Beaneball

John Perotto reports today: "Juan Pierre is looking like the odd man out in the Dodgers’ outfield, as he has been outplayed by Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp, who are likely to play on the corners, flanking center fielder Andruw Jones." There is justice in the world!

Also, "The Yankees recently kicked the tires on Oakland pitchers Rich Harden and Joe Blanton, but decided instead that they are satisfied with their starting rotation of Chien-Ming Wang, Andy Pettitte, Philip Hughes, Ian Kennedy, and Mike Mussina to abandon pursuit, while also deciding to leave Joba Chamberlain in the bullpen." There's been quite a bit of talk about how the Yankees have so much pitching depth, etc. etc. etc. Clearly, though, they realize, rightly, that the depth is likely illusory. Pettite and Mussina have had their injury and performance troubles, and Hughes, Kennedy, and Joba could all be pushing up against new highs in innings pitched, so New York would be smart to keep its eyes on who's available in the starting pitching market.

This is wrecking numerous fantasy teams: "The Rays are likely to send top third base prospect Evan Longoria to the minor leagues, in order to keep his arbitration and free agency clocks from starting." It also might well be a terrible decision from the standpoint of keeping your players happy. What's the difference in salary that Longoria is looking at here? $300,000 at the major league level vs. what if he's in the minors? Not to mention the fact that he'll hit free agency and arbitration later. Obviously, from a pure numbers standpoint, it's a good move for the Rays, but people aren't numbers, as much as we might like to treat baseball players that way. Furthermore, the Rays might actually be competitive this year, and Longoria is probably the best option at third base. (Willy Aybar apparently would get the spot if Longoria is in the minors.)

Finally, it looks like Josh Fields is headed back to AAA as well, which also may annoy some fantasy owners. Joe Crede's PECOTA projection for the year: 249/306/422. Fields? 253/333/468. By WARP, that works out to about a win and a half. Crede's got a rep as a solid major league third baseman, despite that awful projection, so there must be someone out there who'd give up something to get him, right? Wouldn't this be a win-win for the Sox?

In fact, I was just about to suggest that the A's consider Crede, given that Eric Chavez is apparently not going to start the year with the team and Jack Hannahan is ... well, he's Jack Hannahan. Then I looked at Hannahan's PECOTA: 253/351/425. It's not much power, but you have to like that on-base ability, which is precisely what Crede doesn't have. WARP-wise, Hannahan is about even with Fields. Interestingly, past player comments in the BP books indicate that Hannahan has a "Rolenesque" glove, and that his bat is the problem. Given that very adequate hitting projection, I'd be all for sending Eric Chavez on his merry way (the Dodgers need another injured third baseman, don't they?) as soon as they can get something decent for him. I'd miss him, because he's one of my favorite A's, but as far as the talent on the field and the talent in the minor-league system, I can't really say the team needs him.

I was going to make a snide comment about how the A's ripped the Tigers off for Hannahan, but then I looked at Jason Perry's numbers. (Perry's the guy the A's sent to Detroit for Hannahan.) As a 26-year-old outfielder last year, he hit 268/367/521 in Sacramento in 333 plate appearances. He fell apart in Toledo after the trade, but it was only 58 PA's. He's basically a nice extra outfielder to have around, the same way Hannahan is a nice extra infielder. Perry would be an interesting guy to pair with Marcus Thames as an extra outfielder in Detroit, given that Thames is all-power, no-on-base, while Perry is the opposite. Plus Perry has to be better than Jacque Jones, right?

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Baseball, Oakland A's at 13:32 | |

Four more cuts by the A's: Jerry Blevins, Kirk Saarloos, Matt LeCroy, and Henry Rodriguez. Rodriguez is the guy with a future, the name everyone's buzzing about, as his fastball apparently touches triple figures at times. But let's not get crazy: the guy is 21, he's got two professional American seasons under his belt, and he walked 58 hitters in basically 100 innings last year. He also hit four and threw 13 wild pitches, so I think it's safe to say he hasn't really harnessed his stuff yet. Of course, maybe we can get a tiny bit crazy about 106 strikeouts in those 100 innings and just two homers allowed. It is the low minors, so guys tend to not have a ton of power yet, but a homer every fifty innings is something either way.

LeCroy wasn't going to make the team once it became clear that Mike Sweeney was going to have a hell of a spring. LeCroy brings that nice 3rd catcher vibe, but that's not really necessary, is it? Better to have an actual hitter, and I think Sweeney can more closely approximate one of those than LeCroy at this point.

