During the 2011 postseason, I wrote about Brandon Inge and the unusual circumstances of his season with the Detroit Tigers. In post entitled Brandon Inge’s Rare Feat, I explained that:

Based on my research, Inge appears to be the only player in the past 10 years with more than five years of major-league service who was designated for assignment, then was recalled by the major-league team that sent him down and then went on to play a significant role [for that team] in the postseason.

The Tigers had designated Inge for assignment last July after he batted .144/.202/.196 in 239 plate appearances. He reported to the Tigers’ Triple-A affiliate in Toledo, and hit his way back to Detroit in August. Upon his return, he batted .262/.315/.436 in 54 plate appearances and earned a spot on the Tigers’ postseason roster. He contributed a .429/.500/.571 line to the Tigers’ winning effort over the Yankees in the League Division Series and a .267/.389/.467 line in the Tigers’ loss to the Rangers in League Championship Series.

Heading into the 2012 season, Inge expected to play third base for the Tigers in the final year of his 2-year/$11 million contract. But Victor Martinez blew out his knee and was lost for the season, leading the the Tigers to sign Prince Fielder and move Miguel Cabrera to third base. The Tigers moved Inge to second base, where he split time with Ryan Raburn and Ramon Santiago. In twenty plate appearances, Inge hit .100/.100/.300. The Tigers released him on April 26.

Four days later, the Oakland A’s — desperate for just a replacement-level third baseman — signed Inge. In eleven games, Inge is producing for Oakland like he did for Detroit last postseason. In 50 plate appearances, Inge is hitting .227/.300/.545 with five walks, two doubles and four home runs. Two of Inge’s   homers have been grand slams, including this walk-off slam against the Toronto Blue Jays last week:

He’s also made some nifty defensive plays for the Green-and-Gold, including this catch of Omar Vizquel’s bunt attempt in the same game as the walk-off grannie.

Whether Inge will continue to produce for the A’s remains to be seen. Fifty plate appearances is a tiny sample size and runs counter to Inge’s career numbers: .234/.304/.389, .301 wOBA and 81 RC+.

Even so, Inge has already accomplished something few other major leaguers have: getting released from one team mid-season, signing with a new team that season, and making an immediate impact for the new team.

To be sure, there are dozens of players who’ve redeemed their careers in the the seasons following an outright release. Among pitchers who’ve recently turned their careers around after getting released there’s Brandon McCarthy, Ryan Vogelsong, Kevin Millwood, Clay Hensley, and Tim Byrdak. Among  position players, there’s Casey Kotchman, Melky Cabrera, and Jeff Francoeur.

But few players turn their season around with a new team following a release. Bobby Abreu’s been given a second chance with the Dodgers this season, after the Angels released him on April 26. After batting .208/.259/.303 in 27 plate appearances with Anaheim, Abreu’s posted a .296/.345/.444 line in 29 plate appearances for the boys in blue. Livan Hernandez has been useful out of the bullpen for the Braves this season, after getting released by the Astros at the end of spring training. In 22 1/3 innings, Hernandez has a 2.17 K/BB ratio and is stranding 81 percent of the runners on base.

Last season, the Rays released Cory Wade from their Triple-A affiliate in June only to see him become a steady reliever out of the Yankees bullpen.  The Rangers faced Arthur Rhodes in the World Series after they released him  August and he signed on with the Cardinals.

Pat Burrell turned his career around with the Giants in 2010, after the Rays released him in the second year of a 2-year/$16 million contract. At the time he left Tampa, Burrell was batting .202/.292/.333 with two home runs in 96 plate appearances. In San Francisco, Burrell batted .266/.364/.539 with eighteen home runs in 341 plate appearances and was a key component of the Giants’ first World Series Championship since the team moved to San Francisco in 1958.

Unlike Burrell and Abreu, there’s nothing in Inge’s career numbers to suggest he can sustain this offensive production for the A’s over the rest of the season. But Inge has proved us wrong before. And he may just do it again.

Even before Billy Beane and Scott Hatteberg and Moneyball, the Oakland A’s were a team that took a lot of walks. Over the 50 years of the Expansion Era (1961-2011), the A’s ended the season with a walk rate below the league average only eight times. Of those eight seasons, in only one did the A’s have a walk rate more than one percentage point lower than the league average. In 1978, the league average walk rate was 8.5 percent and the A’s walk rate was 7.3 percent.

On the flip side, Oakland has three of  the top fifteen walk-rate seasons in the last fifty years. The 1999 A’s share the record with the 2000 Mariners for highest team walk rate in the Expansion Era at 12 percent.  The 2000 A’s came in at 11.7 percent and the 1992 A’s at 11.3 percent. The league average in those seasons was 8.5 percent (1992), 9.5 percent (1999) and 9.6 percent (2000).

