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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Friday, July 08, 2022J.J. Cooper: Looking Back At ‘Moneyball’ 20 Years LaterSub required.
RoyalsRetro (AG#1F)
Posted: July 08, 2022 at 11:59 AM | 13 comment(s)
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1. Doug Jones threw harder than me Posted: July 08, 2022 at 02:06 PM (#6085994)But also IIRC, the basic idea of the Moneyball was to try to identify players of value that they could sign cheaply.
The Oakland A's throughout the mid-2000's were IIRC a pretty old team:
2007 Oakland A's:
C J. Kendall 33
1B D. Johnson 27
2B M. Ellis 30
SS B. Crosby 27
3B E. Chavez 29
LF S. Stewart 33
CF N. Swisher 26
RF T. Buck 23
DH M. Piazza 38
Also:
J. Cust 28
M. Scutaro 31
K. Suzuki 23
M. Kotsay 31
J. HAnnahan 27
D. Murphy 42
D. Barton 21
M. Bradley 29
T. Walker 34
B. Kielty 30
A. Melhuse 35
Average age: 29
Though on the hurler side they were quite a bit younger:
J. Blanton 26
D. Haren 26
C. Gaudein 24
L. Dinardo 27
J. Kennedy 28
D. Braden 23
A. Embree 37
S. Casilla 26
H. Street 23
J. Marshall 24
K. Calero 32
Average age 26.6
Fairly enough, this article (not that I've read it) looks beyond just who they picked, adding their other prospect rankings. Those might be worse and of course their draft looks better in part because they never had the chance to draft Greinke and others.
Beyond all that, if you were looking for financial efficiency then the obvious move at the time was to sign as many Dominican and Venezuelan kids as you could get your hands on. I don't recall the A's being very active on that front. If they were, they don't seem to have found any superstars there either (Tejada signed back in 1993).
In my poking around, I found what might be the luckiest spot in the draft -- the #22 overall pick. Palmeiro (72 WAR) and Biggio (66) lead the way but there are 5 more who made it to 20 and 7 who made it to 11. Your #22 AS team:
C Biggio 66 WAR
1B Palmeiro 72
2B Wong 21
SS Craig Reynolds 13
3B Dave Anderson 6
LF Tom Goodwin 8
CF Chet Lemon 56
RF Jayson Werth 29
Bench: Ricky Jordan 5, Lee Stevens 2
SP: Bruce Hurst 34, Rick Helling 20, Jeremy Guthrie 18, Stroman 18, Gil Meche 17, Kyle Gibson 14
RP: Matt Thornton 13, Steve Karsay 11, Glen Perkins 9, David Aardsma 2
For comparison the #21 spot has just 6 players who made it to 11 WAR. Slots 19 (Clemens, Grich) and 20 (Mussina, CC) may be better at the very top but don't have the depth. #16 is quite similar but you have to go all the way up to #6 (mainly because of Bonds) or #4 to find a slot that's had clearly superior results. And #22 has had clearly better results than #9 and #11.
Anyway, the Brown pick was pretty odd. It's one thing to "save money" but why risk missing out on Obenchain and Teahen, players the A's apparently thought were worth more than Brown (who nobody else was gonna pick in that slot). I see the Reds did something similar, drafting Mark Schramek at #40 but giving him just $200 K.
The Cubs did their usual great job, getting Luke Hagerty at #32, Chadd Blasko at #36 and Matt Clanton at #38 and giving them a total of $3.2 M. That was slot money but you can see why the A's might have thought a total under $2 M for Brown, Obenchain and Teahen was likely to produce as much value.
All told the last 16 picks of the 1/1s cost $14-14.5 M (Mayberry Jr unsigned) and produced under 4 WAR, Teahen the best player.
Oh, c'mon. Don't hide Chet Lemon in the middle of the list. In addition to the fact that he's a classic HoVG guy, he has one of the great names in modern baseball, and delivered his teams a great deal of value by being willing to lean into a fastball. Chet Lemon is a dude to be remembered.
Tony Perez (54 WAR): 309 votes (and eventual induction, in 2000).
Chet Lemon (56 WAR): 1 vote. (Lemon had more WAR than six HOFers on that year's ballot: Perez, Minoso, Kaat, Rice, Oliva and Sutter.)
CL 7874 PA, 121 OPS+, 56 WAR, 3 AS games
KP 7831 PA, 124 OPS+, 51 WAR, 10 AS games, 6 GG, a 2nd and two 3rds in MVP
TH 9692 PA, 110 OPS+, 51 WAR, 5 AS games, 9 GG, some MVP votes
TH 7740 PA, 115 OPS+, 50 WAR (similar peak)
Lemon was also involved in two lopsided trades. He was an A's draft pick and they traded him and Dave Hamilton (a reliever with a bit left) for Stan Bahnsen (4 WAR left, 3 for the A's) and Skip Pitlock (who never pitched in the majors again, not that anybody wanted him to). Several years later, the Sox traded Lemon, just turning 27, to the Tigers for Steve Kemp who had one OK season for the Sox then became infamous for getting a nice contract out of the Yanks. Somebody can check but my best guess is that both players were a year away from FA but the Tigers extended Lemon. I can't imagine that Lemon's demands were extreme -- I guess the Sox had Rudy Law and a young Baines so probably they thought Kemp was a better 1-year fit.
(Just read the SABR bio ... apparently the Sox and Lemon had a verbal agreement on a new contract which would have made him the highest-paid player on the team. But then they signed Fisk to more money before Lemon signed and he backed out of the deal. In the SABR bio, looking back, he calls himself childish for the move. That sort of thing will usually get you traded.
But Steve Kemp was a legitimate hitter and the same age as Lemon. The real problem with the trade was that Kemp was a year way from free agency at the time of the trade, and Lemon wasn't.
Kemp then got hit in the eye with a ball during batting practice his first year from the Yankees, had trouble with his vision, and was never the same. He kept plugging away, though, and even spent a year in the minors at the age of 32, trying to fight his way back.
I think they both entered FA the same season. Kemp left for NY. Chet re-signed with Detroit.
Never really thought of these guys as similar. Kirby was an extreme high average guy. Won a batting title, hit .356 another year, and .318 career. But his OBP is only slightly higher than Chet’s despite outhitting Chet by 45 points. Plus there’s body type, no other outfielders in recent memory looked anything like Kirby. Hunter was more similar, average about the same as Lemon but more power, less OBP. I can see Lemon and Hunter as similar players, but Kirby is a different species.
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