Archive for Oakland Athletics

Ryan Kalish has freed up his mind and added fluidity to his swing. As a result, the 25-year-old outfielder has a chance to earn a roster spot with the Chicago Cubs. That’s only part of the story.

The once-highly-regarded prospect reached the big leagues with the Red Sox in 2010. His future looked bright, but instead of breaking out, he began breaking down. Injuries have dominated Kalish’s career. He missed all of last season and faced the possibility of never playing again. More on that in a moment.

The adjustments to Kalish’s left-handed stroke began in the off-season. Following a long stint on the shelf, he had to rediscover who he was.

“I was a little mechanical with everything,” said Kalish. “Coming back [from injuries] you think you’re going to just snap back into place. but it’s not that easy. A lot of baseball — especially the swing — is about fluidity and whatever feels most natural.

“Early in the off-season, I was just kind of taking a stride and swinging,” continued Kalish. “With fluidity, you have some sway, or what we like to call ‘swag.’ You have movement and flow. With everything that happened to me, I was concerned with all these little things. The advice I got was, ‘Hey, this is baseball and you have to be natural, you have to let your body do what it wants to do.’ You also have to free your mind. When you’re in the box, thoughts of what you’ve worked on have to go out the window. A lot of what we did as children, I’m trying to get back to now. Back then, we weren’t thinking about anything.”

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Three years ago, Derek Norris was a highly-regarded catcher in the Washington Nationals system. Known more for his bat than for his glove, he was battling injuries and scuffling at the plate in the High-A Carolina League.

Norris was subsequently traded to Oakland and broke into the big leagues with the A’s last summer, where he appeared in 60 games. This season the right-handed hitter is splitting time behind the plate with left-handed-hitting John Jaso.

Norris remains an unfinished product. The raw power is there — as are improved plate discipline and defensive skills. What’s eluded him so far are consistent performances. His home run jumpstarted the A’s to a win on Tuesday night, but overall he is hitting just .216/.340/.336 in 141 plate appearances.

Norris talked about his development when the A’s visited Fenway Park earlier this season.

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Seth Smith continues to mature as a hitter. Despite a recent cool stretch, the 30-year-old Oakland A’s outfielder is off to a .283/.366/.455 start. A career year may be in the offing, as well as a shedding of the platoon-player label.

A left-handed hitter, Smith came into the campaign with a career .614 OPS in limited at bats against same-handed slants. This season he is getting more opportunities versus southpaws, and the results have been positive — he’s hitting .345./.387/.586. The sample size is too small to be meaningful, but the same can’t be said of his efforts to fine-tune.

Smith talked about the evolution of his hitting approach — against righties and lefties alike — when the A’s visited Fenway Park in late April.

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Seth Smith: “When you get to the big leagues, you’re taking that next step from just kind of swinging and trying to hit home runs to working counts. The longer you’re around, the more you pay attention to what the pitchers are trying to do. Strengths and weaknesses become more important. Over time, you learn how to be a smarter hitter.

“I don’t think you ever have it completely figured out, but I’ve made a steady progression. I have a good idea of what I’m trying to do up there. You need to be right physically, but being right mentally is equally important.

“An adjustment I’ve made is not worrying about getting deep into counts, nor worrying about putting the first strike in play. It’s about waiting for the strike you’re looking for. That comes with at bats and knowing what the pitcher is going to do late in the count. The more comfortable you are — regardless of the count — the better chance you’re going to have of success.

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Farhan Zaidi isn’t the most famous member of the Oakland A’s front office — that would be Billy Beane — but he might be the smartest. Currently in his fifth year as the club’s Director of Baseball Operations, Zaidi has a Ph.D in economics from the Cal Berkeley. He also has a job description befitting the A’s Moneyball reputation. According to his bio, his primary responsibilities include “providing statistical analysis for evaluating and targeting players,” and “analyzing data from advance scouting reports.”

