If I had to sum up the offseason for the Oakland Athletics and San Diego Padres, it would be thusly:

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Oakland Athletics. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Colorado / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Tampa Bay.

Batters
Oakland catchers combined for the fourth-highest offensive and absolute lowest defensive run totals in the majors last year. In part, the poor defensive record was a result of both John Jaso and Derek Norris making starts at DH (and thereby receiving the attendant negative positional adjustment). In part, it’s because Jaso and Norris aren’t particularly excellent defensive catchers. For ZiPS, at least, the strengths compensate for the weaknesses sufficiently to make catcher the club’s likely most productive position.

Elsewhere, one finds more optimism regarding Marcus Semien’s 2015 season. Not regarding his shortstop defense, of course. ZiPS projects him to concede seven runs there in roughly a full season (which is almost precisely Steamer’s estimate, as well). However, both systems have Semien producing a roughly league-average batting line with roughly league-average (position agnostic) defense. Those estimates conspire to produce a nearly league-average projected WAR.

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By the time the Jeff Samardzija trade became official Tuesday at baseball’s winter meetings in San Diego, Chicago White Sox general manager Rick Hahn was fielding secondary questions about the chances of extending Samardzija’s contract beyond 2015. Most — if not all — of the questions reporters asked Hahn pertained (fairly) in some way to Samardzija, who gives the White Sox a formidable top of the rotation with left-handers Chris Sale and Jose Quintana. It’s possible, however, that another player the White Sox received in the deal with the Oakland Athletics will get a chance to help his new team long after the coming season.

Billed in 2008 as a generational talent who had the signing bonus to prove it, 6-foot-7 right-hander Michael Ynoa is getting a fresh start with the White Sox after struggling with serious injuries, reaching bloated expectations and getting frustrating results since turning pro. In a secondary scrum with reporters that came after the TV cameras shut off, Hahn was excited to talk about Ynoa after trying to explain — for a third or fourth time or 20th time — that the matter of Samardzija’s contract wouldn’t be resolved that day.

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David Forst was appointed to his current position in February of 2004 after serving as an assistant to the general manager and coordinator of professional scouting for the Oakland Athletics. His primary duties include assisting Billy Beane in all player acquisitions, contract negotiations and player evaluations. He agreed to sit down and talk at baseball’s Winter Meetings in San Diego, California.

Eno Sarris: A lot of people are asking: What are the Athletics doing? Here’s a different version: Was there a plan for the offseason, was there an overarching idea, or is it always just “Get better, piece by piece”?

David Forst: There’s definitely a plan. We certainly spend the first couple of weeks after the year, when the season ends, talking on a macro level about what direction we should go. The specifics of who to trade and who to target don’t necessarily come into focus until a little bit later in the offseason, but certainly the plan is talked about immediately. And frankly, it was probably something we talked about in September, before the season was over.

I think Billy [Beane, General Manager] has articulated in a couple of places that we knew that just bringing back the current team, assuming the losses of [Jon] Lester, and [Luke] Gregerson, and [Jed] Lowrie and some of those guys that we didn’t have an opportunity to sign — bringing back that team wasn’t going to work. The Angels were obviously 11 games better than us and the Mariners were right on our tail, and poised to get better. Just bringing back our group and just supplementing it with little pieces, wasn’t going to give us a chance to compete, and was also going to leave us further down the path of having an older, more injury-prone club, frankly.

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It’s a stunning reversal, is what it looks like. And it is a stunning reversal, if you just think about where the A’s were in the middle of last season. It was then that they dealt Addison Russell for shorter-term help. It was then that they dealt Yoenis Cespedes for shorter-term help. It was then that the A’s were very obviously going for it, and it was going well enough for them right up until the later innings in that game against the Royals. Now the A’s are shedding, only a handful of months later, and this isn’t what we’re accustomed to. Not from your average baseball team. The A’s are deliberately taking steps backward on the win curve.

They dealt Josh Donaldson. They dealt Brandon Moss. They dealt Jeff Samardzija. Of course, they don’t have Cespedes, and Jason Hammel is gone, and Luke Gregerson is a free agent, and Jed Lowrie is a free agent, and so on and so forth. You know what the A’s look like, because they’ve been one of the most popular conversation topics over the last few weeks. People everywhere are trying to figure out what Billy Beane is doing. The funny thing about it is Billy Beane is saying exactly what he’s doing, and why. The A’s are just doing what a team like the A’s pretty much has to do, if it wants to remain in any way competitive in the long-term.

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The White Sox deal for Jeff Samardzija still hasn’t been officially announced, but everyone is acting as if it’s a done deal. Kenny Williams is openly talking about trying to sign Samardzija to an extension, and at this point, it seems like an announcement could easily come before I finish writing this post. The deal is expected to be centered around infielder Marcus Semien, with a couple of prospects heading to Oakland as well.

