Oakland A’s

The A’s had yet another glorious regular season featuring another marvelous second half (and a winning streak you may have heard about), followed by another ignominious post-season defeat, followed by another good, and I think better than it looks, offseason.

First, the downside. The A’s won 103 games, but their Pythagorean record (i.e their predicted performance based on their runs scored and allowed) was just 96 wins. Their record in 1-run games was an excellent 32-14. They won despite serious offensive struggles at C, CF, and, in the first half, RF because they received better than expected performances from Jeremy Giambi (while he was there), Scott Hatteberg, Mark Ellis, and of course John Mabry. All of these suggest the A’s had more than their fair share of luck last year.

On the upside, the A’s featured perhaps the strongest starting rotation in the league and were 3rd in the AL in defensive efficiency (turning balls-in-play into outs). Put it all together and, although the bullpen struggled some, they gave up the 2nd fewest runs in the league. Miguel Tejada won the MVP, Barry Zito won the Cy Young, Jermaine Dye improved in the second half of the season (giving hope he’s back to form after the broken leg), and Chad Bradford continued to be a great bargain.

Are they a better team in 2003? They’re mostly the same team in 2003, so let’s look at the major changes.

Erubiel Durazo. Durazo can hit. This comes as a surprise to no one, though some out there seem to have begun to doubt this. The question is, can he hit enough?

It’s not that his hitting ability should be doubted, it’s that he has big shoes to fill. Noone ever thought the day would come when John Mabry would leave a team with big shoes to fill, but, in 2002, Mabry and Giambi combined for an OBP of 354 and a SLG of 500 in 398 PA. You can probably expect a little more out of Durazo than that, and hopefully more PA, but he’s not likely to be a difference-maker. He’ll be a much better player than Mabry 2003, but probably not that much better than Mabry 2002.

Of course he also has an extensive injury history and hasn’t hit lefties at all (though it’s only a meager 108 AB, irregularly spread out over 3 seasons), so maybe 398 PA is about right.

The Foulke-Koch trade. On the surface, Keith Foulke and Billy Koch look pretty similar. Foulke has a career ERA of 3.36 (ERA+ of 139) while Koch has the slightly higher career ERA of 3.48 (ERA+ of 138) but is two years younger than Foulke.

However, Foulke’s career numbers are badly skewed by the disastrous start of his career. Coming up in 1997 as a starter for the Giants, Foulke pitched 44 2/3 innings and gave up a staggering 41 earned runs. Since being moved to the pen by the White Sox in the latter part of 1997, Foulke has posted an ERA of 2.87. His ERA+ for the last 4 seasons are 215, 174, 198, and 159; Billy Koch has hit those heights only once (2000).

Back to the trade. Although Foulke is clearly the better pitcher, this part of the trade can still be defended because Foulke stands to be a free-agent at the end of the year, while Koch won’t be an FA until after 2004. Foulke is better than Koch, but two years of Koch may be better than one of Foulke. If the A’s can’t re-sign Foulke at a reasonable price, the White Sox will have done fine in this part of the trade.

But where Beane almost always wins is in small trades and the "throw-ins" on bigger trades. Somehow, in exchange for 2 PTBNL, Beane convinced the Sox to part with a solid cheap young C who knows how to walk in Mark Johnson and a live bullpen-ready young arm in Joe Valentine. Johnson is, at worst, a nearly perfect back-up C and I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to see him starting by the end of the year.

So in the short-term, the A’s significantly improved their bullpen and, in the short- and long-terms, improved their catching depth. Nice job.

Chris Singleton?? No move seemed to puzzle, if not downright disappoint, stathead fans more than the A’s signing Singleton. This low-offense, undisciplined, no-power centerfielder appears to be the opposite of an A’s player. However, here are some numbers for you:

2000: 269
2001: 265/249
2002: 242

Those are the EQAs of Terrence Long 2000, Long/Johnny Damon 2001, and Long 2002, i.e. Oakland’s CFs of the last 3 seasons. Long is a lousy defensive CF while Damon is a rather good one.

It’s a bit uncertain how good Chris Singleton is defensively as different metrics have him as average, above-average, or excellent, but everyone agrees he’s a major upgrade on Long. What everyone overlooks is that, despite his poor plate discipline, he’s been an OK hitter. His EQAs starting with 1999: 277, 236, 263, 263.