Saarloos was a long shot to make the team, what with Joe Blanton, Rich Harden, Justin Duchscherer, and Chad Gaudin ahead of him in the rotation. And then there's Dana Eveland and Lenny DiNardo, and even ol' Dallas Braden. I guess his best shot was probably as a long man, but you have to figure that spot belongs to either Eveland or DiNardo, probably the latter. This is not even to mention the fact Saarloos had an ERA over seven last year.

Jerry Blevins I'm a little more surprised about. He had an excellent minor league season last year, making four stops across three levels while racking up these numbers: 77 1/3 innings, three homers, 18 walks, and 102 whiffs. There's a lot to like in that line. That said, he's 24 and he's got a total of 2 2/3 innings in his career at AAA, so I guess it won't really hurt to let him sit down in Sacramento this year and be the A's eighth or ninth bullpen guy, called up if they need him. But I'm not sure I see seven or eight guys ahead of him: Huston Street, Alan Embree, Andrew Brown, Sandy Casilla, and Joey Devine are, I suppose, locks. Keith Foulke? Sure. So that's six, which explains why Blevins is out. I guess I'm just surprised he didn't last 'til the very end, at least to push Foulke. Then again, as I keep forgetting, we're basically at the very end already because of this silly Japan trip. The Red Sox games aren't until the 25th and 26th, but there are a couple of exhibitions lined up for the 22nd, and there are travel days, all of which add up to just three days of regular Arizona spring training left for the A's.

Have I mentioned already how silly this Japan thing is? The A's are going to go over there and play two regular season games, and then come back and have another exhibition series? (The Bay Bridge series that closes the exhibition season every year against the Giants.) And then play two more at home against Boston? For what? To try to drum up interest in baseball in Japan? Hey, Bud Selig! The Japanese already like baseball! And look, this is just me as an A's fan complaining. At least the A's have nothing to really play for this year (or at least that's what everyone says). What if you're the Red Sox? Doesn't this suck, this throwing off of your entire schedule? Aren't you in contention for another championship? Why do you get shafted? I guess it wouldn't have been right to have an A's-Royals series in Japan to start the season, but in some ways, that makes a hell of a lot more sense than sending the champs off on a glorified barnstorming tour. (Which baseball outlawed decades ago!)

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Oakland A's at 16:28 | |

Excellent news from Susan Slusser: Carlos Gonzalez and Eric Chavez aren't going to Japan. On the former, this is good because I'm worried the A's will blow one of their cheap years of Gonzalez trotting him out to center or right every day while the team struggles to win 75 games. On the latter, I was worried that Chavez was going to forego three days of treatment to DH in Japan when there are better DH options available and the A's are likely better served if he can get back on the field, where his glove can do damage to the other team, at full strength closer to the start of the (American) season.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Oakland A's at 22:52 | |

Barry M. Bloom, for MLB.com, wrote this about Greg Smith's outing today: "Smith may be setting the pace. It was his third appearance on Tuesday and just his second start. He threw 44 pitches and was so eager when he was removed from the game that he went down to the bullpen and tossed another 16 pitches." Isn't that last sentence wrong? In modern spring trainings, guys are set to throw x pitches in a particular outing in order to keep on track to be ready for the season. If they get through a bunch of innings in fewer than that number of pitches, but the team needs to pull them in order to get other guys work as well, they head down to the bullpen and finish out their pitch allotment down there. That's what happened here, I'd assume. After all, if he was "so eager", then why 16 pitches? That's a strange number, isn't it? Well, it's not strange if you consider that his total pitch count for the day would thus be 60.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Oakland A's at 22:38 | |

John Perrotto reports at Baseball Prospectus that "San Francisco has interest in Oakland first baseman Dan Johnson." My god Billy, what are you waiting for? Look, if Daric Barton isn't healthy, so what? Mike Sweeney will outhit Johnson this year, and he's right-handed. Jack Cust can DH, with an outfield of Chris Denorfia, Travis Buck, and Todd Linden. And if Barton is healthy, then great, Sweeney can start twice a week, once at DH and once at 1B, and PH once or twice more per week (for Bobby Crosby or Jack Hannahan, or Cust in a platoon situation). Oh, and if you trade Johnson, maybe Linden will stop whining about how he may not make the team. (On the other hand, do you really want to keep a guy who's whining in the middle of the spring about how he might not make the team?)

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Oakland A's at 19:08 | |