Beaneball

Chris Young returns, Daric Barton DFA'd

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

Chris Young makes his return from the disabled list today, and to make room for him on the 25-man roster, the A's designated Daric Barton for assignment. Shipping Barton out was one of three possibilities, the other two being the optioning of Luke Montz and the waiving of Nate Freiman. The team professes to want to keep Barton, of course, but every team professes to want to keep every player they designate for assignment. Optioning Montz would not have required a 40-man move.

Since I can't make sense of the roster jumble in my head, let's work this out on paper.

The base lineups, it seems, as it stands, with Barton designated:

v RHP

C: Norris
1B: Moss
2B: Sogard
SS: Lowrie
3B: Donaldson
LF: Cespedes
CF: Crisp
RF: Smith
DH: Jaso

(Note that this is not tonight's lineup, as Melvin has opted for Chris Young in right with Seth Smith on the bench.)

v LHP

C: Norris
1B: Freiman
2B: Lowrie
SS: Rosales
3B: Donaldson
LF: Cespedes
CF: Crisp
RF: Young
DH: Montz

Suppose instead that the team had optioned Montz:

v RHP

C: Jaso
1B: Barton
RF: Moss
DH: Smith

v LHP

DH: Moss? Smith?

I'm not sure I see either of these options as obviously better than the other, now that they're drawn out. Bob Melvin made a defense-over-offense choice tonight with Chris Young in right instead of Seth Smith, but I suspect that's part of the A's "just got on the roster? Okay, you're starting!" plan as much as anything. Long term, if Smith is on the bench against righties, I don't know why he's on the roster.

What having Barton around does, though, is push Derek Norris out of the lineup and force John Jaso behind the plate. Norris is hitting in some sense of the word (.218/.364/.322), but I'm not sure you worry about that. Jaso isn't a great catcher, but Norris isn't the second coming of Yadier Molina either.

Barton does help the defense against righties because Barton is probably better than Moss at first and Moss is probably better than Smith in the outfield, so you get a cascading improvement in ball-catching.

Losing Montz would create a dilemma against lefties—as it stands, Melvin can run an entirely right-handed lineup out against your C.C. Sabathias and Jason Vargases. Without Montz, he couldn't do that.

The issue of Montz being a third catcher so that Jaso can designatedly hit is sort of a moot point, as I see it. If Barton stuck around instead of Montz, then Jaso would not DH in the v. RHP lineup anyway because he'd need to vacate the DH spot for Smith so that Barton could start.

I don't know whether a team will claim Barton. I don't know whether it matters. He got on base five times in 23 trips to the plate in his brief time in Oakland and he hasn't hit since 2010. Defense at first base only goes so far.

Who is the A's emergency [X]?

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

Tonight's win over Texas resulted in half a game of a fun lesson in what happens when "injury stacks" happen: you wind up with your everyday first baseman playing center field. That's what Bob Melvin was forced to turn to when Yoenis Cespedes had to leave the game with a tummyache¹. With Coco Crisp, Chris Young, and Josh Reddick all on the disabled list until at least Wednesday (when there's now some hope that Crisp could actually be the first one off the list, with Young apparently not recovering as fast and the possibility of Reddick having surgery being tossed around), it's amusing to ponder what the A's depth chart at each situation actually looks like and how many owies it would take to get to a really dire situation.

In center, we've already seen it:

Coco Crisp
Chris Young
Yoenis Cespedes
Josh Reddick
Grant Green
Brandon Moss!

Moss is by my estimation the sixth center fielder on the depth chart, but that makes him, again, as we saw tonight, #2 on the current roster.

Let's just note right now that right field, left field, and first base aren't fun. "Oh no Jemile Weeks is the 10th first baseman on the depth chart!" never made anyone laugh that hard.

So. Second base?

Eric Sogard
Jed Lowrie
Adam Rosales
Andy Parrino
Hiro Nakajima
Grant Green
Jemile Weeks (noting that Weeks actually has more games at short this year than at second)
... Josh Donaldson? Mmmmmmmm Coco Crisp?

As for the current roster, this means Donaldson is fourth, though if you get to the point where you're down Sogard, Lowrie, and Rosales, that means you're also missing your shortstop, so Donaldson probably plays there, maybe with Luke Montz at third, and ... gosh Daric Barton at second?

In a sense what this really means is that you only need two injuries to get Donaldson to second base because whoever that third guy is will be playing short. That's an exciting prospect.

Catcher?

Derek Norris
John Jaso
Luke Montz (third catchers make things dull)
EDIT: Josh Donaldson, thanks Chris Biderman
Stephen Vogt
Daric Barton!

~~Unless I'm missing someone, Daric Barton is the only non-catcher on the A's with a catching background in professional baseball, but~~² Bob Melvin's desire for a third catcher so that he can designatedly hit John Jaso against righties makes it harder to imagine the situations where Barton dons the implements of bewilderment EDIT: especially with Josh Donaldson an ever-present presence.

If you want to get into rank speculation of who would come after Barton among all the players who've never caught before, you'd probably have to go with Adam Rosales, though it's worth wondering whether he'd hurt himself leaping forward for a pitch and launching his head directly into the hitter's swing path. Maybe just sit Bartolo Colon back there.

Medical term. ↩
I'm an idiot. Josh Donaldson was a catcher forever! ↩

A's Power Ranking, Five-Twelve

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

Your updated A's Power Ranking. As always: this is cumulative, not just based on the last week, and ranks only players who are presently on the 25-man roster. Stats through Saturday's game, though I've seen most of Sunday's as I write.

