While it’s not quite the cakewalk that the NL Central projects to be in 2021, the AL West is up for grabs this year. The Astros project as comfortable favorites, but that’s just one team. The Rangers and Mariners aren’t likely to be competitive. That leaves room for the A’s and Angels to take a crack at the division. On Thursday, Oakland took a stab at it, signing Trevor Rosenthal to a one-year, $11 million deal, as Jon Heyman first reported.

If you glanced at our list of the top 50 free agents, you won’t find this deal particularly odd. Projector emeritus Craig Edwards saw a two-year, $16 million deal for Rosenthal, while crowdsourcing came in at two years and $13 million. One year and $11 million is a better deal than those, but not by a huge amount, and Jeff Passan reported that he turned down multi-year deals in that range. Rosenthal’s contract includes deferrals — he’s due $3 million in 2021, $3 million in 2022, and $5 million in 2023. That’s essentially $11 million, though; at a 2% interest rate, it’s the same as $10.75 million in 2021. Don’t focus too much on that — it’s mere window dressing, and the interesting part of the contract is Rosenthal himself.

Rosenthal is hardly a standard free agent, and the fact that he’s signing a perfectly ordinary contract is in itself remarkable. This time last year, he had reported to camp with the Kansas City Royals on a minor league contract. The deal wasn’t for the league minimum — it guaranteed him $2 million if he made the major league roster, with another $2.25 million in incentives. Earnable money is different from a guaranteed contract, however, and if he’d had a bad spring training or tweaked something before camp ended, he’d never see the money.

With the benefit of hindsight, that deal was great for both Rosenthal and the Royals. He appeared in 14 games and struck out 21 opponents, good for a 37.5% strikeout rate that echoed his best years with the Cardinals. Did he walk 12.5% of opposing batters? Sure, but you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet, and he had been plenty effective in St. Louis even with slightly elevated walk rates. The Royals dealt him to San Diego in exchange for Edward Olivares and Dylan Coleman, two mid-level prospects, and everyone walked away happy.

Wait, hold up. Rosenthal has a career 2.75 FIP (and a 3.46 ERA and 3.32 xFIP, it’s hardly smoke and mirrors). He had a career 2.79 FIP before his solid 2020. He got flipped for two real prospects after 13 innings of relief work, after 233 pitches. Teams seemed to agree that he had value. Why did he have to take a minor league deal to prove himself? Read the rest of this entry »

The A’s continued to stockpile relievers over the weekend, signing free agents Yusmeiro Petit and Sergio Romo to one-year contracts, both for a little over $2 million for the 2021 season.

Petit is a familiar face in Oakland and will likely play a similar role as he has since 2018: pitching mostly mid-leverage innings, mainly in the sixth through eighth innings. He was rarely used for longer than an inning in 2020; the odd shape of the season and the more expansive roster made this less desirable and less necessary. Still, in the past, he’s been one of the closest players to the old long reliever archetype that has largely faded out of baseball.

Among active pitchers, only Stammen has made more two-inning relief appearances. Compared to history, though, 106 appearances only gets Petit into a tie for 323rd all-time, behind the relief stars primarily from the 1960s, 70s and 80s who dominated this usage.

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Last Friday, the Dodgers traded reliever Adam Kolarek and right-fielder Cody Thomas to Oakland in exchange for third baseman Sheldon Neuse and right-hander Gus Varland. While it’s unusual to see a division favorite flip a major leaguer for prospects with another contender, the move makes sense for both parties. The A’s get a little better in the here and now, while the Dodgers can dream on Neuse as another breakout candidate for the club’s stellar player development staff to work with.

Kolarek is the lone established big leaguer in this swap. The sidearming southpaw has been a stable part of the Dodgers’ bullpen since his acquisition from Tampa Bay 18 months ago, running an 0.88 ERA over 30 innings of work in Los Angeles — a fun bit of trivia that shouldn’t distract from otherwise normal peripherals. He primarily works with a high-80s, low-90s sinker out of a funky slot and has generated a 62% ground-ball rate over his career. Between that, a supposedly deadened ball this year, and a cavernous new home park, he may never allow a homer again.