Update: the official deal is Samardzija and Michael Ynoa for Semien, Chris Bassitt, Josh Phegley, Rangel Ravelo.

As has often been the case when a premium player gets traded lately, the perception of the deal seems to be slanted towards the buyer of the trade. Jeff Samardzija is really good, and while he’s only under control for one more year, it’s one cheap year with an exclusive chance to sign him long term. Or, failing that, the right to make him a qualifying offer at the end of the season and get a draft pick if he leaves via free agency.

And realistically, with starting pitchers, fewer years of team control can actually be described as fewer years of risk, and can actually be a feature rather than a bug. The White Sox might only be trading for Samardzija’s 2015 season, but the flip side of that coin is they’re not on the hook for his 2016-2021 seasons if he blows out his elbow. For franchises that have been burned by giving out big contracts to starting pitchers, Samardzija represented something like the best of both worlds.

And yet, at the same time that multiple teams were falling all over themselves to give Jon Lester $150 million, Samardzija was traded primarily for a lower ceiling middle infielder who was seen as a back-end Top 100 prospect at best, and has probably seen his stock fall a little bit with inconsistent MLB performance since. Marcus Semien and some stuff is not exactly an overwhelming return, and certainly seems to be less than what the Phillies are seeking in return for Cole Hamels, for instance. So, did we overrate Samardzija’s trade value, or did the A’s make a bad deal here?

The easy answer to that question is to just look at what Samardzija cost the A’s to acquire a few months ago and decide that the A’s didn’t get enough in return. After all, the same pitcher cost them Addison Russell in July, and Marcus Semien is no Addison Russell. But while Jeff Samardzija himself hasn’t changed in the last few months, his trade value has taken a nosedive, because instead of buying two playoff runs, the White Sox are only buying one. Additionally, they’re buying Samardzija in a market where teams have a plethora of alternatives, while the A’s bought Samardzija when there weren’t any quality free agents to sign.

Back in August, I looked at the cost of buying wins at the trade deadline, and my back-of-the-envelope calculations suggested that prices may be as high as double what they were the previous winter. Samardzija himself is both less valuable now than he was in July, and the market price for acquiring talent is less than it is at midseason, so we can’t simply say that the A’s should have gotten a similar return to what they gave up few months ago.

So let’s try to quantify what Samardzija’s trade value might actually have been. Given the prices being floated for Lester, it seems that the going rate for an elite starting pitcher is probably in the $8 million to $9 million per win range. Samardzija conservatively projects as a +3 WAR pitcher for 2015, though you could argue for something closer to +4 WAR if you buy into his 2014 performance as legitimate improvement rather than career year. What’s the market rate for one year of a pitcher at this level? Those price estimates would suggest something in the range of $25 to $35 million on a one year deal; the latter seems more realistic, given what Lester’s about to sign for.

And that doesn’t even include the value of the qualifying offer, which adds another $5 to $15 million in value, depending on how aggressively you value draft picks. That leaves us with a combined value of somewhere in the range of $30 to $50 million. Let’s split the difference and just call it $40 million. We don’t see those kinds of salaries because teams would rather borrow from the future than hit up their owners for that kind of cash on a one year outlay, but given the amount of money in the game and the lack of risk that a one year deal brings, it’s a justifiable salary.

Samardzija is actually due $9-$10 million for 2015, so he brought about $30 million in additional value to the table. That’s a lot, certainly, but we can be fairly certain that teams value their elite prospects at more than that amount. The rumored price tag for Yoan Moncada, for instance, is in the $60-$80 million range, and that’s with all the extra risk that comes with evaluating an international player who hasn’t played in the states yet. The best prospects currently in the minors probably have a market value north of $100 million at this point.

So Samardzija wasn’t bringing back Addison Russell, or anything close to it. Not in the winter, when free agent alternatives exist, and not with just one playoff run left. So is Marcus Semien worth anything close to $30 million by himself? Maybe.

If you think he’s a league average second baseman right now, as Steamer projects him to be, then it’s actually a pretty easy argument to make. After all, Yasmany Tomas — who seems to project as roughly a league average outfielder — just got $68 million in guaranteed money from the Diamondbacks, and that contract included a fourth-year opt-out, so if he hits his upside, it really turns into $36 million for four years and then the D’Backs lose him to free agency. Semien’s skillset won’t be valued the same as Tomas’ right-handed power, but we have a very recent example of a team betting big on a 24 year old with no big league track record who doesn’t project as a superstar.

And while Semien’s skills may be valued less than Tomas’ skills, the contract terms are certainly far more favorable. Essentially, Semien is signed to a one year, $500,000 contract with five team options beyond that. If he plays well and they keep him through all five arbitration years, he’s probably going to make somewhere in the range of $20 to $30 million through his team controlled years, so to be worth $30 million in value above his paychecks, he’d have to be worth $50 to $60 million over those six years.