Jed Lowrie ↔ Lowrie's hitting continues to tumble inevitably given how impossibly hot he started the year. He's still got a .399 OBP and .471 SLG and he hit the ball hard a couple of times on Sunday, though to no good effect. With the rest of the team mostly cooling off or hurt and with Lowrie playing at one of the middle infield spots every day, he's got no real competition for the top spot.
Josh Donaldson ↔ Donaldson has a higher OPS than Lowrie, but it's based on a tad more slugging and a tad less OBP, and while he plays a good third base, it's still third base rather than shortstop. Anyway, 18 walks in 155 trips is extremely encouraging and a return to his 2009–11 minor-league form after an ugly 14 in 294 in the bigs in 2012.
Brandon Moss ↑ Moss looked awful on Sunday against Joe Saunders, taking home a golden sombrero, and he's now whiffed 43 times on the year. That's tops on the team, but he came in to the game just 16th in baseball, 14 behind the leaders, Chris Carter and Colby Rasmus, so it hasn't been as bad as it looks.
Derek Norris ↑ Norris's OBP has gone down and his SLG has come up since last week, but he's still at .370 and .338, which is still weird, especially for a guy who's six feet and 200-plus pounds. All the DHing of John Jaso means that Norris has two more PA against right-handers than lefties so far. (Don't you dare actually cite his split stats.)
Yoenis Cespedes ↓ I've liked Cespedes's defense in center a lot better this year than last. I've heard some claim that his struggles on defense came in left last year, not center, but I don't buy that—he looked like he got bad breaks and weird reads in both spots last season, and he's looked better to my totally flawed and TV-bound eyes this time around. I'm less skeptical about him being an asset in center in the post-Crisp, post-Young world (i.e. 2014). I'd prefer he not have a .280 OBP, though.
Tom Milone ↑ "Through Saturday's stats" is key since Milone did not have a good game against Seattle, beginning with a three-run homer by Kendrys Morales in the first inning. Before that, he had a team-leading 3.91 RA/9 and an excellent 41 strikeouts to just six walks. Unfortunately, he walked three and gave up just one homer to Seattle, so he's now got more walks allowed than homers.
Adam Rosales ↑ I don't like the way Adam Rosales throws because my sense is that he gives up more time on his release than he gains on the speed of the throw, but you can't argue with .311/.392/.467, with pretty much the entire damage coming against lefties. (He's platooned, but even platoon players wind up facing a lot of right-handers because of relievers and so forth.)
Seth Smith ↓ Smith is now down to nearly exactly what he hit last year: .333/.420 vs. .338/.417. His May free-fall is to blame: .154/.154/.205 will sink all sorts of hot starts. Tiniest of samples, but he's actually crushed lefties in 33 plate appearances so far.
Jerry Blevins ↑ Blevins hadn't pitched since May 7th when he gave up a homer on Sunday to Jason Bay.
Ryan Cook ↑ Cook allowed one more walk in two more innings since last week, so he's right on pace as always. He's still leading the bullpen in strikeouts, though, and is the only A's pitcher aside from Jesse Chavez not to allow a homer.
John Jaso ↔ Jaso has a respectable batting line for a catcher in Oakland. He does not have a respectable batting line for a designated hitter, in Oakland or anywhere else.
Sean Doolittle ↑ Doolittle has exactly two runs to his debit this season. He's also allowed two homers. He's allowed one of 10 inherited runners to score—the league average is thrice that.
Bartolo Colon ↓ Since last week, Colon allowed two homers and no walks. He's up to six homers and one walk allowed in 41 1/3 innings. According to FanGraphs, the lowest single-season walk percentage for an ERA qualifier from 1916 to present is Carlos Silva, at 1.2 percent. Colon now sits at 0.6 percent.
Grant Balfour ↑ Balfour only threw one inning this week (and added another walk), which is about what you expect when the team is in these kind of doldrums. Closers don't pitch in losses.
Daric Barton new entry Barton's only batted 12 times, but he did hit a homer and draw a walk in those trips. There's not a lot to say about 12 plate appearances. Sorry.
Dan Straily ↓ When you've only made four starts, it's easy to yo-yo around in a ranking like this with one bad start, and six runs in five innings to the Mariners on the 10th was a bad start.
Jesse Chavez reentry Chavez was 25th the last time he was on this list but some poor performances in his absence have allowed him to climb without really pitching. Here's my analysis: he's Jesse Chavez. He's okay.
Eric Sogard ↓ Sogard's still hitting the same thing he was last week (basically), and there's a point at which you run out of things to say. Imagine if I did this daily?
Pat Neshek ↑ He's still got that 9:8 strikeout to walk ratio. You know what's weird? And about which I had no idea? He's an extreme fly-ball pitcher. Huh.
Luke Montz new entry Montz has three extra-base hits in 17 trips to the plate along with no singles and no walks. I don't know that an allergy to first base is a good approach for a hitter.
Chris Resop ↑ He's pitched badly and it doesn't matter.
A.J. Griffin ↓ Griffin has a good ERA but a homer every six innings will catch up to him and while his walk rate is as good as ever, the strikeout rate is ugly. What'd I say about believing in him?
Nate Freiman ↓ Still tall.
Michael Taylor ↓ Somehow fell from 23rd last week. He's batting .063/.063/.063.
Jarrod Parker ↓ Josh Reddick being on the disabled list isn't the only reason Parker falls to 25th: since the last Power Ranking, Parker threw 11 1/3 innings, 10 hits, seven runs, six walks, 12 strikeouts, and five homers. It says a lot about his season that his barely quality start on Saturday (6 1/3, three runs) is a highlight game for the year so far. I don't know if Parker needs a DL stint or a Triple-A trip to work out some mechanical issues sans pressure or what the hell is going on, but something has to change.

Riser of the week: Ryan Cook, from 17 to 10
Faller of the week: A.J. Griffin from 12 to 22

See you back here next week.

Josh Reddick to the DL, Daric Barton up

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

Josh Reddick's wrist is going to cause him to miss enough time that the A's made a roster move today, calling up Daric Barton from Sacramento. Reddick apparently doesn't need all 15 days, but isn't going to miss only a game or two, either, leaving the A's in that limbo where they could have a 24-man roster for a week. Rather than live with that, Billy Beane filled Bob Melvin's bench.

Daric Barton, as you may recall, was removed from the 40-man roster a ways back, so the A's had another move to make to add him. Faced with another opportunity to designated Jesse Chavez for assignment, Beane decided instead to flat-out cut Jordan Norberto. Readers of the blog will know I'm not the biggest Norberto fan, mainly due to my bias against guys who can't throw strikes. Still, the lefty averages better than 93 mph from the left side with his fastball and whiffed 46 in 52 innings in the bigs in 2012. Unfortunately, since August of last year he's been dealing with arm injuries and he's pitched just 1 1/3 innings in 2013, with his last appearance coming on April 10th.

All of this means that you might think the A's could have waived Norberto, hoped he went unclaimed because of his injuries, and kept him in the organization. And in fact there's talk that the team might try to re-sign him to a minor-league contract now that he's been released. But the word, both from Susan Slusser on Twitter and via email from Bob Rose, A's press maven, is that you cannot request waivers on an injured player. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out where this rule comes from after a quick look at both the Major League Rules and the Collective Bargaining Agreement. There are rules about designating for assignment players on the Major League Disabled List, but unless I'm missing something, Norberto wasn't on that list, because why would he be? He was optioned to the minors, then got hurt—there's no need to clear a 25-man roster spot because he's not on the 25-man roster.

I don't disbelieve Slusser and Rose, by the way, and the fact that the A's appear to want to keep Norberto supports the theory that they didn't actually want to release him—I'm basically just begging for help. Can anyone find any textual support for the rule that you can't request waivers on an injured minor-league player?

With that out of the way, and noting that Daric Barton was the starting first baseman tonight against the extremely right-handed Justin Masterson, and further noting that he walked in his first trip to the plate and then made a fine defensive play that was nearly a double play in his first chance in the field, here's what I guess the lineup looks like now:

v LHP

C: Norris
1B: Freiman
2B: Lowrie
SS: Rosales
3B: Donaldson
LF: Taylor
CF: Cespedes
RF: Moss
DH: Montz

v RHP

C: Norris
1B: Barton
2B: Sogard
SS: Lowrie
3B: Donaldson
LF: Smith
CF: Cespedes
RF: Moss
DH: Jaso

Tonight's lineup did not look like this, with Jed Lowrie at designated hitter and Eric Sogard at second, but if this roster were the A's roster for more than the next 10 days or however long it takes for Chris Young to get back and push Luke Montz or Michael Taylor back to the minors, I'd expect the above to be the basic lineup from which various variations arise.