He joins a very good bullpen in Oakland. The Athletics’ relief corps had the league’s best ERA and third-best FIP in 2020, and that group was pretty good the previous two seasons as well. Still, Kolarek fills a hole, as the ‘pen otherwise leaned heavily toward right-handers; Jake Diekman is the only other lefty likely to crack the Opening Day roster. With the A’s set to contend again this year, Kolarek adds depth to a strong unit that should see plenty of work in relief of Oakland’s young starters.

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Over the weekend, the Rangers sent long-time shortstop Elvis Andrus, catcher Aramis Garcia, and $13.5 million dollars to the Athletics for DH Khris Davis, catcher Jonah Heim, and pitching prospect Dane Acker. The deal was surprising for a few superficial reasons (two fan favorites being traded within the AL West), but when you strip away the uniforms, it makes sense for both clubs.

The biggest names in the trade are Andrus and Davis, but the biggest pieces in the deal are Andrus and Heim. The Athletics needed to find a way to replace departed shortstop Marcus Semien, and Andrus joins a host of potential internal options (Chad Pinder, Sheldon Neuse, Vimael Machín, maybe Nick Allen fairly soon) who are unlikely to equal Semien’s production but might be enough to keep the A’s in the postseason hunt.

After an outlier 2017 during which he homered about as many times as he had in the previous four seasons combined, Andrus returned to Earth in ’18 and ’19, producing like a low-end regular at shortstop before he had a lousy 2020 season based on surface-level stats. But in addition to whatever COVID-related personal weirdness may have contributed to his lackluster year, there’s underlying evidence that he was his typical self and was instead subject to small sample variation caused by limited playing time. Andrus played in just 29 games last year and ran a .200 BABIP, but his average exit velocity and HardHit% stayed the same, and his .390 expected Slugging%, per Baseball Savant, was higher than his actual career mark of .370.

Andrus did struggle in other areas that might indicate real physical decline. Again per Savant, he was nearly a full tenth of a second slower from home to first, his top-end speed (Sprint Speed) fell, and he regressed (on paper) defensively. But I don’t believe Elvis is actually dead. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that, because he’s 32, the weird start-stop-sprint sequencing of the 2020 season had an outsized impact, and that playing for a non-competitive team didn’t aid his level of motivation. A normal lead up to the season and playing for a contending club could lead to a revival, to say nothing of the new financial motivators that are now at play. Remember, Andrus had to waive a no-trade clause to go to Oakland; he wants to be there. And per the terms of the contract he signed with Texas, what was supposed to be a 2023 mutual vesting option is now a vesting player option that Andrus can trigger by either accruing 550 plate appearances in 2022 or 1,100 appearances in ’21 and ’22 combined. He’s owed just over $14 million each of the next two years, while the player option year in 2023 is set for $15 million. I believe the A’s will be getting the best of whatever is left of Elvis Andrus as he chases control of that vesting option.

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It feels like a long time ago that the Oakland A’s won the AL West. Partially, that’s because everything feels like it lasted forever in 2020 — the last year has been the longest decade of our lives. Partially too, though, it’s because the team has spent the vast majority of the offseason doing nothing.

Marcus Semien, Liam Hendriks, Joakim Soria, Yusmeiro Petit, Mike Minor, and Tommy La Stella all left in free agency. On Saturday, the A’s made their first major transaction of the offseason, trading Khris Davis and Jonah Heim for Elvis Andrus. Later that day, they issued their first (!) major league contract of the offseason, signing Mike Fiers to a one-year, $3.5 million deal, as Ken Rosenthal and Alex Coffey first reported.

Fiers was an important but unsung part of a run-prevention monster in 2020. He made 11 starts for the A’s, who reached the playoffs on the back of a simple strategy: prevent some runs with starting pitching, hold some leads with a phenomenal bullpen, and sprinkle excellent defense around it to make it all play up. Fiers wasn’t an ace, and he didn’t need to be.