Zaidi talked about his team’s saber-slanted approach to roster construction between presentations at last weekend’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

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Zaidi on the value of taking risks: “If you’re a small or mid-market team, you’re compelled to engage in a high-variance strategy. We don’t want to just run our operation the same way everyone else does, with the same blend of stats and scouting, In some sense, the optimal strategy is to take risks. We make trades that might be perceived as risky. Sometimes they pay off, like Josh Reddick. Sometimes we acquire guys it turns out we were wrong about.

“If there isn’t some residual between how you evaluate players and how other teams evaluate them, then you’re just using industry values to put together the second-lowest payroll team in the league, and likely end up being the second-worst team. You kind of have to take those risks to outperform your payroll. Sometimes it’s going to backfire, just because you have to try to do something different.

“If I was the Yankees, that wouldn’t be my strategy. Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Melvin was named American League Manager of the Year after leading the overachieving Oakland A’s to a playoff berth. It was an honor well-deserved. The 51-year-old former big-league catcher knows how to nurture young talent, and the squad he skippered was laden with first- and second-year players. Melvin discussed five rookie members of his pitching staff during last week’s winter meetings.

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David Laurila: Tommy Milone, Jarrod Parker and A.J. Griffin all had relatively low strikeout rates. What does that mean for their success?

Bob Melvin: It means they can get deeper in games, and with younger guys, you really want them to cut down on their pitch counts.

As far as Tommy Milone, he’s more touch-and-feel, put the ball in play and keep it in the big part of the ballpark. He’ll use his changeup. He’s not really a strikeout guy, even though he has the ability to strike guys out.

A.J. Griffin has four pitches and he’s very unpredictable about when and where he is throwing them.

I think you’ll see Jarrod Parker potentially strike more guys out. His changeup is a strikeout pitch. He’s getting much better about the command of his fastball and where he wants to throw it. His velocity was 89-92 at times last year. Other times it was 92-95 and when it was 92-95 he was striking guys out.

DL: Are strikeouts and ground-ball rates less important in your home ballpark? Read the rest of this entry »

Jerry Blevins took the mound with a plan. The lefty reliever entered the game with runners on first and second and none out, his team trailing by two runs. Possessing neither overpowering stuff nor a high ground-ball rate, he was going to rely on scouting reports and location to get out of the inning. Seven pitches later, he did just that.

Blevins, who has appeared in 161 games over six seasons with the Oakland A’s, broke down this particular performance, pitch by pitch.

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Read the rest of this entry »

As FanGraphs readers know, Brandon McCarthy made some notable changes prior to the 2011 season. As Ryan Campbell wrote last October, the A’s right-hander fined-tuned his mechanics and traded in his four-seamer for a two-seamer and a cutter. The results of his data-driven adjustments were striking. Armed with a new repertoire and approach, McCarthy emerged as a frontline starter. He wasn’t satisfied. McCarthy is in the process of perfecting a new pitch, which he talked about prior to last night’s game at Fenway Park.

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Brandon McCarthy on his new changeup: “When I started this process, I knew that I needed a changeup and that I wasn’t going to go back to my old one. Finding a grip that will work has kind of been a slow process. I need something that I can throw for strikes, where I want it, and with enough action. It also needs to be slow enough.

“My old changeup was something nobody else throws. Read the rest of this entry »

The strength of the A’s is their pitching staff. And the strength of the A’s pitching staff — at least as far as the future is concerned — is Jarrod Parker. The 23-year-old right-hander is considered an ace-in-the-making, which is why Oakland was willing to trade Trevor Cahill and Craig Breslow to acquire him from Arizona this past December. Now 30 months removed from Tommy John surgery, Parker began this season in Triple-A before making his first Oakland start last Wednesday. If all goes as planned, he’ll be making plenty more in years to come.

Parker talked about his enhanced repertoire — which includes a two-seamer and a pair of changeups — prior to last night’s game at Fenway Park.

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Parker on his repertoire and approach: “I throw four- and two-seamers, a changeup, a slider and a curveball. I’m aggressive. I like to attack the zone, down. I started throwing a two-seamer last year and it has helped me to use fewer pitches and go deeper into games. After surgery, I also really focused on learning a good changeup. I’m trying to not throw as many breaking balls, just use them when I need to.