I could be overrating Montz's place on the team, but it strikes me as entirely pointless to have Montz, Freiman, Moss, and Barton all on the squad if Montz isn't going to play sometimes. The above basic lineups have the virtue of making all 13 position players starters. Assuming that is a virtue.

It does, by the way, since I mentioned it, sound like Young will be the first back from the disabled list, as he's a tad ahead of Coco Crisp. I think he'll replace Taylor directly as it's not clear when Taylor would ever play once Young is back. Montz at least still has notional value in that case as a backup catcher when Jaso is DHing. I suppose in theory we could see Hiroyuki Nakajima make an appearance, but that likely depends on Bob Melvin's comfort with not having a backup infielder on the nights that Lowrie DHes versus not having a backup catcher on the nights that Jaso DHes. If Jaso is the default DH against righties, as I have him above, it probably makes sense to keep Montz around. Lowrie, by contrast, is presumably an occasional DH, not the default.

Now I might be mixing predictions of the A's approach with my own predilections and hopes, but that's always been more or less my mode around here, so why change now?

What do the A's do if Jarrod Parker goes on the DL, something Bob Melvin has said isn't likely to happen but about which really youneverknow? Susan Slusser tweeted that she heard that Sonny Gray is the favorite to replace Parker, which is interesting because Andrew Werner is a starting pitcher (eight starts for San Diego last year, seven for Sacramento this year, no relief appearances in his career) is already on the 40-man roster, though his 8.54 ERA might be giving the A's pause. Having to make another 40-man move with Norberto already gone could prove tough.

That said, perhaps Jesse Chavez's time would be up if Gray were to be his replacement. You can understand the A's unease with cutting Chavez for the sake of Barton—if a reliever were to get hurt, they'd be left with Werner, Pedro Figueroa (7.62 ERA himself), or ... well, no, it's just those two pitching at Triple-A and on the 40-man roster. I'm a Michael Ynoa fan, but I don't think he's ready.

But if you're adding Gray to the 40, then dumping Chavez leaves you where you started, rather than short an emergency reliever, assuming, of course, that Parker were only hurt for a short time and that Gray would go back to the minors thereafter.

I don't have strong feelings about Chavez, so I don't think he needs to go so much as I think it's weird that he's survived this long and figure there's no way he'll last the year on the roster given Mike Ekstrom and Hideki Okajima and Gray and Bruce Billings and even Danny Otero all waiting around in Sacramento for a shot and none on the 40-man roster. At least if he's removed for Gray, Chavez can say he was booted by a legit prospect.

Luke Montz vs. John Jaso

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

In the seventh inning last night, Derek Norris led off with a double to left-center (which he crushed, by the way), bringing the tying run to the plate. With lefty Nick Hagadone on the mound, Adam Rosales pinch-hit for Eric Sogard. After he flew out, Bob Melvin sent Luke Montz out to hit for John Jaso, which caused Tito Francona to relieve Hagadone with righty Bryan Shaw.

Given the relative merits of Jaso and Montz (as opposed to Rosales and Sogard), it seems likely that Melvin had the ball in his court: he could choose Jaso vs. the lefty or Montz vs. the righty. He was never going to get Montz vs. the lefty.

Because I wasn't sure about that choice at the time, and still wasn't sure when I woke up this morning, I thought I'd throw out some numbers so we know what Melvin was working with.

Here's Jaso v. LHP in his career: .176/.308/.237 in 162 plate appearances.

Here's Jaso v. RHP in his career: .269/.367/.415 in 984 plate appearances.

Jaso's not good against lefties. He was actually worse against them in 53 trips last year: .119/.250/.143. The best you can hope he'll do is eke out a walk.

Baseball Reference recently added minor-league splits back to 2008, though it does not appear that they are yet aggregated, so here is Montz year to year against lefties and righties:

	LHP (PA)	RHP (PA)
2008	.260/.352/.496 (146)	.266/.337/.426 (315)
2009	.216/.336/.388 (137)	.162/.260/.270 (232)
2010	.186/.234/.279 (47)	.210/.319/.320 (119)
2011	.351/.473/.667 (146)	.242/.356/.445 (337)
2012	.248/.351/.608 (148)	.208/.287/.437 (272)

There's no such thing as a sample size big enough to make me happy, but Montz has made his living the last two years, and in his career in general, roasting lefties. His performance against righties has sometimes been adequate and sometimes been awful—and remember that the 724 OPS he put up against righties last year came in the Pacific Coast League, a place not well known for its run-suppression.

There are other factors at work besides Montz and Jaso, of course, including how tired Hagadone was, how fresh Shaw was, how the two hitters match up against those two particular pitchers, not just as righties and lefties but as players with specific arsenals and sequencing routines, how Jaso and Montz were feeling that day, and, not least, the small possibility that Francona might lose his mind and leave Hagadone in to face Montz.

I don't have answers in any of these areas, and Melvin, even to the extent he had answers, didn't have an hour to sit around and think about it. So I don't know if he was right, but I do know he wasn't wrong.

A's Power Ranking, Five Six

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

Off a 4–2 week that looks quite good considering the team lost not one, not two, but three men to the rigors of a 19-inning baseball deathmatch, here is your updated A's Power Ranking. (The rules: this is not a ranking of how these players did this week, but all season; and you have to be on the 25-man roster at this writing to be ranked. The main statistic I rely on is Baseball Prospectus's VORP, though it's also not a strict ranking by that stat. Arrows after the names show how the rank compares to last time.)