After Monday’s action, the A’s team walk rate is 7.9 percent, below the league average of 8.3 percent. That fact isn’t particularly interesting. But the way the A’s get to their 7.9 percent team walk rate is.

The A’s have three players in the top thirty in walk rate for batters with more than 50 plate appearances so far this season. Seth Smith leads the team with a 17.6 percent walk rate (15 in 67 plate appearances), followed by Jonny Gomes at 14.5 percent (9 in 51 plate appearances) and Daric Barton at 13.4 percent (9 in 57 plate appearances). The Indians also have three players in the top 30 (Carlos Santana, Travis Hafner and Shelley Duncan). No team has more than three players in the top 30. Ten teams have no players in the top 30.

The player with the lowest current walk rate in the majors for hitters with more than 50 plate appearances also plays for the A’s. Catcher Kurt Suzuki has one walk in 98 plate appearances, giving him a walk rate of 1 percent. Teammates Josh Reddick and Cliff Pennington also make the top 50 in lowest current walk rate. Reddick is at 4.1 percent (five walks in 121 plate appearances) and Pennington is at 4.4 (5 walks in 114 plate appearances).

If Smith, Gomes and Barton continue on their path and Suzuki, Reddick and Pennington continue on theirs, the A’s could match some interesting records for teams in the Expansion Era.

Since 1961 (and not counting the strike years of 1981 and 1994), only one team has had three players draw 20 walks or less in a season, among players qualifying for the batting title. On the 2007 Seattle Mariners, Jose Lopez drew only twenty walks, while Yuniesky Betancourt and Kenji Johjima drew fifteen each.

Only eight other teams over the last fifty years had two players end the season with twenty or fewer walks among players qualifying for the batting title (again, not counting the strike years).

The 1977 Cardinals were one of those teams. Ken Reitz drew nineteen walks that season. Garry Templeton drew only fifteen. But that Cardinals team also boasted two players who ended the season with more than 75 walks. Keith Hernandez and Ted Simmons each drew 79 walks. The 1977 Cardinals are the only team in the Expansion Era to have two players with twenty or fewer walks and two players with 75 or more walks in the same season.

Will the A’s match the 2007 Mariners for most qualifying players with twenty or fewer walks in a season? Will they match the 1977 Cardinals with two qualifying players with twenty walks or fewer and two players with 75 walks or more in the same season? Will they match both Expansion Era records?

We’ll have to watch and be patient. As patient as Seth Smith, Jonny Gomes and Daric Barton.

Way out in the National League West, the much-mocked Barry Zito and the much-debated Trevor Cahill are both off to good starts. Both players got their starts with the Oakland As before moving the to National League. Of more interest is that both players have, at different times, been held up as examples of pitchers for whom DIPS stats like FIP are inadequate. Without getting into lengthy discussions of each pitcher or the whole debate about DIPS (of which FIP is just one variety), let’s take a look at Zito and Cahill’s early-season performances with a glance at their past performances and see if there is anything of interest.

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After getting swept by the Mariners at home last week, the Tigers decided to make some changes, and those changes including releasing Brandon Inge. The longtime Tiger played himself out of a job last year and failed to improve on his struggles while making the conversion to second base this season, so Detroit finally cut him loose. After clearing waivers, the A’s swooped in and signed him to a contract, and will install him as their third baseman after designating Luke Hughes (claimed on waivers to take the position just last week) for assignment to make room for Inge.

On one hand, it’s hard to imagine how Inge could actually represent any grade of upgrade for a Major League team at this point in his career. He hit .197/.265/.283 last year and was just 2 for 20 to begin the 2012 season. As a soon to be 35-year-old, he looks like his career is nearly finished. On the other hand, the A’s in-house options at third base might actually be even worse.

The team began the year with Josh Donaldson tabbed as the starter coming out of spring training. Donaldson is a 26-year-old who was a below average hitter in the PCL last year. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t able to hold the job for more than a few days, as Bob Melvin had him split time with utility infielder Eric Sogard. Sogard was bad, but Donaldson was worse, so he ended up back in Triple-A and the team claimed Luke Hughes on waivers from the Twins. Hughes played four games before he was DFA’d to make room for Inge.

Using the rest-of-season ZIPS projections, we can see the forecast for Inge and the two guys who he’s being called on to replace:

Inge: .285 wOBA
Donaldson: .277 wOBA
Hughes: .274 wOBA

Almost unbelievably, Inge is actually projected to outhit both incumbents, but of course the margin is so small that all three could really just be lumped into the same “awful hitter” category.

