The Best Laid Plans
After watching an anemic offense struggle through the 2008 season, the A’s decided to make some upgrades to add a little thump to their line-up. They traded for Matt Holliday, then went out and signed Jason Giambi, Orlando Cabrera, and Nomar Garciaparra. The new pieces gave them balance and depth to their line-up, at least on paper.
So far, it hasn’t worked. At all.
Holliday hsan’t quieted any of the concerns about how well he would hit away from Coors Field. He’s still the aggressive hitter he’s always been, but the ball just isn’t flying off the bat right now. A .109 ISO is not what the A’s had in mind. He’s certainly better than this, and the bat will come around, but Oakland needs it to happen sooner than later.
Holliday has looked like Babe Ruth compared to the three free agents the A’s signed, however. Giambi has a .270 wOBA, and he is yet to hit his first home run in his second tour of duty with the A’s. Cabrera is hitting .211/.277/.246 – even though they signed him for his defense, they weren’t expecting Rey Ordonez production at the plate. Nomar has been the worst of the bunch at .179/.200/.286, and as always, nagging injuries have kept him from being able to take the field regularly.
There’s no question that all four of these hitters will produce at higher levels than they have so far. However, the A’s need the corporate slump to end ASAP. They can’t win if they’re not scoring any runs, and the new guys are the ones who are supposed to be providing the thump.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
An offense so bad, it generated 2 almost simultaneous FanGraphs posts.
Yea, sorry about the duplicate content, folks. Great minds think alike?
Then why exactly are we thinking alike?
You were trying to get even because David Aardsma made two of your outfielders look like eight year olds?
Well, that was excessively cruel.
And still will anyone say anything bad about Billy Beane?
I’ll say something bad about him: He’s not quite as sexy as Brad Pitt.
Other than that, I’d say he’s doing a pretty good job.
Why would you?
BP’s third order wins have the A’s as the best team in the AL West.
Wow if only divisions were won and lost based on 3rd order wins
I think this entire article is about how things on paper don’t always work out
Feel free to elaborate on why Beane should be blamed for a two-and-a-half-week hitting slump. I’m sure you have other reasons, but you haven’t so much as mentioned one, and you’re coming across as someone who simply wants to pick a fight.
I am not attempting to say that its Beane’s fault that the team has yet to hit.
My only point is that every move Billy Beane makes doesn’t have to be praised as another golden egg
…because what this post is full of is praise for every move Beane made like it was another golden egg.
Beane is praised for the overall process, not the minutia. This is baseball employing real humans, not chess with immutable pieces. Not every move works out. But if the philosophy behind the moves is a sound one, more will work out than not, and that’s how you improve a team. How does the A’s process compare to other teams, particularly teams with similar payrolls?
Of course Beane’s job is getting harder, because more teams are learning to work the same way so the inefficiencies he can exploit are fewer and less pronounced. But how many other teams would still be better off with him in charge?
I’ve been an A’s fan all my life and while I’m not going to saddle Beane with the blame here, I do wonder how a Major League team can change its season-to-season “mission statement” so frequently in a three-year span.
April 2007: “We’re just a ‘Mike Piazza’ away from winning the AL West again. Let’s keep the ’06 Division Champs together!”
April 2008: “We’re rebuilding.”
April 2009: “We’re good enough to win a shaky AL West. Let’s sign some declining hitters are cross our fingers.”
Obviously, I’m grateful for the work Beane’s done in Oaktown, but the recent focus of my favorite team seems to change with the wind.
Well, they didn’t decide they were rebuilding until halfway through the ’08 season. Beane dealt Harden in July when the A’s were five games behind the Angels and 3 1/2 games out in the wild card, but he had a lot of injured regulars at that point and clearly decided that the A’s wouldn’t be able to sustain their spot, let alone climb ahead of those clubs.
I think Beane’s real problem was that in ’07 they formulated 5 year plan that culminated in a new stadium in 2012, and that evaporated along with Cisco field.
I thought the trades of Dan Haren and Nick Swisher in the offseason, prior to 2008 were clear indications that the A’s were punting on ’08. They were surprising contenders for the first few months, but the Harden/Blanton deals were just offshoots of their previously established re-boot of the roster.
And because so many of his moves have been golden eggs, we should then fire up the hate parade because of a SSS hitting slump just to make sure he’s not TOO respected?
Hmmm, I would argue that the A’s strength has been there ability to develop talent, not to sign FA or trade for major league players