Jed Lowrie ↔: the slugging percentage has slipped below .500, but he's still got an OBP well over .400 and he's still playing the middle infield. He's getting close to a third of the way to 100 games. (He's never before played 100 games.)
Josh Donaldson ↑ biggest rise: hit the go-ahead homer in the top of eighth on Sunday, and he's hitting .302/.383/.491 while playing at the very least an adequate and quite possibly very good third base. This isn't an MVP pace, but it's a team MVP pace.
Yoenis Cespedes new entry: a fifth homer in 32 team games is a 25-homer pace. The batting average (and thus OBP) are still lagging, but the slugging is up to .507, and he's looked better in center field in his few games out there since Coco Crisp and Chris Young went down than he did in 2012.
Seth Smith ↔: he's cooled off significantly, but .366/.455 OBP/SLG will still work, even from a DH or bad left-fielder. Surprise stat: he's second on the team in strikeouts.
Brandon Moss ↔: and he's first. Still, he's got 45 points of OBP and 13 points of SLG on the AL-average first baseman so far (an average that includes Moss himself, so he's actually beating a more legitimate average by a bit more).
Derek Norris ↓: .246/.405/.316 is a weird (but valuable!) batting line. I'm starting to be a bit more skeptical of his defense, which doesn't mean it's bad, but does perhaps mean that he really will need to hit to be better than average overall.
Tommy Milone ↔: the only starter I have any confidence in right now. He's actually struck out 36 batters in 39 innings, which is awesome for a guy throwing 87 mph. Check this: six walks, six homers allowed.
Dan Straily new entry: a nice start against the Yankees boosts his stock a bit, though Jerry Blevins didn't do him any favors by letting in the two inherited runners he left. Still, the pitches were moving well and mostly located well, especially down in the zone, and overall he's got 21 whiffs to just four walks in 16 2/3 innings. Having a sixth starter this good is one of those "nice problems."
Adam Rosales new entry: he's not hitting great, but for a shortstop, .278/.333/.417 is well above average. Visually, I'd rate his defense at short against Lowrie's as a toss-up, but Bob Melvin knows at least 276 times as much as I do about baseball, so I'll take his word for his preferred defensive alignment.
Bartolo Colon ↑: I have no real reason for not feeling confidence in Colon, and his 3.62 ERA so far is perfectly fine for a back-end starter, but there's something about his defensive-independent numbers that holds me back. Remember Milone's weird walk and homer stats? Here's Colon: one walk, four homers.
John Jaso ↑: the hitting has picked up, as he's up to what I think we'd have expected, or some facsimile of it: .274/.351/.357. A touch more power would be nice, and this isn't adequate if Jaso's going to DH a lot, but if he's a catcher, that's a nice line. He seems to get along in the A's dugout, too.
AJ Griffin ↓: Contributing to a shutout in Yankee Stadium, even of a Yankee team whose good hitters are basically just Robinson Cano and Travis Hafner (sorta), is nice. His ERA has tucked under four, and I'm believing in him a little more each time out.
Sean Doolittle ↔: He's thrown 89 percent fastballs this year, per Brooks Baseball, and yet he's given up five hits in 49 batters faced. I know he throws 94 and there's a lot of deception, but still. The only reason Doolittle is this low is because he is, in the end, a reliever, and relievers can only impact a team so much. He's thrown half the innings that Brett Anderson has, for instance.
Jerry Blevins ↓: a poor outing on Sunday drops his stock, but he's still got a 19:1 K:BB ratio in 18 innings pitched, so he's just chugging right along being Jerry Blevins. Combined with the fact that he's hilarious, I'm convinced Blevins is the most underrated player in baseball.
Luke Montz new entry: he's slugging .727! Okay, it's 11 at-bats, but three extra-base hits in 11 trips is a nice thing.
Eric Sogard ↓ biggest fall: he's down to a .300 OBP and .288 SLG, so I'm curious to see whether he lasts much longer. Would the team call up Jemile Weeks in a platoon role? It might be unusual giving that Weeks is a switch-hitter, but the point is not only to maximize Weeks, but to maximize the position(s) as a whole, and Rosales vs. a lefty might well be a better bet.
Ryan Cook ↓: six walks in 15 innings isn't great, but he's whiffed 17 and given up just nine hits, so he's still Ryan Cook and I'm still probably underrating him. I'm not fair, but neither is life.
Nate Freiman ↑: .243/.326/.378 at first base should probably be ranked lower, but I'm going to leave him here as a testament to the value of relief pitching and to illustrate how bad Jarrod Parker and Josh Reddick have been.
Grant Balfour ↓: Sunday was a little scary what with putting the tying run on second and then throwing some fastballs very near the heart of the plate, but he got away with it. Six walks and two homers in 13 innings aren't good ratios.
Pat Neshek ↓: here: eight walks and 16 hits in 12 1/3 innings. He's no Chad Bradford. Luckily Bob Melvin seems to know it.
Chris Resop ↓: the most anonymous A's reliever. Can you name anything about his pitching? Besides that it hasn't been good in his 13 1/3 innings?
Evan Scribner new entry: the most mop-up A's reliever.
Michael Taylor ↔: he doesn't get clean shots, really, but he also doesn't seize the unclean shots he gets. He's 0–9 so far this year and I don't remember a hard-hit ball.
Jarrod Parker ↔: he threw just his second quality start in six tries on the 30th, but even then it wasn't good: four runs allowed (three earned), four strikeouts, three walks. He did record 17 ground balls to just three in the air, per ESPN, which is astounding and fantastic, but the last time he had a good game, he followed up with a stinker against Baltimore, so he's not out of the woods yet.
Josh Reddick ↓: apparently his late double on Sunday was his first hit at Yankee stadium in 34 at-bats. That's incredible, but it also feels like he's 1-for-34 in 2013 overall. (Actually 13-for-88, albeit with 14 walks.)

Luke Montz gets the nod

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

Here is our mission, should we choose to accept it: make sense of the A's roster.

Coco Crisp hit the disabled list, as is his wont, so to replace him, the A's did the obvious thing and pulled up Michael Taylor, a backup outfielder, one who has been up and down with Oakland the last couple of years, who probably won't get many/any starts, but who can be a competent backup in the corners and maybe take a whack at a lefty now and again.

Wait, what? They didn't do that? They reached off the 40-man roster and spent the spot vacated by Casper Wells on Luke Montz, a Triple-A journeyman signed as a minor-league free agent this offseason who doesn't really play the outfield? O--okay.

Let's just build the lineups and see where this takes us:

v. RHP

C: Jaso
1B: Moss
2B: Sogard
SS: Lowrie
3B: Donaldson
LF: Cespedes
CF: Young
RF: Reddick
DH: Smith

Alternatively:

C: Norris
LF: Smith
CF: Cespedes
RF: Reddick
DH: Jaso

Those are really your two options. The first lineup is stronger defensively in the outfield but suffers John Jaso's clownery behind the plate. The second has Cespedes in center and Smith in left, but allows Derek Norris's crazy on-base skills to be in the lineup and also solidifies the catching (and throwing and framing and everything else that comes with catching).

v. LHP

C: Norris
1B/DH: Freiman? Montz? Moss?
2B/SS: Rosales/Lowrie
3B: Donaldson
LF: Cespedes
CF: Young
RF: Reddick

Second and shortstop are apparently going to involve Adam Rosales being considered the stronger defender and thus playing short while Lowrie toggles back and forth between short and second, as was promised all along in the spring after he was acquired in a trade anyway.

The harder question is first and designated hitter. I'm not going to insult you by quoting Brandon Moss's platoon splits over his time with the A's (i.e. the time he's been good) because it would be a small sample one way or another, and it's an even smaller sample because Melvin has kept him away from lefties to a large degree. Does that mean that with two right-handed 1B/DH types on hand, Moss will sit versus lefties for as long as Montz is on the roster? Two responses:

If that's not what that means, then why is Montz here? What's the point of being on the roster at all, given that Freiman is already around and apparently here to stay, surviving where Casper the Friendly Wells could not, if he's not going to push Moss to the bench against lefties? Prior to Montz's arrival, the A's had faced seven lefty starters and Moss had started in five of those games. This is not necessarily ideal and, with Montz around, it does not have to continue.
Montz's first day on the roster, May 1, saw the A's facing C.J. Wilson, a lefty, and Melvin went with Nate Freiman at first and Montz DHing. The A's under Melvin like to get a newly called-up player a start immediately, so perhaps this was just a happy coincidence, but it may also be a sign that Moss won't play much as the A's face a slew of lefties over the next two weeks.

