A Season of Hypotheticals

by Blez on Aug 23, 2007 12:45 PM PDT in News

I've spent a lot of this past season asking myself a very simple question, over and over and over again. What if?

As in, what if Rich Harden could stay healthy for more than a game at a time? What if Esteban Loaiza had surgery on his knee during the offseason and been good to go at the beginning of the year or closer to it? What if Mike Lowell wasn't a douche lord and unnecessarily collided with Mike Piazza? What if Huston Street didn't have a funky nerve or Duke didn't have an 80-year-old grandmother's hip? What if Eric Chavez would decide to finally get his myriad of health issues fixed by a dude in scrubs with a scalpel? What if Bobby Crosby would take 10 minutes one day to watch video of Travis Buck keeping his bat back enough so he can pull pitches inside and go with pitches outside?

Alas, this is not a "healthy" practice (pardon the choice of words). But one thing kind of dawned on me as the A's finally got back to .500 yesterday. Have the A's been a better team when they've had more "key" players on the DL? The A's have been a .500 team nearly every month this year, being one game under .500 for April, one game over .500 for May and two games over .500 for June. There are two exceptions to that rule. July, the A's went a dreadful 9-18 and August, the A's are 14-7 so far this month. And if you think about it, the A's are probably missing more key players now than they have been all year. They're essentially down to their third string third baseman and shortstop. Buck, who is arguably the team's MVP this year, is out. The bullpen finally just returned to close to full strength (albeit without Duke's hip) and that is a big difference maker with the team.

But the team has won in August with a lot of unexpected names being a part of it. Hannahan, Suzuki, Murphy and Scutaro. The A's have actually hit .500 for the 18th time this year, two short of the Oakland record of being at .500 20 times in a season. I mean, the A's have already set the record for injured players, so why not set the record for getting to the ultimate sign of mediocrity? It's just funny because these crazy bunch of players have actually brought us to a point where they just might be a winning team again for the first time since July 7. It's just sad that the month of July derailed the season so badly. What if...? There I go again.

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Crosby

I doubt watching Buck or anyone else hit would help Crosby out. I think his problem is pitch recognition. Some have it, some don't. I don't think it's something you teach that much. Those sliders away look like fastballs down the middle.

by McBain on Aug 23, 2007 12:46 PM PDT 0 recs

I agree

"Talent" isn't all about athleticism. And good strike-zone judgment isn't all about concentration and taking extra BP. Very few players go from really bad walk rates to really good ones.

No one expects, say, Cust to "learn" how to run fast. He could probably learn to run faster, but there's a physical limit to his footspeed. Crosby might just not have the physical tools to recognize pitches that well.

"And Julio Franco is batting right-handed!" -- Wayne Hagin, A's radio play-by-play, mid-80s

by Nick on Aug 23, 2007 1:13 PM PDT up 0 recs

If w get rid of Crosby

Can Crosby pull a Carlos Pena on us?

by asfansince1989 on Aug 23, 2007 6:26 PM PDT up 0 recs

The "what if" I want to know

is what if the A's had stopped playing their sub-replacement level players months sooner? What if Kendall had been traded as soon as the Cubs got rid of Barrett? What if Crosby had been dealt in mid-May, when his average was as close to respectable as it was ever going to be? What if Kotsay had retired?

Unlike the injury questions, those are legitimate hypotheticals because they involve actual choices made by people. Replacement-level offense and comparable defense from these positions would probably have given the A's 3-4 more wins.

by PaulThomas on Aug 23, 2007 12:56 PM PDT 0 recs

+1

Nothing beats first hand experience ~ grover @('.')@

by monkeyball on Aug 23, 2007 1:00 PM PDT up 0 recs

Here here!

Brilliant points!

by A'sfansince1970 on Aug 23, 2007 1:19 PM PDT up 0 recs

Not an actual choice ...

At least not how you're presenting it.

The A's didn't have replacement level alternatives who played comparable defense.

Suzuki became one, but the A's couldn't really have called him up much earlier than they did. As it is, he only played half a season in AAA and while he held his own, he was no star there.

Crosby and Kendall were both considered plus defenders. We were hoping that Kendall would do what he did last year, coming on strong in the second half and that Crosby's bat would come back after finally being healthy for a while. Neither happened, but they offered a lot more upside than dredging the wire for freely available talent.

They did try to replace Kotsay with Snelling ... but their replacement got hurt. To this point, neither Kotsay nor Crosby has been replaced to the standard you presented.

"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback

by devo on Aug 23, 2007 1:50 PM PDT up 0 recs

Well here's a few answers

What if Mike Lowell wasn't a douche lord and unnecessarily collided with Mike Piazza?

Then Jack Cust would still be playing in the Padres' minor league system.

What if Huston Street didn't have a funky nerve or Duke didn't have an 80-year-old grandmother's hip?

Then Casilla would still be at Sacto and Embree would have 2 or 3 saves. And Beane might not have gotten Brown.

