the A’s are bad in the playoffs, it shows they are great at getting to and losing elimination games. Either that very odd and unique skill is Beane’s doing, or that isn’t actually a skill and we’re just dealing with a small sample.
It’s less than 50%. That’s hardly “awesome.”
Your perception of CarGo’s value is seriously overblown. The guy’s got a career .258/.314/.437 line away from Coors Field. He’s basically Josh Reddick if you put him in a real ballpark, but people think CarGo’s better because he gets to play 81 games a year in Coors.
Interesting article, though I find it strange that that they would have DFA’d Kyle Blanks if they were really trying to trade fly balls for grounds balls– especially considering Blanks could have taken at bats away from Moss and/or Reddick by playing 1B or OF.
Just because they might be shifting strategies and Blanks hits more ground balls doesn’t mean they would automatically want to play him more. They’re still going to play the best players, and Moss & Reddick are clearly better overall players than Blanks (at least to this point)…
I think Beane saw a way to free up between $40-50M and get essentially the same production on both sides of the field in Lawrie. After arbitration Donaldson could be making a ton of money after this year. Lawrie, not nearly as much, even if he truly breaks out, and with 12 HR in 70 G, he sure looks it.
And yes, this was the Jays wanting Donaldson, not Beane trying to move him. Lawrie was also considered “untouchable” – people keep forgetting to mention that.
I take issue with the argument that Donaldson’s escalating arbitration costs justify a cost cutting maneuver. The arbitration process has its flaws, sure, but talented players who are being rewarded through arbitration tend to be rewarded at lower salaries (on a $/projected WAR basis) than they would be on the open market. In other words, paying $20MM AAR through the arbitration process for a 5 WAR player is a good problem to have to deal with.
There are really only two exceptions to this. First, when a player’s arbitration value is derived from antiquated stats like a high RBI count, his arb cost may be higher than it would be otherwise, so your value isn’t as good (though it may still wind up better than on the open market). Second, a team on the rebuild might say that paying a guy $20 MM AAR for 5 wins isn’t worth it since those 5 wins take the team from 70 to 75 wins, not from 85 to 90, and another team may value them more.
The A’s are in neither of these scenarios. It’s unreasonable to think that they dealt Donaldson because of his cost; there had to be more here. Jeff’s article is an interesting perspective that may answer the ‘why’ of this deal, from the A’s perspective.
The A’s were all in last year and it didn’t work. Theories are interesting, but the fact is the A’s best strategy last year didn’t work, now they need to try something different.
Just because something didn’t work doesn’t mean you have to try something different. If I am playing Rock, Paper, Scissors and I know that my opponent plays rock 45% of the time Paper 35% of the time and Scissors 20% of the time, my best move is Paper. If I play Paper and he plays Scissors I’m not going to say “Fuck it, that didn’t work time to change strategies”.
Of course, if your opponent knows that you know these numbers, you would be an idiot to continue to play paper. Beane knows his opponents know what he’s doing, so maybe he’s changing things up? This may explain why he traded Donaldson. It does not explain why he was so thoroughly ripped off in the deal.
Of course Beane is going to do something different when a strategy doesn’t work. That’s what he does. And just because a prior strategy doesn’t end up working out doesn’t mean it wasn’t the correct call at the time (which, IMO, going “all-in” in 2014 was)…
The A’s did not go “all-in”. They kept Daniel Roberton & Matt Olson – two guys who could have bought in a 2B and relief help.
I agree that they did not *literally* go all-in, if the definition of that means trading every last high-end prospect.
Most people would consider trading a top 10 prospect, another 1st round draft pick, and Cespedes (one more year on contract) for Lester (free agent) as close to “all-in” as it gets in baseball, though.
You could also make the argument that there wouldn’t have been a trade out there where they wouldn’t essentially be trading Robertson or Olson for pennies on the dollar, since 2B was/is barren (thanks in part to RAJ’s unwillingness to part with Utley) and the A’s bullpen was already pretty darn good at the trade deadline (any addition would have just been a marginal upgrade).
Perhaps this is nothing more than the A’s recognizing that market inefficiencies are drying up in baseball, and re-focusing on the low-payroll strategy that does not depend on market inefficiencies: trading players with little room for improvement for players with greater room for improvement. If enough of these “lottery tickets” pay off, you can sneak into the playoffs.
This may be Beane trying to build a more consistent offence. It has been shown, in baseball and in other sports, that all else being equal (total runs scored/conceded), consistent offence and inconsistent defence lead to a greater win%. Perhaps these moves will help the A’s do better against fly-ball pitchers – even if they get worse against ground ball pitchers, this could lead to a better allocation of runs scored over the course of a season.
“And he made a bold move the other day, exchanging a very excellent Josh Donaldson for a package of compost.”
Fixed that for you.
You win
Round of applause for Johnston, our resident comedian…
If you think of Donaldson being worth Lawrie + one good/very good low level prospect as a fair deal, then Beane did really well, because he is saving a bunch of money and also got two mediocre prospects thrown in as well.