That appears to be Oakland’s plan again this year. Their projected rotation is close to unchanged (Minor started a handful of games, but the other five top starters are all back):

Fiers will be the worst everyday starter, like he was last year, but he’ll take the ball every five days, and the A’s would have struggled on that front otherwise. Daulton Jefferies, A.J. Puk, and Grant Holmes are the next three starters up, and all have had serious injury issues in the past few years; the team will likely want to limit all of their innings this year. Read the rest of this entry »

When Eric Longnhagen wrote up Daulton Jefferies for last year’s Oakland A’s Top Prospects list, he cited a “plus, upper-80s changeup and plus command” as the now–25-year-old right-hander’s primary attributes. That combination helped earn Jefferies a cup of big-league coffee last September, and it has him projected as a member of Oakland’s starting rotation for the upcoming season.

Drafted 37th overall out of Cal-Berkley in 2016 — he underwent Tommy John surgery that same year — Jefferies is atypical among young, modern-day pitchers in that he stands just six-foot (and weighs 195 pounds) and is neither data-savvy nor a flamethrower. His fastball sits a relatively pedestrian 93–95 mph, and the spin rates on his array of pitches remain a mystery to him. Then there is the strangest thing of all: Jefferies features a no-seam repertoire.

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David Laurila: What is your full repertoire, and what is your best pitch?

Daulton Jefferies: “I have four- and two-seam fastballs, a changeup, a slider, and a cutter. My best pitch is my changeup.”

Laurila: What makes it effective?

Jefferies: “I think it’s more of a tunneling thing. You want everything to look like a fastball for as long as possible — Gerrit Cole does that really well, [Jacob] deGrom, [Max] Scherzer, all those guys — and mine has good depth. It’s also really hard; it’s like 87 to 90 [mph] and I can run it up to 90 at times. The only time I get in trouble is when it flattens out and basically becomes a straight fastball. Most of the time, it’s my go-to pitch, right-on-right. It’s my baby.” Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Earlier in this series, I profiled 2021 Hall of Fame candidates Tim Hudson and Barry Zito, who together made up two-thirds of the “Big Three” starters who helped the Moneyball-era A’s make four straight postseason appearances from 2000-03 despite their shoestring budgets. Inevitably, the economic realities of playing in Oakland forced general manager Billy Beane to trade away Hudson and Mark Mulder, the third member of the Big Three, as they grew more expensive, and to let Zito depart via free agency.

In doing so, Beane was able to replenish his roster, keeping the A’s competitive for a few more years before heading into rebuilding, and then repeating the cycle. The two players in this installment of my One-and-Done series were part of that endless process. Dan Haren was one of three players acquired from the Cardinals in exchange for Mulder in December 2004, and a key starter on the AL West-winning A’s in ’06. Nick Swisher, the team’s 2002 top first-round pick — compensation for losing center fielder Johnny Damon to free agency — was the starting left fielder on that ’06 squad. Both players were subsequently traded away in the winter of 2007-08, with two players acquired from the Diamondbacks in exchange for Haren, namely lefty Brett Anderson and first baseman Chris Carter, contributing to their 2012 AL West champions, and one player acquired from the White Sox for Swisher, namely lefty Gio González, traded again to net catcher Derek Norris and left-hander Tommy Milone, contributors to the team’s 2012-14 run. And the cycle continued… Read the rest of this entry »

MLB managers not named Tony La Russa did Zoom calls with members of the media this past week. Today’s column features highlights from several of those sessions.

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Two of the topics Dusty Baker addressed on Monday were job-related. One was the position he currently holds with the Houston Astros, the other was a role that’s never appealed to him. The latter is anathema to baseball’s Most Interesting Man in the World because it wouldn’t allow him to kick back and ruminate on life.

“One reason I never wanted to be a general manager is because you don’t really have an offseason,” Baker told a cohort of reporters. “He works all year, and doesn’t have much time off, but for the general manager, and front office people, this is the most busy time of the year.”

Baker is 71 years old with 23 managerial seasons under his belt. How much longer he’ll sit in that chair is a question he can’t answer, but he’s been around long enough to know that life can come at you from different directions. Much for that reason, he’s simply going with the flow.