Last note -- the A's run differential has been pretty stable this year, IIRC. Here's the Pythagorean West standing:

Angels: 70-56
M's: 64-60
A's: 66-62
TX: 60-66 (skewed by the 30-3 game, obviously)

This team is better than its record, and has been for most of the season. That in and of itself is a good sign for next year if it holds up.

"And Julio Franco is batting right-handed!" -- Wayne Hagin, A's radio play-by-play, mid-80s

by Nick on Aug 23, 2007 1:20 PM PDT 0 recs

Run differentials don't make any sense

if you don't cap them at a certain point in a game. I'd much rather see Pythag standings based on differentials with a single-game maximum of 5 runs. College sports ranking schemes use these "adjusted victory margins" all the time.

Speaking of college rankings, the A's are 13th in RPI.

by PaulThomas on Aug 23, 2007 1:58 PM PDT up 0 recs

That only makes sense in college or similar

situations or the very rare example like the 30 run Texas outburst ...

In college top teams play against a varying level of competition. It does not matter whether they blow out Podunk State by 4 touchdowns or 7. Scoring or allowing 15 runs against legitimate Major League competition -- the same competition other teams play against is absolutely relevant.

"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback

by devo on Aug 23, 2007 2:20 PM PDT up 0 recs

The thing is,

at some point it's not really Major League competition anymore. The lower the leverage of a situation, the less scoring runs in that situation tells you, because you end up facing crappy pitchers (and sometimes even crappy position players) when games turn into blowouts, and conversely, when the other team is STARTING crappy players, the games are more likely to turn into blowouts in the first place.

Good subject for a study-- does adjusted Pythagorean differential (perhaps even at a variety of different "caps"-- 4 runs, 6 runs, whatever) correlate better with winning than "standard"? Unfortunately I'm no statistician, so I basically wouldn't know where to start on this.

by PaulThomas on Aug 23, 2007 3:12 PM PDT up 0 recs

But every team (league differences aside)

plays against the same teams with the same crappy pitchers. Unless you have very good, specific reasons for excluding data, you're very unlikely to improve your dataset by limiting it.

The study would be easy to do -- I just don't know where to get the game by game data in a usable form.

"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback

by devo on Aug 23, 2007 3:38 PM PDT up 0 recs

Two things

First-- teams don't play balanced schedules. This is why teams don't actually have identical strength of schedule figures. (I was interested to find out that the Indians have played-- by an enormous margin-- the easiest schedule in the AL.)

More importantly, though, it's just not correct to say that you're playing against the "same team" in the seventh inning of an 11-2 blowout as you are in the seventh inning of a 3-3 nailbiter. Teams' motives start becoming conflicted in blowouts. Managers may tell pitchers to pitch to contact to try to minimize their pitch counts. Injury-prone players get pulled early. Et cetera. Most importantly, crappy pitchers get sent out instead of good ones, and often left out there even when it's clear that they aren't getting guys out.

Basically, I'm inclined to see data from blowouts as random noise sprinkled into the actual useful information. If it's possible to eliminate it, it seems to make sense that one should.

by PaulThomas on Aug 23, 2007 5:46 PM PDT up 0 recs

The difference between the average pitcher ...

and a pitcher at the bottom 10th percentile just isn't that great in Major League Baseball.

Every run a team scores or allows tells you something about its ability. Are we to assume that somehow the pitcher tried harder to prevent Nick Swisher from scoring on Jack Cust's home run in the second inning today than he did from trying to prevent Cust from following him home, because that gave the A's a six run lead? Of course not, that's a ridiculous idea -- but that's exactly what you're suggesting would happen.

In statistics you have to either assume that circumstance even out or else you have to correct for them. For instance, you could replace the Orioles pitchers with average pitchers -- The first three guys had somewhat worse than average eras coming in -- lets call them a 5.0 for simplicity. We'll call average 4.5 for simplicity. We'd except average pitchers to give up 10% fewer runs -- so the 21 runs they allowed would be reduced by 10% -- to 19. Paul Shuey has been pretty bad this year, with a 6.75 era coming in -- so we'd expect an average pitcher to give up 33% fewer runs -- lowering it to 6.

So, by correcting for the quality of pitchers they faced, the Rangers "earned" 25 out of their 30 runs. Like I said, a group of relatively poor MLB pitchers isn't that much worse than average.

"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback

by devo on Aug 23, 2007 6:53 PM PDT up 0 recs

Douche lord...

File that behind "asshat" for new favorite expletives.

I am Ray Fosse's man crushes for Clay Wood and Jason Kendall.

by franks a lot on Aug 23, 2007 1:21 PM PDT 0 recs

.500 isn't a "sign of mediocrity" for ell teams:

for KC and Texas (among others) it's the holy f'ing grail!

'I have a theory about Randy Bell, but it betrays such an abject lack of faith in humanity that I cannot voice it.' ~FSU

by LAXile on Aug 23, 2007 1:22 PM PDT 0 recs

Season of hypotheticals?

I think, given that Bonds broke the record, 2007 will be remembered as the season of hypodermics.