So why Chris Singleton? Singleton gives the equivalent of the best of what Long has given them on offense and a glove closer to what Damon gave them on defense. In other words, scary as it may be, Chris Singleton should be an improvement in CF compared to what they’ve had the last three seasons.

The "problem" with Singleton is that he moves Long to left, where Long may be even less valuable than in center (he’ll be less valuable offensively, but less detrimental defensively, so it may all even out). In other words, the problem is Long, not Singleton.

So what do these changes add up to? Last year the A’s main problems were C, CF and the bullpen. These moves improve all three of those positions and add the small upgrade of Durazo over Mabry/Giambi.

Now that we’ve gone over the big changes, let’s look ahead to 2003:

Offense. The A’s finished 8th in the league in scoring, 5th in the league in OBP, 7th in the league in slugging. Some of that is due to the Coliseum being a pitcher’s park (e.g. the park-adjusted EQA statistic puts them tied for 4th in the league), but no matter how you slice it, the A’s are not an offensive powerhouse. However, if Long can return to his 2000-2001 form and Singleton can maintain what he’s done the last two years, this is a lineup with only one below-average hitter. Here’s the starting lineup:

Ellis, 2B
Hatteberg, 1B
Tejada, SS
Chavez, 3B
Dye, RF
Durazo, DH
Long, LF
Hernandez, C
Singleton, CF

The bench for the A’s looks to be quite good. The A’s plan to go with 11 pitchers, opening up 5 bench spots for hitters. C Mark Johnson and middle infielder Frank Menechino are practically guaranteed two of those spots. For the remaining three spots, the A’s had the following players in camp: Ron Gant, Eric Byrnes, Adam Piatt, Mitch Meluskey, Rontrez Johnson, Billy McMillon, and Jason Grabowski. That’s 7 guys capable of being productive bench players competing for three spots, which is a good plan. Johnson has since been sent back to the Rangers (and picked up by the Royals), Meluskey has been sent down, and Grabowski will almost certainly go back to AAA. Byrnes has an option left, so it looks like it will be Gant, Piatt, and McMillon. Still, almost no matter what choice they make, they’ll have a strong bench.

Overall, the A’s offense should be eerily similar to last year’s. Like 2001 and 2002, expect the offense to need a mid-season boost. Like 2001 (Dye) and 2002 (Durham), expect Beane to make a move.

Pitching and Defense. Zito, Mulder, Hudson. While there’s some reasons to think that Zito isn’t quite as good as he’s looked, there’s no question this is the best trio of starters in the game. The only question I had about them going into 2002 was whether Mulder’s jump from 5.1 K/9 to 6.0 K/9 was for real, and he answered that by bumping it all the way up to 6.9 K/9. If A’s fans still want something to fret over, all I can offer is that Hudson has fallen to 5.7 K/9.

At last report, the 4th spot is going to Ted Lilly and the 5th spot to John Halama with Ed Yarnall and Aaron Harang down in AAA, and Rich Harden possibly up by mid-season. I like Halama and think he could be a lefty version of Cory Lidle.

The bullpen appears to be set and looks quite strong. Foulke is perhaps the best reliever in baseball, Rincon is an effective lefty-killer, Bradford is a durable sidearmer. Jeremy Fikac has looked good this spring. Lefty Micah Bowie and Rule 5-er Mike Neu round out the pen, with Jim Mecir due back soon. With Foulke’s history as a multi-inning reliever and his desire to become a starter, it will be interesting to see if the A’s will use him for more extended outings.

On defense, the A’s should again be near the top. Chavez and Hatteberg anchor a very solid infield defense; Dye should be more fully recovered from his broken leg and return to at least an average RF; Singleton is an upgrade in CF. That leaves LF as the only question mark, but Long has been about average when playing there before and Ron Gant is surprisingly good.

Prediction for 2003. The A’s look like the AL West favorites to me. I don’t expect them to win over 100 games again unless Beane significantly upgrades the offense. But 90-95 wins seem to be a good bet, and I think that will be enough to squeak out a win in this tough division.

What could derail those plans? The A’s have sufficient depth just about everywhere but SS and 3B, who also happen to be their two best players. A serious injury to either Tejada or Chavez would put the A’s in a very tough spot. The starting staff is the other key to this team and while I think they could hang in there if one of their aces goes down for a bit, injuries to 2 of the 3 big guns would probably be too much to overcome.