$10 million per year currently buys you Jason Hammel, Billy Butler, Nick Markakis, or Andrew Miller. Each of those four project for something like +1 to +2 WAR players in 2015, and each project to get worse as their contracts go forward. Is it unreasonable to expect Semien to be better than any of those four in 2015, or to improve as he reaches his prime? Steamer thinks he’s likely a +2 WAR player for 2015, on par or better than Asdrubal Cabrera, who the crowd projected for $33 million over three years. If an aging Cabrera is worth 3/$33M, is it really absurd to suggest that Semien would have a market value of 6/$50M?

As I noted in the piece about star player trade value last week, it seems like there’s currently a disconnect between the public and the teams themselves about the value of mid-level talents. If you think it’s an easy task to find capable +1 to +2 WAR players who can fill holes and perform reasonably well, then this trade makes no sense, because Marcus Semien would have little value. But Major League teams clearly do not think that it’s easy to find above-replacement-level pieces, because they’re paying a mint to get low-upside role players this winter.

Marcus Semien and some stuff feels like a light return for Jeff Samardzija, just like Drew Smyly and Nick Franklin felt like a light return for David Price, and Martin Prado and stuff felt like a light return for Justin Upton. At some point, we need to stop expecting the market value of very good players on short-term deals to be elite talents who could turn into superstars. Instead, it appears that the market value of these kinds of players is lower-ceiling, big league ready players who look like they could perform at roughly a league average level for multiple low cost years.

That kind of production might not be as sexy, but getting the equivalent performance of a $10 million player for the league minimum has legitimate value. Marcus Semien might not ever turn into anything more than just a nice little second baseman, but nice little second baseman aren’t so easy or cheap to acquire as we might think. As another trade piles up suggesting that this is what teams can expect in return for short-term frontline starters, we probably need to calibrate our expectations accordingly.

Jeff Samardzija is very good and very valuable. Marcus Semien is less good, but maybe not that much less valuable.

Someday, an up-and-coming SABR scientist should try to measure the psychic effect that losing has on ballplayers. As everyone knows from watching “The Natural,” losing is a disease — as contagious as polio, syphilis and bubonic plague. Attacking one but infecting all, though some more than others. And no other major leaguer over the past decade, among hitters, lost as frequently as Josh Willingham did.

Willingham, 35, recently announced his retirement after playing nine full seasons and parts of two more. What a relief it must have been for him to finish as a part-timer with the Kansas City Royals, who made it to the seventh game of the World Series. Only once before had Willingham played significant time for winning team (with the Florida Marlins in 2008), and never had he played in the postseason. Cross it off the list, call it a career. And it was a good one, aside from all of the losing.

Overall, his teams went 503-644 in Willingham’s appearances, producing a .439 winning percentage, the worst among anyone who recorded at least 4,000 plate appearances since he broke into the majors in 2004. It usually wasn’t Willingham’s fault that his team lost; he was the best hitter on the Marlins as a rookie, after Miguel Cabrera, and he was better than Hanley Ramirez. He was the fourth-best hitter in ’07, the third-best in ’08 — and in ’09 and ’10 after being traded to the Washington Nationals. He was the best hitter on the Oakland Athletics in 2011, and the Minnesota Twins in 2012.  It’s just that Willingham’s teams lost anyway.

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The list of non-tenders is out. Time to dream!

It’s actually a very tough place to shop, even if there are a few names that seem attractive this year. Only about one in twelve non-tenders manages to put up a win of value the year after they were let loose. Generally, teams know best which players to keep, and which to jettison.

You’re not going to get 12 non-tenders in your camp in any given year, but there is a way to improve your odds. It’s simple, really: pick up a player that was actually above replacement the year before. If you do that, you double your chance of picking up a productive major leaguer. So let’s look at this year’s market through that lens first.

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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.

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As you by now are well aware, Josh Donaldson was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays over the weekend in a blockbuster deal that sent Brett Lawrie back to Oakland. The Blue Jays gave up Lawrie and a few prospects to immediately get better, because Josh Donaldson is a guy that immediately makes any team better. Over the last two years, only Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen have a higher WAR than Donaldson, and Donaldson’s been three wins better than the next-best third baseman. Donaldson can hit, he runs pretty well for a third baseman, and he’s good with the glove. Add those up and you’ve got a hell of a player.

But there’s something to that last point — that he’s good with the glove — that’s been on my mind for awhile. It’s something I was going to write about when the Gold Glove winners were announced, but then Donaldson didn’t win, so I saved it for another day. Now that Donaldson is back in the news, today is that day.
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