Inge used to be an elite defender at third base, but injuries have taken their toll on him, and he’s not what he used to be with the glove. Still, given the atrocious options the A’s had in house, signing him actually represents a small upgrade offensively, as hard as that actually is to believe.

While velocity isn’t everything when it comes to being a successful major league starting pitcher, it’s surely a large part of the story. Starting pitchers who have a higher velocity — particularly on their four-seam fastballs — tend to have higher strikeout rates and induce weaker contact from opposing batters. And pitchers who can limit balls in play through strikeouts, tend to have lower earned run averages. Of course, not every major-league starter can sport a blazing fastball. A number of starting pitchers have not only survived, but they’ve thrived during seasons where their velocity was significantly lower than league-average.

Which brings us to the case of Oakland Athletics left-hander, Tom Milone. After starting five games as a 24-year-old for the Nationals last season, Milone was shipped out as part of the deal that sent Oakland’s Gio Gonzalez to Washington. Milone, now 25, has worked his way into the Athletics’ rotation this season — this despite an underwhelming fastball. Generally, Milone’s four-seam fastball (a pitch he throws about 54% of the time) has averaged less than 88 mph. For some perspective: In the past three seasons, major-league starters have averaged 91 mph on the four-seamer.

What are the odds that Milone can perform above league average this season, given the lack of zip on his fastball? To answer this, I looked at some similar pitchers who have played during the Pitch FX era (2007-present). Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Allen has been set free. With Daric Barton eligible to return from a stint on the disabled list, the Oakland Athletics designated Allen for assignment. The 26-year-old started two of the Athletics’ first four games but now finds himself on waivers — free to be claimed by any team. While Barton’s return likely meant that Allen would lose playing time, he is far from a franchise first baseman. And this may have been the wrong move for the rebuilding A’s.

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Dave Cameron laid out the methodology behind the rankings last Friday. Remember that the grading scale for each category is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

2012 Organizational Rankings

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston

Oakland’s 2011 Ranking: #18

2012 Outlook: 38 (25th)

Oakland’s neither here nor there right now, but there might not be a better team to help us through the new methodology. After all, they dropped ten rungs, and in some ways it’s business as usual in the bay.

We know going into these rankings, for example, that the current team isn’t (and hasn’t been) very good. Last year, they allowed 24 more runs than they scored, and then they spent the offseason trading away three of their top five starters, their All-Star closer, and their fourth outfielder and best left-handed reliever. Some projections have them only allowing 50 more runs than they score this season — seems almost generous after all that — but no matter what, those moves don’t really put them in a position to win more games than they won last year, right?

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It is to say nothing new or bold to note that spring-training stats and performances are to be regarded as one might regard a neighborchild holding a pair of tweezers for no discernible reason — which is to say, with suspicion.

There is, first of all, the issue of limited sample size (which leaves authors like the present one performing regression gymnastics). Beyond that, spring training offers a wider variation in the level of competition. One could, for example, face Roy Halladay and then both Austin Hyatt and B.J. Rosenberg in the same game, producing a 2-for-3 effort even after a three-pitch strikeout against the major leaguer of that group. Finally, there is also the question of player intent. As was noted on Twitter recently (by whom, I’ve unfortunately forgotten), Barry Bonds posted a 2:13 BB:K in 45 at-bats during the 2007 edition of spring baseball — before producing a 89:54 UIBB:K ratio that season. There’s reason to believe that Bonds, as many veterans are likely to do, was experimenting with this or that part of his game.

Now, with all of those reasonable statements stated, allow me to submit one that is slightly less so (although only by a little) — namely that, for players who are competing for their baseballing lives, spring-training performances are a relevant piece of the overall information puzzle.

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The Oakland Athletics have pined for a move to San Jose for some time. Bud Selig and Major League Baseball recently have put the issue onto the front burner, yet no resolution seems to be within reach at this point in the negotiations.

This potential move to San Jose is not simply another example of a professional sports franchise strong-arming the league and the public sector into building a new stadium. Instead, the potential move is about money. The organization desperately wishes to leave Oakland because the profitability of the area has waned. In fact, the Athletics reportedly lost money last season, despite healthy revenue sharing checks.

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With a single crack of the bat on a picturesque day in Phoenix, the legend of Oakland Athletics Yoenis Cespedes was born. From infield/outfield, to pre-game batting practice, to his 2-2 effort with a home run and a walk, Cespedes’ United States debut unfolded like a play where each act heightened the storyline to a memorable crescendo.

Video after the jump

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