Looking further ahead. Whether the A’s will be good in 2003 was a fairly easy question to answer, but what about the future? Here’s how long the A’s have their core players under their control (via contract or arbitration, assuming all reasonable options exercised):

2003: Tejada, Foulke
2004: Dye, Chavez
2005: Hudson, Hernandez, Long, Durazo
2006: Zito, Mulder, Johnson
2007: Ellis

First, we can see that this team should remain good through 2004 at least and, since the core pitchers are signed through 2005-2006, should be at least competitive through then. It’s hard to imagine a GM doing a better job of tying up productive young players at reasonable prices.

The A’s have already announced that they won’t re-sign Tejada, but they should have a shot at keeping Chavez with Dye’s $10 million per year coming off the books after 2004. This means A’s fans need to keep their fingers crossed on Bobby Crosby, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see the A’s sign a stopgap SS for 2004 (Jose Hernandez maybe).

That’s not to say it’s all rosy. The Dye contract looked badly overpriced from the start and the Hernandez and Long contracts have turned into very bad ideas. The A’s will be spending about $30 million on those three players over the next two years (not to mention what was spent in 2002), money that either could have been more wisely invested now to push this team into the stratosphere or could have been saved up to help with resigning Tejada and Chavez.

2003 ZiPS Projections - Click for info

PO Player       G  AB   R   H 2B 3B HR RBI BB  SO SB CS   BA  OBP  SLG
C  Hernandez  140 431  54 106 22  0 12  53 42  65  1  0 .246 .321 .381
1B Durazo      79 208  36  51 11  1 13  37 42  53  0  1 .245 .377 .495
2B Ellis      128 456  70 124 29  3  7  42 52  73 10  4 .272 .352 .395
3B Chavez     157 577  94 167 31  2 36 112 61 108  7  2 .289 .359 .537
SS Tejada     162 653 110 194 31  1 35 126 47  88  8  2 .297 .354 .508
LF Long       160 612  85 164 34  4 16  77 51  94  5  4 .268 .326 .415
CF Singleton  141 465  63 122 26  5  9  48 25  78 15  8 .262 .304 .398
RF Dye        147 560  80 149 30  1 26  92 60 106  3  1 .266 .346 .463
DH Hatteberg  121 412  45 109 21  2 11  47 56  47  0  1 .265 .359 .405
c  Johnson     98 304  37  73 10  1  7  27 39  56  2  1 .240 .333 .349
c  Meluskey   100 294  34  84 16  0 11  50 50  61  1  0 .286 .394 .452
if Menechino  124 427  66  97 19  1  9  52 63  91  3  5 .227 .332 .340
if Lopez      131 488  55 131 24  1  8  60 51  55  1  2 .268 .344 .371
2b German     134 490  85 132 17  3  5  37 74  83 24 12 .269 .370 .347
of Piatt      113 353  51  94 20  1 10  49 42  72  4  3 .266 .350 .414
of Byrnes     113 331  60  89 18  1 13  37 25  52 12  3 .269 .326 .447
of Gant       102 308  49  72 18  1 15  45 36  74  3  7 .234 .317 .445
of Grabowski  107 376  59 101 26  3 12  53 56  87  4  4 .269 .369 .449

PO Player        W  L  ERA  G GS  IP   H ER HR BB  SO
SP Zito         17  9 3.33 34 34 211 172 78 16 70 212
SP Hudson       15 10 3.67 34 34 227 213 93 18 64 180
SP Mulder       15 10 3.46 31 31 203 189 78 16 47 169
SP Lilly         6  5 4.06 27 21 124 110 56 16 43 119
SP Halama        8  9 4.67 31 19 131 141 68 15 39  69
SP Harang       10  7 3.87 28 26 142 127 61  8 57 112
SP Hiljus        6  7 4.76 29 18 121 117 64 21 41 106
SP Duchscherer   8  7 4.02 22 22 132 124 59 15 40 100
RP Neu           4  2 3.66 58  0  64  50 26  6 28  73
RP Snow          3  3 4.17 54  0  54  40 25  6 32  68
RP Harville      2  4 5.00 38  0  45  40 25  8 23  47
RP Bowie         6  8 4.81 39 14 118 112 63 14 57  94
RP Fikac         5  5 4.22 71  0  81  77 38 10 27  69
RP Rincon        3  1 3.24 65  0  50  44 18  3 14  44
RP Bradford      4  2 3.00 65  0  66  60 22  3 12  51
CL Foulke        6  2 2.96 65  0  79  67 26  5 17  73
ZiPS is not a playing time predictor and should not be added for team totals.