The 2015 Athletics have been talked about more than one might expect given their place in the standings. It might actually be because of their place in the standings that they’re getting talked about so much. Having a record in one-run games of 2-13 will do that to a team. They’re unlucky. Their bullpen has chosen the worst possible times to implode this season. And, while this hasn’t gotten as much attention, their defense has been a serious problem, so much so that they might be one of the worst overall defenses in the past 15 years if they continue this level of play.

Those defensive issues are mostly on the back of the infielders, especially third baseman Brett Lawrie and shortstop Marcus Semien (the latter leads all MLB infielders with 15 errors and was profiled on these digital pages just last week). Last night, with a game against the Rays in the eighth inning, it looked like the A’s might put up a zero in the error column, which is more of an exception than a rule in 2015. Then this happened:

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A cursory examination of the WAR leaderboards for shortstops in 2015 shows a few surprising developments. At the very top, we have the nice blend of defensive and offensive aptitude in Zack Cozart, and the mainly defensive-minded duo of Brandon Crawford (who has surprised at the plate this year) and Andrelton Simmons. Then, where we might expect a name like Ian Desmond or Troy Tulowitzki, we instead have Marcus Semien.

It’s only May, so we’re still dealing with the usual parts of the game that suffer from small sample size issues when it comes to player comparison and valuation, like BABIP and defensive metrics. Still, there’s something about Semien being toward the top of the boards that warrants our attention: not only is the A’s shortstop there because of his offense, he’s there despite his defense.

On Sunday, we saw both the best and worst of him. Let’s start with defense. During the bottom of the second, Logan Morrison hit a routine one-hopper up the middle to Semien, who was shifted along with the rest of the infield. The outcome was one Athletics fans have wearily gotten used to:

That was the 24-year-old’s 9th error of the season, briefly tying him with Ian Desmond and Danny Santana for the league lead, that is until he moved into sole possession of first by making another on Monday (he made one last night too). If you don’t like errors, Semien sits at -1 runs by DRS, good for 20th in the majors.

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At the very bottom of the 2015 standings, you’ll find two unsurprising teams tied for the worst record in baseball: the Phillies and the Brewers. The Brewers have been a disaster, already firing their manager, and the Phillies are paying the piper for years of making moves to maximize short-term returns. But do you know which team is only a half game ahead of that pair of disasters? Well, you probably do if you clicked on this post, given that I put them in the subject, but yes, it’s the Oakland A’s, who currently stand at 12-21 after getting swept in Seattle over the weekend.

The A’s were expected to take a step back this year after trading away Josh Donaldson and a bunch of his friends, but while they spent the first half of the winter getting younger, they also went out and landed Ben Zobrist, Billy Butler, and Tyler Clippard, showing that they weren’t just punting on 2015. While they churned half the roster in an effort to set themselves up better for the future, this was supposed to be a team that could at least hang around the Wild Card race and maybe make another run at a division title if things broke right. Instead, after weeks of baseball, the A’s are 8.5 games behind the Astros, and their playoff odds have shrunk from 33% on Opening Day to 15% today.

While it’s still early enough to turn things around, there is a point at which the hole gets too big to dig out of, especially because other teams will likely start calling about impending free agents like Zobrist, Clippard, and Scott Kazmir in the next month or so. If they don’t start winning pretty soon, you can bet that Billy Beane won’t hesitate to make another flurry of trades to bring in even more young talent, so the A’s clock is ticking, and it won’t be too long before they have to decide if they’re in it for 2015 or not. Despite their miserable start to the season, I wouldn’t suggest giving up on this A’s team just quite yet.

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You’ll hear it every time he steps to the plate in Oakland, a slow, building chant. If Stephen Vogt lets the at-bat go long enough, or the moment is big enough, it can be deafening: “I believe in Stephen Vogt. I believe in Stephen Vogt.”

Craig Edwards pointed out that only two catchers broke out as late as the 30-year-old Vogt and sustained any sort of high level of production, so the odds are stacked against him. That sort of thing makes Vogt right at home with the Athletics, but there are plenty of reasons to believe in him, too. The awkward way he made his way to the big leagues probably kept him from showing his true self until this late in the game. It might not have really been his fault that he didn’t advance quicker.

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Brett Lawrie doesn’t really have a problem with breaking balls, not if you zoom out on his career. He’s whiffed on sliders (14%) and curves (8%) at about an average rate (13% and 11%, respectively), which follows his overall whiff rates (8.6% for Lawrie, 8.5% is average).

Opening week, in three games against the Rangers, Lawrie saw ten straight breaking balls… twice. He’d never seen ten straight breaking balls before.

