andrew brown will be back soon enough, maybe they’ll keep dinardo up until then.
actually i’d rather keep davis up than dinardo…

1. An extra year of team control – “preserving your guy for another year”
2. Super Two arbitration eligibility

In Buck’s case I suspect that #1 will prove to be far more important than #2.

1. As a GM you do know exactly how much service time all players get – it’s managed down to the day. You can calculate how many days of service every Oakland A’s player has earned. This allows you to figure out exactly how many days a player needs to spend in the minors to ensure that you get that “seventh year” of contractual control (in Buck’s case, ensuring that he spends just enough time in the minors that he doesn’t get a full year of service this year, so that he ends this season with around 1.170 days of service, rather than 2).

This becomes important in Buck’s case because that extra year of contractual control is the difference between him becoming an FA in 2013 instead of 2012, assuming no more demotions and no contract extension. Buck will be 29 years old in 2013 – generally one of the most productive years of a player’s peak.

(And hence my constant suggestion of Buck and Barton both spending some time at AAA this year. We’d love to have that last age 28/29 season under our control. You could justify squandering that last year down the road if either guy were doing extremely well this year, or critical to the team’s success. Miguel Tejada had to be up on the big club in ‘98 because there was no other SS solution. But he also posted a .233/.298/.384 line that year. I’m sure Beane would’ve loved to have had just one more year of him on the back end – the .311/.360/.534 that he put up in his first year in Baltimore. And the difference between Tejada ‘98 and Barton/Buck ‘08 is that there are better players on the roster who play the same position as Buck and Barton this year. There is no black hole at 1b the way there was at SS in ‘98. So if Barton essentially wastes a whole year of service this year with below-average defense and a .675 OPS, some people will feel kind of silly if the A’s lose out on .900 OPS year from him in his peak in 2014). Beane’s thinking the same thing, and that’s why I’d expect Barton to get sent down if Chavy gets fully healthy soon).

2. Super-Two eligibility is an important factor in the case of the absolute best prospects, but less so in the case of Buck. I’ll attempt to argue that it’s not worth aggressively managing in Buck’s case.

Off the top of my head I can think of three examples of Super-Two status being actively managed/avoided (I just pulled a Devo there and linked to my own work): Miguel Cabrera, Ryan Braun, and Jay Bruce this year.

All three of those players had a few things in common: 1.) They play for middle class teams who are conscious of payroll 2.) They were/are dominant enough minor leaguers that, once they were called up, it was obvious that their play would dictate that they’d never get sent down again, and 3. They all stood/stand to make tens of millions of dollars in arbitration.

In cases that fit that profile, it makes sense to carefully tiptoe around Super Two Arbitration status, because it could cost your team more than $10 million dollars, as evidenced by Ryan Howard’s Super Two arby award this year.

But in the case of Buck – a good player, but also a guy who has had some hiccups and is no sure bet to avoid being sent down again at some point in his career – I don’t think it makes sense to manage his arb status aggressively. In the cost-benefit analysis, the team would have to gain something great to overcome the risk of alienating the player. Ten million or more certainly qualifies; Buck’s murkier situation – which would end up being over far less money, since average players earn far smaller arby awards than elite ones do – doesn’t, in my opinion, especially when you can’t pinpoint exactly what would need to happen to avoid Super 2, as you astutely said yourself.

But back to #1, when you can send Buck down for 20 days now in ‘08 when he’s performing poorly and turn that into an extra year of contractual control during his peak in 2013 (age 29), that makes tons of sense. That’s why Beane did it. The fact that he thinks that far ahead is why he is, in my opinion, the best GM in the game.

Needs to be sent down because he looks completely lost while Jack gives a more battling AB.

Jack and Sweeney spliting time at first and Barton playing every day in Sacramento seems better for the A's right now.

If for no other reason than it would be really funny.

How ‘bout we let him lead off on his birthday in Toronto?

Frank has never started a game at lead-off.

In the “G” column he shows two ABs in the 1 slot, but I think those must be as a pinch-hitter since the “GS” column shows zero. In those two ABs he has one walk and one HR. I think the lesson is clear.

for slightly better than awful performance makes no sense, when the person providing the former has tons of room to improve, and the person providing the latter is as good as he’s ever going to get.