As to (2), though, that great number of lefties, which is reportedly what caused the A's to call up Montz over Stephen Vogt, who is ripping Sacramento apart with his bare hands but is left-handed, cuts both ways. Will Melvin play his fourth-best hitter (by True Average, behind Lowrie, Crisp, and Cespedes, which really means he's third because Crisp isn't around for a bit) only half-time because they're facing lefties that often? Or will he be tempted to throw Moss in there out of a sense that Moss should be starting 75 or 80 percent of the games?

Now here's the question: Montz over Taylor. The latter can DH just as well as the former can, it requiring little in the way of defensive skill. Taylor also shores up the outfield a bit -- look at that lineup against righties and note that if, say, Cespedes tweaked his ankle, the A's are down to sticking Adam Rosales into the pasture. Maybe that's not the worst thing in the world, since that's what Adam Rosales is for, but I'd, personally, rather have a real outfielder backing up the outfielders.

On the other hand, if you run with the Jaso/Norris lineup against righties because Norris is thriving and plays good defense and Chris Young couldn't hit Vladimir Putin if he was standing right in front of him right now, much less a baseball traveling 90 miles per hour, then a Norris injury leaves the team giving up the designated hitter. Montz being on the roster negates that possibility.

This means we're balancing the odds an outfielder gets hurt times the negative value of Adam Rosales in the outfield against the odds Derek Norris gets hurt times the negative value of pitchers batting for a few innings. Which really means we're comparing epsilons and what this all boils down to is that the A's probably like Luke Montz as a hitter against lefties more than they like Michael Taylor as a hitter against lefties at this moment.

That decision, coming based on tons of scouting and psychological (such as it is -- I really mean coaches passing up reports) data and only some small amount of information that we can actually get our hands on, is hard to criticize. Montz is a year older than Taylor, which means the two are both quite advanced aged-wise for minor-league players, and both hit well last year, albeit in different ways: Montz for power and no OBP, Taylor for OBP and unimpressive (for a corner outfielder in the Pacific Coast League) power.

On many teams, this move, the "who's going to be our 25th man?" decision, wouldn't matter. You're not going to see that guy play much over the time it takes for the injured player to get healthy. The A's, though, via Billy Beane's organizational construction and Bob Melvin's willingness to juggle player after player, use all 25 spots. When you look at their 13 positions players, there's no utility man or fifth outfielder: every single player is either a full-time starter or a platoon-starter. (Assuming that Montz is, in fact, a platoon starter.) Nate Freiman doesn't seem like he's gotten much run, as you'd expect from a Rule 5 pick, but he has made seven starts (25 percent, basically) and has been in the starting lineup against seven of the eight left-handed starting pitchers the team has faced. (He sat against Jason Vargas on April 11th and started against Brad Peacock on April 5th.) Everybody plays. Everybody has to contribute. On this team, every move matters.

Post-marathon roster reinforcements

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

Nineteen-inning games are the ones that blow up your roster, causing you to make moves you wouldn't normally make just to provide fresh legs, fresh arms, fresh heads, fresh lettuce. For instance:

I might expect Brett Anderson to hit the disabled list because of his tweaked ankle (which ankle was already injured, of course) rather than just missing a start as the A's obviously hoped he would, thus allowing them to call a pitcher up, whether it be Jesse Chavez (exempted from the rule that you have to spend 10 days in the minors by the fact that he's replacing a disabled player) or Evan Scribner or even Pedro Figueroa.

Or to the extent Chris Young or Coco Crisp might normally be day to day with their injuries, the fact that both of them got knocked out in the same marathon game could leave the team unwilling to run with a 23-man roster and a two-man outfield (plus Seth Smith or Brandon Moss), thus necessitating the placing of whichever of the two is more badly injured on the DL and the calling up of Michael Taylor to play left or Shane Peterson to play first while Brandon Moss plays left. Or, I guess, theoretically at least, Grant Green (who is hitting .337/.409/.525 thus far (115 PAs) in his second crack at Triple-A).

It's also possible that, even if Anderson goes on the disabled list, the A's could want even further reinforcements in the bullpen, but it's hard to see where these would come from. They're not going to send out Balfour, Cook, and Doolittle, and these are the only three relievers who aren't out of options. The A's could possible go short on the bench for a few days, swapping out Eric Sogard for a pitcher, then sending that pitcher down for Andy Parrino when the time comes to go full-bench again.

With Jerry Blevins having thrown three days in a row, Balfour Cook and Doolittle having gone back-to-back, and Pat Neshek and Chris Resop having gone multiple frames yesterday, I would not be surprised to hear that Bob Melvin and Curt Young asked Billy Beane for reinforcements.

Casper Wells joins the A's

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

Casper Wells continues his quest to haunt¹ every ballpark in the American League by joining the A's, who paid a little bit of cash to the Blue Jays to acquire him. This is after stints in Detroit and Seattle, although note that the Blue Jays never actually got him into any games in his brief time on the roster.

Wells was a 14th-round pick back in 2005, with other players from that round being Rusty Ryal and Scott Van Slyke. It's fair to say that Wells making it this far means he's an overachiever. (Pedro Alvarez was also taken in that round, but that was out of Horace Mann, i.e. high school, not his later number two overall selection from Vanderbilt.)

We don't have the most major-league data on Wells, as he's accumulated about a season's worth of plate appearances (656) in his three-plus years in the bigs. What we do see is a low-average hitter due to a ton of strikeouts (a 25.9 percent rate that ranks 32nd out of the 400 hitters who accumulated at least 500 PAs from 2010 to the present) who is neither averse to nor especially fond of the base on balls, but who does have a fair amount of pop (.189 isolated power from 58 extra-base hits). That slugging percentage plus the fact that he's played in some tough parks (Baseball Prospectus has him at a 94 batter park factor, which means that the mix of places he's played, home and road, has depressed offense by six percent) means that he's actually been an above-average hitter for his career, coming in at a .279 TAv, which is more generous than the 109 OPS+ and identical 109 wRC+ you see at Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs. The difference in this sample, though, is a quibble, and all three agree that what we've seen is an above-average hitter.