“They’re not going to stop until I make an adjustment,” Lawrie admitted before a game with the Mariners. But that statement’s not enough to uncover what it’s like to see a barrage of breaking balls like Lawrie did. And what it means, and how you claw your way out of a hole like the one he found himself in.

Lawrie’s a loquacious dude: he’ll keep talking if you let him. So, at one point, I asked him about the thought process when something like this was happening, and he obliged. You can’t edit an inner monologue like this, especially when you know he’s describing what it feels like to strike out four times on 12 straight pitches:

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Oakland starter Jesse Hahn is throwing the changeup more than ever before. In some ways, it’s new. In other ways, though, this was the changeup he’s always had. This isn’t just semantics or word play, though.

Let’s make the case that Hahn’s changeup is new, first, and see what that might mean for Hahn.

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Last season, Derek Norris and John Jaso took the bulk of the catching starts for Oakland, starting 140 of Oakland’s games at behind the plate. The duo performed well for the A’s and the 126 wRC+ by Oakland catchers ranked third in Major League Baseball behind only the Pittsburgh Pirates and Milwaukee Brewers. As the A’s tend to do, they remade their roster in the offseason sending Norris in a deal to the San Diego Padres that netted Jesse Hahn, and sent Jaso to the Tampa Bay Rays in the deal that landed Ben Zobrist. The deals cleared the way to playing time for Stephen Vogt, a 30-year old catcher with under 500 plate appearances in his career, with a decent amount of those appearances coming from first base and the outfield with the A’s in 2014.

The projections did not expect much from the Oakland catcher. The FanGraphs Depth Charts expecting a .255/.303/.398 season and producing roughly two wins. Vogt has gotten off to a great start in 2015 with a .360/.441/.700 line in 59 plate appearances including seven walks, four home runs, three doubles and one triple. The projection systems have begun to take notice. ZiPS now projects Vogt for a .259/.310/.415 line for the rest of the season while Steamer has Vogt with .265/.316/.420, already an improvement over the projections from a couple weeks ago and with his early season exploits, a two-win season has turned into one that could top three wins with the potential for more if he hits like he has over the past year. Since being called up at the beginning of June 2014, Vogt has hit .292/.341/.473 with a 130 wRC+ in 346 plate appearances.
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We rarely talk about Aaron Harang. When we do, it’s usually to describe him as a “safer” player rather than a good one, or perhaps to poke a little fun at his appearance. He never ranks very highly when it comes time to make lists, and we’re generally at a loss to describe his success. And yet, he keeps churning out solid seasons of baseball.
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For the first time in four decades, the U.S. Supreme Court will have an opportunity to reconsider baseball’s notorious exemption from antitrust law. On Wednesday, the city of San Jose, California filed an appeal with the nation’s highest court, asking it to overturn professional baseball’s nearly century-old immunity from the Sherman Antitrust Act.

The appeal is the latest step in the litigation surrounding the Oakland A’s proposed move to San Jose. Back in 2013, the city sued Major League Baseball claiming that the league’s failure to approve the A’s relocation violated federal antitrust law. The district court dismissed the lawsuit later that same year, concluding that baseball’s exemption shielded MLB’s relocation decisions from antitrust scrutiny. That decision was upheld earlier this year by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

While these lower courts were constrained by a series of Supreme Court precedents exempting baseball from the Sherman Act, the Supreme Court itself is not bound to follow the prior rulings. So San Jose is asking the Court to seize this opportunity to overturn baseball’s highly controversial antitrust immunity. Like any appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, however, the odds that the Court will agree to take San Jose’s appeal are rather slim.

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Oakland A’s first baseman/left fielder Mark Canha is off to a fine start to the 2015 season. Through the year’s first week and a half, he’s hitting a solid .333/.353/.515, and leads all rookies with 11 hits. This is obviously a teeny tiny sample, and we all know better than to read too much into seven games. But even so, an excellent performance from a previously unknown player is a little hard to ignore, especially after his six homers and .297/.342/.635 batting line from spring training. The A’s have to be happy with the return they’ve gotten on their rule 5 choice so far.

Although this is his first taste of big league action, Canha’s no youngster. He turned 26 this past February, and has been playing professionally since 2010, when the Marlins drafted him in the seventh round out of the University of California. Although he started out as a 21-year-old in short-season ball, Canha moved through the Marlins system relatively slowly. He spent a full year at each minor league level, so he’s just now making it to the big leagues.

Canha’s slow climb up the minor league ladder wasn’t due to a lack of hitting. His wRC+s from 2010-2014 were 139, 144, 128, 141 and 131. He’s never hit worse than his league’s average, nor has he come particularly close. But, year after year, the Marlins chose to let Canha mash as an old-for-his-league slugger instead of challenging him with more polished pitching. Read the rest of this entry »