I’m a lefty, and my company softball team just made me the shortstop. That’s scary enough, ‘cuz I not only am a lefty – I stink, too.

What’s worse is that, given the rest of our team, I think our captain made the right decision.

Wanna guess our record?

I think the A’s also see plate discipline and defense as baseball skills. I wasn’t really referring to tools anyway, but I can understand what you mean. I do think there’s a difference between tools and skills though. A tool is, in my estimation, the manifestation of physical attributes while a skill is a practiced technique.

in a typical game, inning by inning, would reveal that
(1) if you don’t give up home runs, you have a great chance.
(2) if you can make balls hit in the gap into outs, make no errors in the infield, you have a great chance.

So I think the best pitching plus defense is going to put you into every game. You have to score runs to win, and to win against teams that ALSO have the non-HR pitching plus defense (more like the Angels, less like the Marlins) you have to get a lead-off double, move the runner, score the runner by making contact.

The Athletics team is almost there. The team ERA leads the majors, and that’s good, but like the series with Tampa Bay and NYYankees showed, simply have to cut down on HRs even more, and, on offense, have to have more doubles-to-runs type innings. Walks are great in that they wear down the opposing pitching, but it cannot be an “end in itself”, which is where this team has gotten, taking too many called third strikes.

Outfield defense and infield play has shown in those two series that it will keep you in a ballgame that could otherwise “get away” from close, just on a single play. Youth has a lot to do with this, as well as team speed.

A team like the 1997 Athletics had a lot more power than this one.
That team came in last in the AL West.

In 2005, when the league had not seen his slider, he got tons of swinging strikes from the slider. Then in 2006-07, he continued missing bats and putting hitters away – less often with the slider, more just the combination of a fastball that was “plenty good if you have to look out for the slider,” the slider, and the changeup.

Street is not putting hitters away lately. Just look at the recent ABs from Torii Hunter, Juan Rivera, Jason Giambi, and Wilson Betemit – yes Hunter and Rivera did not make solid contact, and Giambi did not put the ball in play at all, but after how many “two strike” pitches did each of these ABs end?

If I were a scout, I’d be concerned that Street does not have the “putaway pitch” he has had. Maybe a couple MPH on his fastball is partly responsible, maybe he is not able to get quite the arm angle and/or stride he needs due to physical limitations, I don’t know. What I do know is that Street is able to get two strikes on hitters but that hitters are fouling off, taking, or lining to left, pitches they used to miss, and that they are seeing well pitches that used to fool them. That is not a good thing.

They’re major league baseball players, not used cars. It’s not as if the thrice broke down Fiatt down at Jimmy’s chop shop gets a write up in SF Gate every time it breaks down. GMs know what they are getting into when acquiring an injury prone player.

Imagine the hitter you could flip Halladay for, and the trade starts to look pretty good for Oakland.

GAMERS.

really? How about the acceleration of gravity, on Earth?
Instrumentally, you might get enough variation to declare “change”, but is it practicable?

he wasn’t very good at reading pitchers, and likely would have been thrown out enough to not make it worthwhile to have him stealing all the time.

works in small parks, but that’s about it these days.

plus, it’s important to remember that the other half of Earl Weaver’s success was in having one dominant pitching staff after another.

I think the pitchers win out with video. The public isn’t going to hear it, but I speculate that batters’ approaches to different counts, men on base, etc. are being dissected to the ‘nth degree, and can be, given the overwhelming availability of video..slow mo..everything. Catchers don’t need to keep it all in their heads, either, as the pitch can be simply called from the bench, where reams of triangulating data can be summoned, pitch by pitch if necessary.

You might say, well pitchers can be scrupulously examined and exploited, ceteris paribus but I give you the example of Sandy Koufax. It was soon discovered that he tipped his curveball every time. Yet hitters could do nothing to exploit it, even when they knew the pitch was coming.
Batters will have a harder time thinking “okay, he always throws the splitter 0-2 if it is later than the 5th inning, unless the score is.. and no runners..etc. Batters are losing.

But in a game that employs Brett Myers, Manny Ramirez, and Francisco Rodriguez, I suppose there’s room for one more.

would you be for Dixon skipping from low A to say AAA or from AA to the bigs if he could cut/handle it or would you rather have him prove that he can play at each level before moving on?

Or is that a touchy subject for people who care about basketball?

(totally agree btw, getting the names wrong is a pet peeve of mine too)