PECOTA and Steamer also agree that what we'll continue to see is an above-average hitter. I don't see anything in the PITCHf/x numbers to make me question that. Wells has bad contact numbers, but they appear to be swing- or tools-driven, not necessarily about a terrible approach: he actually swings less than average on pitches outside the strike zone, and more than average on pitches in the zone. Now, that's not everything, and a look at his BP hitter profile provides a bit more insight:

What we've got here is his entire career swing rate, normalized to right-handed hitters, so what you're seeing in those percentages is how much more or less often than other righties that he swings at pitches in each of those locations. And, as the note at the bottom says, this is from the catcher's view, i.e. Wells as a righty is standing on our left, i.e. he's chasing altogether too much at the pitch low and away. There's literally nothing good that can come of swinging at that pitch. How many players can hit a slider low and away with any authority?

Full disclosure, though:

That one shows his normalized True Average. It thus only counts pitches on which he makes contact, but check out the low and away -- in four of those five border zones, he's actually getting above-average value when he makes contact out there.

I guess the lesson of this very quick analysis is: don't do baseball analysis. It's too goddamn hard.

Wells's place on the roster is uncertain. Michael Taylor will get sent back to Sacramento as soon as Wells arrives, which is supposed to be Tuesday. Yoenis Cespedes, however, is due back from his disabled list stint soon, and there's no hint in the newspapers that this trade means he's had some sort of setback.

Thus, there are two possibilities.

First, the tight-fisted A's paid cash for Casper Wells so that he could provide an upgrade on Michael Taylor for the next five days.

Second, Wells will stick around even once Cespedes comes back.

The second sure sounds more plausible than the first, but it's going to require some thinking about the roster:

Maybe the A's will dump Jesse Chavez back to Triple-A and go with a six-man bullpen.²
They could go with no utility infielder and send down the struggling Andy Parrino, and in case of injury they stick Nate Freiman or Derek Norris at third or Coco Crisp at second.
Most likely, in my opinion, they waive Nate Freiman. He's a Rule 5 pick, recall, so he has to stay on the 25-man roster or be offered back to his original team (after passing through waivers, I believe, noting how the A's acquired him in the first place). If the A's like him enough, they could always try to work out some trade with the Padres to keep him, but I suspect that Freiman isn't on the team as some keeper-league stash guy but as a potentially useful right-handed platoon partner for Brandon Moss who can be cut any time the team feels that he's no longer serving that purpose.

Freiman looks less like a platoon partner for Brandon Moss right now than a backup first baseman, and backup first basemen just aren't a thing that there's room for on a big-league roster. The spot is probably better used on a hitter in whom the team has more confidence and who also has defensive and baserunning value.

And if Moss gets hurt? You cover the spot for a few innings with Andy Parrino and then you call up Shane Peterson (or, hell, Stephen Vogt) after the game. If Moss winds up injured in that "don't really want to put him on the disabled list but he can't play" way, then you're in a bit of a pickle, but you can always fake it with Parrino or Jed Lowrie or even Donaldson for a few games if you have to.

The other alternative is that the A's will simply make another move, flipping Wells along to yet another team. This strikes me as unlikely, mainly because how often do you actually see it happen? Beane did it with Ryan Langerhans, sure, but I'd put the odds of it happening again significantly lower than the odds that Freiman is cut. Here's my rank order:

Freiman cut
Wells DFA'd, hope he passes waivers
Wells trade
Parrino option
Chavez option

Unless there's a Chris Young swap (for what, exactly? An upgrade at second?) in the offing, I only see three legitimate possibilities + two weird ones.

GET IT. ↩
Shut up, sometimes you just have to dream. ↩

A's Power Ranking, Four Twenty

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

Here is the Power Ranking for every player currently on the 25-man roster:

Jed Lowrie -- he's batting .413, he's walking, he's got a .270 isolated power (SLG less AVG), he's playing shortstop every day at a mostly adequate level (catching everything hit at him but without stellar range to my eyes), and he's just generally awesome. Jed Lowrie: The Legend Continues.
Coco Crisp -- dude still has stellar range in center, he's four-for-five on the year stealing bases, and he's slugging .759. He's also got 10 walks and just four whiffs. Crisp is absurdly, fantastically hot right now.
Derek Norris -- seven walks in 35 plate appearances is right up my alley. It's also a lot easier to appreciate how solid he is behind the plate now that we have John Jaso hanging around as an easy comparison.
Seth Smith -- yet another of the absurdly hot hitters: .405/.479/.619. He's a born designated hitter, as we learned by watching him play left field this week, but hey, that's his actual position on the team, so we can't complain so much.
Brandon Moss -- I'm not a believer at all, but it's been a great 56 PAs to start the year: .306/.393/.490 despite a near-constant worry about an impending baby. Young Master Moss has arrived now, though. Moss could work on his understanding of which balls to chase and which balls to let through for the second baseman.
Eric Sogard -- A .367 OBP and solid defense at second is nice for someone who was supposed to be the backup utility infielder.
Tom Milone -- good solid Milone-like work to start the year. It puts my mind at ease to have one starter where I feel like I know what he's going to give you. (And walks aren't part of it.)
A.J. Griffin -- I put Milone above Griffin despite Griffin winning the ERA battle by over a run and a half because I have no idea how I'm supposed to feel about Griffin's peripherals and his stuff resulting in a 2.25 ERA. He's not striking anyone out and his walk rate is pedestrian. Maybe he's a BABIP-suppressor, but it's very early to say.
Jerry Blevins -- the lanky lefty never gets any respect, but he's given up one earned run in 9 2/3 innings while striking out 12 and walking one. Great work from a guy who only A's fans know.
Josh Donaldson -- as with Moss, I'm not a believer, and his OBP is just .310, so I feel sort of vindicated, but if Donaldson has a .251 TAv and plays good defense at third, he's an asset for the price the A's are paying.
Brett Anderson -- he hasn't pitched as badly as it seems, though if his ankle sprain doesn't heal up fast, he'll fall quickly
Ryan Cook -- the inability to command his pitches will never not bug me, but his sheer stuff lets him pile up strikeouts enough to offset the walks and apparently has helped prevent hard contact as well. I'm always on edge with him, but maybe he really is a good setup man.
Sean Doolittle -- he's been pumping the strikes in this year, resulting in a Milone-like number of walks, but the whiffs aren't back yet. It hasn't hurt the bottom line yet, but keep an eye out.
Bartolo Colon -- he's a start behind, in a sense, but he has walked zero batters in three games (19 innings), so I feel I should have him higher, but the whiff and hit rates are exactly what you expect, so I can't justify it
John Jaso -- he's not really hitting yet, though by the standards of the catcher position, his .252 TAv is perfectly nice. His defense legitimately upsets me, though. Last night's throw to first on a simple dropped third strike that caused Brandon Moss to have to jump off the bag to make the catch (and thus not record the out) was, I fear, what we're going to see a lot of from Jaso.
Grant Balfour -- he's given up a couple of home runs already is the only thing keeping him down. They were both solo shots and they're the only runs he's allowed, but I've got to order this list somehow, and the A's bullpen is deep.
Chris Resop -- perfectly reasonably unremarkable middle reliever thus far. I might just copy and paste this comment every time I do this list.
Pat Neshek -- he hasn't really found his stride or his release point or something yet. Pitches are going all over the place, resulting in no strikeouts, lots of walks, and lots of hits. His position in the bullpen means it hasn't really hurt the A's that much, though, so I have a hard time getting worked up. If he is the sixth guy in reserve, well, every team needs a sixth guy.
Chris Young -- whiffing a ton. He's popped a couple of homers, but it seems like every time you look up, he's swinging through a hittable fastball. At least he's a versatile defender.
Josh Reddick -- similar to Young, though it's more been about weak contact keeping his performance down than strikeouts.
Andy Parrino -- he hasn't played much, and he hasn't hit in his 16 trips, but I like watching him throw the baseball. He's got a fine arm.
Nate Freiman -- also hasn't played much, but hey at least he hit his first big-league homer.
Michael Taylor -- five plate appearances and Bob Melvin doesn't seem especially eager to get him more.
Jarrod Parker -- he's just been unmitigatedly terrible in his three starts. Put command aside because Parker doesn't even have control at the moment. He'll toss a good changeup every once in a while but he'll follow that with two fastballs way out of the zone and two fat, Thanksgiving turkey fastballs. The A's of a few years ago could afford to let him figure things out, but if this team wants to contend, we could see him optioned out to try to work through whatever his issues are sooner rather than later. This is the luxury of Dan Straily after all.
Jesse Chavez -- welcome to Oakland! Chavez got called up today.