“Depends on how I feel [and it] depends on how the team feels about me,” said Baker, who was hired by Houston prior to last season. “Changes are going to come about in life. I tend to think in terms of Walter Alston and Tom Lasorda. Those guys signed a series of 20 one-year contracts. I’m not lame anymore. You know what I mean? A lame duck can’t fly. But my wings aren’t clipped no more. I can always fly.” Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

The youngest of the Oakland A’s Moneyball-era “Big Three” starting pitchers, and the last to join the organization and to debut in the majors, Barry Zito reached a higher peak than either Tim Hudson or Mark Mulder while helping the A’s to five postseason appearances from 2000-06. Renowned for a curveball that was considered the best in the game, he made three All-Star teams and is the only one of the trio to win a Cy Young award. He parlayed his success into a record-setting free agent contract with the Giants, though outside of his trademark durability, he rarely lived up to the expectations that it carried.

Then again, Zito rarely lived up to the standard expectations that come with being a high-profile professional athlete. Yes, he surfed, but he also played guitar, practiced yoga and meditation, traveled with scented candles and satin bed pillows sewn by his mother, and read books about the power of positive thinking. In the eyes of the often-hyperbolic agent Scott Boras, who netted him a seven-year, $126 million deal from the Giants in December 2006, he was “Zigasso… the artist-poet-intellectual.” Oookay.

Despite standing 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds, Zito was not a particularly hard thrower, but the rest of his repertoire made up for it, at least in the best of times. From a 2004 Sports Illustrated profile by Michael Silver:

Call it mind over batter: His unrivaled curveball with the roller-coaster drop and his crafty changeup set up a sub-90s fastball that isn’t nearly as hittable as it appears. “He throws strikes and dares you to hit it,” says New York Yankees manager Joe Torre, “and because you have to wait so long for that curve, it makes his fastball that much faster.”

Where Hudson — who’s also on this year’s ballot for the first time — finished his career with numbers worthy of a substantial Hall of Fame debate, Zito fell short; his JAWS is exactly half of the standard for starting pitchers. This figures to be his only appearance on a BBWAA ballot, but as this year’s only first-timer to win a major award, he gets a standalone One-and-Done entry in my series. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

At the turn of the millennium, on the heels of six straight sub-.500 seasons, the Oakland A’s enjoyed a competitive renaissance. From 2000 to 2003, they averaged 98 wins per year, good for a .606 winning percentage that ranked second in the majors, an eyelash behind the Mariners (also .606 but with one more win in that span). They made the playoffs in all four of those seasons, three by winning the AL West, and they did it all despite shoestring budgets that regularly placed their payrolls among the majors’ bottom half-dozen. The ability of general manager Billy Beane to exploit market inefficiencies in crafting a low-cost roster gained fame via Michael Lewis’ 2003 book Moneyball, but underplayed in a tale that emphasized on-base percentage, defense, and quirky, misfit players was a homegrown trio of starting pitchers — Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito — who were central to the A’s success. Drafted out of college, the “Big Three” asserted their spots among the AL’s top pitchers despite a lack of overpowering stuff.

The oldest of trio was Hudson, a skinny, undersized righty (generally listed at 6-foot-1 and 160 pounds) who relied on his low-90 sinkerball to generate a ton of groundballs, as well as a diving split-fingered fastball, slider, and change-up to miss bats and keep hitters off balance. An Alabama native who was drafted out of Auburn University in the sixth round in 1997, Hudson reached the majors just two years later, and quickly emerged as a frontline starter able to shoulder annual workloads of 200-plus innings, belying his modest frame. In a 17-year career with the A’s (1999-2004) and later the Braves (2004-13) and Giants (2014-15), Hudson helped his teams reach the postseason nine times, but both the pitcher and those teams experienced more than their share of hard luck in October. Only at his final stop, in San Francisco, did Hudson’s teams even make it to the League Championship Series, but in 2014, he was a key component of the Giants’ World Series-winning squad.

Though he made four All-Star teams, received Cy Young consideration in four seasons, and won well over 200 games while cracking his league’s ERA and WAR leaderboards seven times apiece, Hudson does not have an especially strong case for Cooperstown, particularly once one looks beyond the superficial numbers. While he’s expected to receive a smattering of support from BBWAA voters in a year where the ballot traffic is comparatively minimal relative to recent cycles, he might not even draw the 5% needed to remain on the ballot. Even so, his outstanding career is worthy of review. Read the rest of this entry »