“I work down more than I did [before the surgery]. The two seamer really helps me get down in front, because when it’s up, it’s not doing anything. It helps remind me to get down through it and finish out in front. I think that takes a lot of stress off of my elbow.”

On changing eye levels: Read the rest of this entry »

Wendy and Matt have already covered the NL West and AL Central, so let’s continue to show that we here at FanGraphs are not subject to East Coast bias and look at the other set of second baseman on the left coast: the AL West. Due to the presence of the A’s and Mariners, the AL West does not generally project as a strong offensive division, but second base is the exception with two All-Stars, a potential star, and the younger brother of an All-Star second baseman. Let us know how you think these players will perform next year.

Texas has the most well established player in the division in Ian Kinsler, a player with a strong walk rate and excellent power for his position. Last season, he posted the 4th highest WAR total in the American League on the strength of a .370 wOBA. Pretty impressive considering his .243 BABIP was 39 points below his career average. The big factor was that he eclipsed 650 plate appearances for the first time in his career. No one has ever doubted Kinsler’s talent level – for his career he has posted 4.64 WAR per 650 plate appearances – just his durability. This is the big question going into 2012, along with whether he can maintain his power while simultaneously raising his BABIP. It may be a coincidence, but the two seasons in which he has posted an ISO above .220, he has had BABIP’s of .241 and .243. All of his other seasons have resulted in ISO’s below .200, and BABIP’s ranging from .279 to .334. Read the rest of this entry »

The third installment of this series — short unpublished interviews from three years ago, focusing on the 1980s — features Dave Duncan. A big-league catcher for 11 seasons, Duncan went on to become the pitching coach for the Oakland A’s from 1986 to 1995. He currently serves in that role for the St. Louis Cardinals.

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Duncan, on what made the A’s pitching staffs of the late ‘80s so good: “Balance. It was a well-balanced staff with good starting pitching. We had Rick Honeycutt, a good left-handed reliever, and we had a great closer in Dennis Eckersely. In middle relief we had guys like Gene Nelson. It was just a really well-balanced pitching staff.

“At times it has been said about the Yankees that they play a six-inning game. There have been periods where their bullpen was strong enough that if they were leading after six, they were pretty much going to win the game. The pitching staff we had in ’88 and ’89 was a lot like that. We had depth and balance to where if we had the lead we had a good chance of winning.”

On Dave Stewart: “Stewart was good because he had good stuff, including a unique pitch in his split-finger. He was a fierce competitor. He never had a game where he wasn’t up for it — either mentally or physically. I think that all of your good pitchers are that way. Sometimes that separates really good pitchers from guys who could be really good, but never get there because they’re not able to do the things — mentally or physically — that allow them to not let starts get away from them.”

On catching Catfish Hunter and Jim Palmer: “What can you say about them? They were great pitchers. They personified exactly what I’m talking about when I say great physical ability and the right mental makeup, and mental approach, to pitching. And they were competitors — really good competitors.”

On Terry Steinbach and Carlton Fisk: “They were both very conscientious about taking each pitcher and knowing how to use what that pitcher was capable of doing effectively. They also didn’t have off days mentally. They were into the game when they played.”

On pitching in the 1980s: “I don’t see a lot of difference in how pitchers were used, although I think pitching changes. I think the 1980s was a period of time where a lot of guys were starting to throw split-fingers again. That was a very effective pitch and it was coming back — the split-finger, or forkball.”

On Billy Martin and pitcher abuse: “He was an exception. In the 1970s, it was common for guys to throw a lot more pitches, and pitch a lot more innings. But by the 1980s I think that everyone had become really aware of pitch counts and usage. They were pretty protective of pitchers. For your top-of-the-rotation guys, 230 or 240 innings was pretty common.”

On being a pitching coach: “I think that you never stop learning. I’ve learned a lot from pitchers. I’ve learned a lot from other pitching coaches. I’ve learned from bullpen coaches. And a lot of what you do is have a common-sense approach to solving problems. Not every pitcher has a different style, but most every pitcher has something that’s unique to him. A big part of being a pitching coach is recognizing what a pitcher does well, and honing it.”