Signatures? We don't need no stinking signatures.

by jubjub on Aug 23, 2007 1:31 PM PDT 0 recs

Better with players on the DL

I've been saying this all season.

Players like Chavez, Crosby, Kendall, and Kotsay were dragging this team down. It wasn't just the lack of offense, it was the "anti-clutchness" It was almost like if it was a situation with the game on the line or a key at bat in a rally they were MORE likely to hit into a double play, or the more people on base the less likely they were to hit a home run.

For a team (like the A's) who build around not making out, the A's had way too many players that would hand the other team an extra out by hitting into double plays. Suzuki will likely never bat .300avg with a .400+ obp like Kendall, but even if he peaks at .260/.270avg, I have to wonder if the fact that he doesn't lead the league in double plays will MORE then make up for the offensive deficit.

by Threepwood XX on Aug 23, 2007 1:54 PM PDT 0 recs

ichiro should have been a role model

weren't some of these guys still in high school when ichiro was a mariner rookie?

1 - stretch

2 - use your motion for a purpose (e.g., move to first base with your swing)

3 - play thousands of games consecutively and be even better in your mid 30s than mid 20s without steroids

how hard is it?

by notah8er on Aug 23, 2007 1:55 PM PDT 0 recs

It aint over til its over....

Yankees play Tigers this weekend....Tigers sweep along with Texas sweeping Seattle and the A's sweeping Tampa Bay and next stop wildcard contention....

AZfan

by AZFan on Aug 23, 2007 2:02 PM PDT 0 recs

i was looking at the schedule and thinking.......

the same exact thing.

You motorboating son of a bitch

by bigmacattack on Aug 23, 2007 2:46 PM PDT up 0 recs

Blez---

i love this post. I was thinking about some of the "what if's" myself recently. I was actually looking at the starting lineups to the most recent games and was looking down through our lineup and amazed at some of the names i was seeing; many of the names you stated above. To think the A's beat a lineup the last 3 days with Wells, Thomas, Rios, Overbay, R. Johnson, etc (and partially Glaus). You could even throw a solid hitter like Matt Stairs onto the list. The A's have names in their lineup that would be unrecognizable to many people.
There was a diary posted by a fellow AN'er about this possibly being Billy's best work to date, and I agree 100%. He has picked some players off the "scrap heap" molded them together and formed a team. I have seen more timely hitting in the past few weeks than i have honestly seen in the last few seasons and I honestly mean that.
In june or july, when many players were healthy,we would have lost yesterday's game without a doubt.
I think going into next season billy has put together some very interesting moves taht should make for a well-rounded team--health not being spared.

You motorboating son of a bitch

by bigmacattack on Aug 23, 2007 2:45 PM PDT 0 recs

Good points

I think the comment about Cust not being here if not for Piazza's injury is a good one. He's clearly the best story of the year for the A's. It seems that the biggest injuries may be the ones that gave so many starts to the combination of Braden, Komine, and (the one to) Meyer. I would imagine the A's record in those games is pretty poor. Five wins instead of losses in those games and the season looks different.

by SA on Aug 23, 2007 5:02 PM PDT 0 recs

Oh, absolutely

I have no doubt but that this team would be a playoff team if Harden and Loaiza had remained healthy. We'd still have endured 3 months of Joe Kennedy, but Gaudin would probably have been promoted-- still fresh, instead of running on fumes-- to fill his spot.

Lucky Lenny is a pretty nice story in his own right, but he's no Rich Harden.

by PaulThomas on Aug 23, 2007 5:48 PM PDT up 0 recs

actually, Scutaro is not an unexpected name

for A's winning baseball over the past few years

by OaklandSi on Aug 23, 2007 7:07 PM PDT 0 recs

i blame it all on e-lo and

huston. lack of one screwed up the starters and the other the pen. both back now. not a coincidence playing better.

jesus saves. and espo scores on the rebound.

by oakath on Aug 23, 2007 9:37 PM PDT 0 recs

One of the best things about being an A's fan

is watching these players that, for what ever reason, didn't pan out with other teams, and have found some measure of success in white shoes. The Red Sox gave up on DiNardo. Everyone thought Stewart was finished. Hannahan was buried in the Tiger organization with nowhere to go. Cust's story is now a legend. The Devil Rays gave up on Gaudin and Lugo. Think they could use them now?

When Charlie Finley sold the A's to the Haas family, he said (I'm paraphrasing) he was getting out because it was no longer about how intelligently you ran the team, but how much money you could spend, and that he couldn't compete anymore.

Well, that's true to a certain extent. I'd dance in the streets if the A's signed A-Rod this winter. But apparently there are undervalued assets out there, and the A's have an uncanny knack for finding them, and making them successful. I'm starting to think that if Dee Brown played every day, he'd hit .280 and run down every ball hit into the gap.

Blez is right - - we could wallow in a lot of what ifs re: 2007. It's been the most difficult season to endure in the past several years. It's maddening (and easy) to think of what might have been. But the future, as always, looks very bright.

by EddieVegas_NRAF on Aug 24, 2007 9:30 AM PDT 0 recs