Shane Peterson

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

I got my first look at Shane Peterson last night, not being a person who lives near Sacramento or who subscribes to MiLB.tv, and here is my thought: it's too early for me to say anything.

That was helpful, right?

I just mean this: you don't go raking the way he's done in the high minors (400 plate appearances at Triple-A, .344/.442/.540 line) without some talent, and it's not like he did this while being way too old (he's 25 this year) or after coming out of nowhere (he was a second round pick back in 2008, a pick behind Tyson Ross, and two picks behind Robbie Ross), so there's presumably some there there. On the other hand, he'd been at Double-A since July 2009 and spent two months at Triple-A in 2011 before finally having two great months at the level in 2012, and last year was the first year he's ever hit for the kind of power and average that can get a corner outfielder slash first baseman to the majors, regardless of his pretty walk rate. So maybe there's not much there there at all.

But here's what I saw against Brad Peacock in his first at-bat:

(From Brooks Baseball of course.)

Pitches 1, 3, and 4 were offspeed, and pitches 1 and 4 were curves. How surprised would you be if the book on a youngish minor-league slugger was "throw him slow, bendy stuff and let him get himself out" and how surprised would you be if it worked?

Of course, it's just one at-bat and you can't scout one at-bat. Or at least I can't. A scout might be able to, but that's neither here nor there because I don't know any scouts and even if I did I don't know any scouts who care about Shane Peterson. But in that one at-bat, Peterson looked anxious, looked like he was pressing to just ... just hit something, dammit. And of course that means he didn't. It means he chased slow, bendy stuff and got himself out.

But to return to the previous structure, would you be surprised if he was anxious? It was his first major-league at-bat, and not all humans can be as placid as Chris Carter. If Peterson gets the time (which he won't even if he does stay in the majors over Michael Taylor upon the return of Brandon Moss), he'll probably calm down and start to hit like the hitter he is. Which, don't mistake me: I'm not saying what kind of hitter he is. I don't have any idea if at the big-league level he's an adequate corner/first baseman or if he's Michael Taylor/Daric Barton. What I do think is that he won't look quite so much like a rookie going forward.

Which makes sense and is likely overly obvious, since he won't be as much of a rookie going forward. But just on the off chance that anybody is worked up about Peterson, it's worthwhile to, like he should have, take a breath and slow things down.

Coco Crisp's groin

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

(Podcast recap of last night's game is here.)

Late in last night's game, Coco Crisp ran hard to third base, rounded the bag, saw Mike Gallego's stop sign, and retreated. He then grabbed his junk. This was, of course, the exact situation that Bob Melvin had foreseen when he said that he wanted to be sure Crisp was 100 percent before he came back from his injury: having to go hard on a fly ball or on the bases, not being able to protect his groin from being put in a compromising position.

Now, Susan Slusser's game recap says that Crisp was pulled "as a precaution on the cold evening," not that he re-injured anything, so maybe grabbing his junk is just what Crisp does? He does seem like a junkgrabber, though I confess that in these years of watching him, I haven't actually been able to determine whether he is one or not.

But never let the facts get in the way of the point you want to make, which is this: visibility on whether decisions around injuries are right or wrong is really bad. If you're in a front office, you can at least analyze the process—

did the trainer ask the right questions?
have the trainer and manager developed a relationship with the player such that the player will be honest?
did the manager understand the trainer's input?
did the manager apply the trainer's conclusions in a logical way, weighing the balance of this game vs. future games?
did the manager properly deploy the depth on his roster to cover for this eventuality?

Even a front office, though, faces a basic epistemological question:¹ if a player played when he shouldn't have but doesn't get hurt, how do you know that he shouldn't have? If a player doesn't play when he should have, how do you know that he should have? You can use your process-based inquiries to try to get an idea of your manager being overly cautious or throwing players to the wind and getting lucky, but you can't really know. Nor can you really know if a manager has just been unlucky if he has multiple recurring injuries. Again, you can see when he's not getting the right information or not understanding the information correctly from the trainer or the player, but sometimes [stuff] happens even to the best of processes, and a team has to be careful not to lay that at the manager's feet.

All of this would have been more timely and more interesting had it turned out that Crisp actually did pull his groin coming into third base, and it's always possible that everybody's lying (I've never understood why teams would be open about injuries to reporters and the public—what purpose does it serve?), but it's something to keep in mind anyway when the A's get to the end of Yoenis Cespedes's 15 days on the disabled list and they're deciding whether to give him an extra day or two to get fully 100 percent totally ready. We don't know and the team doesn't know what the right answer is.

I think it's epistemological, anyway. People who actually know philosophy words can correct me. I don't mind. ↩

Outfield injuries

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

Last night, I was at a sausage place in Atwater Village having a beer and a sausage with my wife and a friend of ours from college. The Lakers game was on TV and the Warriors were doing things to LA that the Warriors shouldn't do—it's not in the nature of the relationship between these two teams. (I'm a Lakers fan, note, and I hope that doesn't make you close my blog forevermore.) The Lakers were storming back behind Kobe Bryant hitting deep threes and generally doing Kobe Bryant things, though, when suddenly Kobe went down to the floor hard. It didn't look good. He left the game. The Lakers won, but news came out that Kobe has very likely torn his Achilles, an injury that's got a six-month timetable associated with it, a six-month timetable that means that any setbacks could have an impact not only on the Lakers' already meager chances in the postseason this year but on the 2013-14 season as well. For a team with the kind of window that L.A. has, with an aging core, that's not a good outcome.