But I don’t think that is enough. We keep saying “If Lawrie can stay healthy, he’ll be worth almost as much as Donaldson,” but the risk that he won’t (a high percentage chance so far) has to be factored into the deal. It’s the same as a Tulo trade.
Barreto looks good, maybe even very good, but he’s still a long way away and is mostly a lottery ticket, in my mind. So many things can go wrong (so-so plate discipline gets worse, injuries, has to move off SS) with a low A player that you can’t count him the same way as an Addison Russell.
The problem I have is that Graveman isn’t worth anything (just emergency depth on a good team) and Nolin isn’t a starter in a playoff team’s rotation. So I see it as just Lawrie and Barreto for Donaldson, and that’s not enough for this deal to be worth it.
It’s not a horrible deal, but it really looks like a mostly cost-cutting move rather than some grand plan. I guess we’ll see, though.
One gimp and some lottery tickets for the third-best 3B in the game. I think most of the people here could’ve made a better trade.
If your position is that Billy Beane, a 15 year GM who has had way more success than other teams with comparable payrolls, who is assisted by some of the smartest people in the game, is so bad that some regular old internet blog readers could whip up a better trade (that another team would actually agree to) on their own, then you are suffering from an acute lack of perspective.
You could have made a better trade than that. I would have made a better trade than that, or no trade at all, which probably would have been the best move. Supergenius Beane has traded away the heart of his team (Cespedes, Donaldson) and the team’s future (Russell) for essentially nothing. If Beane’s 2014 is what genius looks like, then please give us mediocrity instead.
I’m typically at a loss explaining what Beane is up to, but he clearly has a method to his moves and deserves the benefit of the doubt MOST of the time. There are probably several factors at work here, several of which have been mentioned: 1) he went (nearly) all in on his core group and they faltered in the 2nd half and then got bounced by the Royals; 2) the league knows the A’s were trying to hit more fly balls so they’re changing course a bit; 3) he favors over turning the roster more than standing pat.
I’m more confused by the Butler signing than this move. Lawrie is a cheaper and possibly effective return (if stays healthy), and if either of the prospects pan out at all then the Donaldson trade seems like a decent deal. But why would you sink 35 mil into Butler? He does hit a lot of ground balls, so that has to tip their hand more than anything else. I don’t know how else you could justify giving a 28 year old DH coming off his worst season in years that much guaranteed money. I guess the new Beane strategy not only involves hitting into ground balls, but double plays as well.
I agree with you there. The Butler signing just seems so strange to me. Even if he bounces back toward his career norms, he’s only going to be worth $9-$12 mil per year, maximum. So they are basically paying full price for a DH as if they are assuming he’ll bounce all the way back, with almost zero chance of him being worth more than $12 mil per year. So tons of risk and no upside, with a 3-year commitment to boot. Seems like the anti-Billy Beane type of deal.
Remember a player is worth way more or less to a team depending on whether they make the playoffs. If Butler has a good, not great year and the A’s win the division by one game, he will be worth far more than 12 million.
Also, if you think of Butler’s primary function as Jaso’s platoon partner, you go from replacement level at DH the past couple years to several wins there. In addition, you get to use Butler from the right when someone is injured or someone needs a day off and you slide him to first. Think how valuable he would have been this past year if they could have used him and put Moss on the DL to rest or to fill in for Jaso. We might be having a very different conversation about the 2014 A’s right now.
I guess that’s possible. But Butler is a bad defensive first basemen, unless the numbers last year are right and he’s about average there (which is possible).
If he’s mainly a platoon partner then he’s going to be worth less, not more, because he’s playing less. And if you really wanted a DH with flexibility at 1b and/or other positions, I think there were better options.
I can’t imagine Torii Hunter would cost nearly as much, in money or years. Why not try Mike Morse or Ryan Ludwick, who would both cost less than 3/$30, I’d think. Or take a flier on Alex Rios or Chris Denorfia.
I’m not sure any of those guys are as good a hitter as Butler, but they can all play outfield (sort of, in Morse’s case), and would definitely come cheaper. I feel like you could get some/most of these guys for $10-20 million cheaper, which might be enough to afford Donaldson (which I think is the real reason he was traded).
I just don’t have much faith in Butler bouncing back much, and the money is way too much. I like him at 1/$12 or maybe even 2/$20, so maybe the extra $10m isn’t that big a deal.
While I realize this isn’t real a cross-over reference, Beane is starting to remind me of Eric Bischoff. I really hope I’m wrong.
The A’s received a good third baseman, a great prospect and some decent throw-ins, plus the money you mentioned. It’s all part of the reason you don’t pass on a trade like that. They’ll use the money to make the team better in some other way.
An injury-prone infielder and some lottery tickets, you mean. Bad trade. Awful trade.
I wonder if you celebrated all the trades in 2012 for “lottery tickets” that resulted in a playoff berth. I wonder if you celebrated the Rich Harden trade that brought Donaldson to the A’s when he was something worse than what you consider lottery tickets. If all this is is lottery tickets, then Billy Beane is really good at playing the lottery and you should probably trust him.