Can you compare a Yoenis Cespedes hand injury in a game the A's eventually won in 12 innings on a walk-off oppo taco by Josh Donaldson to Kobe's Achilles tear? You could, I guess, if Cespedes were knocked out for two months, but from all indications, he's just ("just") got a strain of some sort and will be out the minimum 15 days after being placed on the disabled list. That's the silver lining, the fact that the injury isn't worse, but with the A's training staff already probably monitoring Josh Reddick's wrist and Coco Crisp feeling some groin issues, the last thing the team needs is another outfielder hampered by injury, especially when said outfielder is easily the best player on the team.

With Crisp also out, the A's have options. Chris Young is presumably the everyday center fielder and Josh Reddick won't sit, either. That means left, first, and DH will be covered by Brandon Moss, Nate Freiman, Seth Smith, and the newly recalled Michael Taylor. I suspect that the default lineup will have Moss at first, Smith at DH, and Taylor in left, with Freiman getting a day at DH or 1B here and there against lefties.

When Crisp comes back to center, I would guess that we'll see Young shifting to left, pushing Taylor to a pure backup role, perhaps pinch-hitting against lefties for Smith or Moss.

All of this illustrates yet again the A's depth and why Billy Beane was willing to trade Cliff Pennington for yet another outfielder. Crisp has been injury-prone for years and Cespedes showed signs of fragility last year, so having Young around to play any of the outfield spots is a real salve. If Young's position were taken by, say, Collin Cowgill, I wouldn't feel nearly so blase about the next two weeks minus Cespedes (and the next few days minus Cespedes and Crisp). The team is worse without question, but it's not so much worse over that short period that I feel the need to worry.

If there's a worry, it's that second base is going to be a black hole from here to eternity. The outfield? Small potatoes.

Astros box score review

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

I was away in New York this weekend, flying out on the redeye Friday night and returning Sunday night and spending all the time in between celebrating a friend's one and only 30th birthday, so I did not see the A's–Astros series on the television. I can read a box score, though!

The Astros are a soft touch for strikeouts, but Dan Straily's 11 on Friday is pretty impressive, especially with zero walks.
I wonder whether Josh Reddick is focusing more on the stolen base this year or if the spots have just been there for him early. He stole 12 times last season (11 successful), but he's got three in seven games so far this year.
No walks, two strikeouts, and the minimum quality start possible are pretty much what you expect from Bartolo Colon.
Ryan Cook throwing nine strikes in 10 pitches is awfully nice. If he wants to do that all year, I'll stop whining about his control.
Coco Crisp went nuts in this series, didn't he? Four doubles and three homers? He did get caught stealing, which is a little surprising, mainly because it's always surprising when he does that. Anyway, if Coco faced Astros pitching all the time, he'd be the MVP. Then again, so would everyone else.
It's interesting to see early how strict or not-strict Melvin is going to be with his platoon situations. Chris Young started Sunday against the righty Lucas Harrell and hit a homer. Also with Yoenis Cespedes getting a day off, Melvin went with Seth Smith in left field rather than Coco Crisp or Young, preferring to play Crisp at the DH spot. I'm not entirely sure that's a good use of Crisp's talents, but maybe putting him in left with Young in center is a recipe for more "demigod" comments like last year, and maybe Young in left just isn't something Melvin thinks can work on any regular basis. (Young has played five professional games in a corner: one in 2005 in Double-A, three in 2002 in Rookie ball, and one last Thursday against the Mariners.)

Sean Doolittle

jasonw@beaneball.org (Jason Wojciechowski)

Aside from my rooting interest in the A's, I have inherited from Sam Miller (by reading his articles) a fascination with Sean Doolittle and his weirdly effective approach to pitching, which boils down to the following steps:

Throw

I don't want to undersell Doolittle's pitching ability, because he threw pitches in the strike at a well-above-average rate in 2012 (51.6 percent over the league average of 44.9 percent), so he's not walking out there with no idea of where the ball is going. (Of course, control is just a part of the battle—I could throw the ball in the zone all day, but I'd never strike anyone out.)

So here's what Doolittle, after throwing a whopping 87 percent four-seam fastballs last year, has done this season:

4/3, Robert Andino: fastball down the middle, fastball up and in, fastball in, fastball up (strikeout)
4/3, Brendan Ryan: Fastball outside corner, fastball up, fastball down the middle, fastball low and in, fastball away (single)
4/3, Franklin Gutierrez: Fastball down the middle (up a little), fastball inside corner (pop out)
4/3, Kyle Seager: Fastball just low, fastball at the knees, fastball down the middle (fly out)
4/4, Michael Saunders: Breaking ball down the middle, breaking ball low, fastball inner half (fly out)
4/4, Franklin Gutierrez: Fastball at the top of the zone, fastball down the middle (single)
4/4, Raul Ibanez: Fastball just in, fastball down the middle, breaking ball that PITCHf/x lost and I can't remember, breaking ball low and away, fastball down the middle (fly out)
4/4, Michael Morse: Fastball low and in, fastball at the knees, fastball at the top of the zone, fastball low and in, fastball down the middle, fastball inner half, fastball up, fastball up and in, fastball way up, fastball at the top of the zone, fastball at the top of the zone, fastball at the top of the zone (strikeout)

That last was was a pretty epic battle, especially given the way that Morse wore out A's pitchers in the series, but it's also an amazing illustration of what Doolittle does. If you foul off his fastballs enough, he'll keep throwing them until you miss one.

Doolittle topped out in the Morse at-bat at just over 94 mph, so he's not Aroldis Chapman. This makes his stats (31.4 percent strikeout rate, again well above the league average) that much more impressive, especially since he had zero trouble with right-handed batters last year. He's not coming at some funky angle from the left side and demolishing lefties at the expense of his ability to retire right-handed hitters. He's just bringing heat and bringing heat and bringing heat and nobody's catching up to it yet.

Doug Thorburn, one of my colleagues at Baseball Prospectus and a fellow A's fan, talks frequently about "effective velocity" being more important than the radar gun measurement. Effective velocity can come from many places: a tricky delivery, a deep release point, and pitch-sequencing all come to mind. Doolittle does not have, to my eyes the first, and he doesn't seem to have the second. (He's not particularly tall, for one thing, at least not for a pitcher.) It'd be awfully funny to say that a pitcher who throws 80 percent fastballs is doing some sort of Greg Maddux advanced moves out there, but of course sequencing isn't only about changes in spin and velocity, but about changed eye levels and in/out pitch-locations as well. Doolittle is a daredevil up in the zone (what lefty with 94-mph heat goes up in the zone six straight times against Michael Morse? I mean ...), so maybe there's something in the way he goes high/low that is causing just a touch of slowness in the bats of his opponents.

Anyway, at this point I tried to make a GIF of Doolittle getting a check-swing strike on a slider to Raul Ibanez, but GIMP and CamStudio aren't getting along (master GIF-makers, any ideas? I didn't give you much to go on, but maybe we can talk this out) so I can't. Suffice it to say that if Doolittle were to have a slider ... hoo boy.