Ryan Howard’s final year of arbitration is going to cost $18 million.

If Travis Buck establishes himself as a consistent .800 OPS player, you can bet that his final year of arbitration would garner at least 6 million, being conservative.

So, an extra year of cost control over Buck is probably worth millions of dollars.

In Howard’s case, he won a $10 million dollar arby award as a Super 2. If he was in the minors for a few more weeks, the Phillies could’ve paid him $400K that year.

So that extra year was “worth” 9 million dollars…not factoring in the progressive future years of arby winnings that he garnered.

(I know that wasn’t perfect, but I was doing it just for illustrative purposes).

Let’s clear this up a bit, ’cause I specifically said Beane has better access to info then the rest of us.

Therefore, I can only assume that comment is tied to the projection argument. Why should we assume Beane has a significantly better projection formula then CHONE/PECOTA/ZIPS/Bill James? If the A’s have a super-secret math formula that’s supposed to propel them to victory then how do you explain the last two sub-.500 seasons?

Even the best projection systems are essentially guesswork. They take past performance and run it through their formulas and produce a projected performance line. Everyone has access to the past performance data, any difference in the projections comes from variations between the formulas themselves or from the projected playing time assigned to a player.

I’m sure the A’s employ their own statisticians and that they have their own mathematical equations, but like I already said there’s no reason to think their equations are vastly superior to what you and I can find on the open market. (Hell, the Red Sox went out and hired Bill James shortly after Epstein was hired, which should pretty much prove that there isn’t some secret coven of math wizards being employed by pro baseball teams!) The team statisticians have one unique advantage over their public domain brethren and that is knowing what the A’s ideal playing time distribution looks to be.

If the A’s think/plan/hope on Chavez getting 500 plate appearances next year then their math whiz can take that number and plug it into his formula and produce a projection based on past performance and that particular amount of playing time. Do that for every player, throw in some Kentucky windage ‘cause you’ve always got some sub-replacement level IP and at bats during the season and there’s you’re team projection for 2009.

But that playing time distribution is more fantasy than reality for now. Oh, and don’t fire the scouts… they’ve got very little to do with the projection formulas being employed.

(Although there is probably a pretty interesting discussion to be had on the role scouts have in player acquisition.)

Or his drafting skills or his ability to find talent in general. You aren’t talking about his roster management or how he delegates responsibility or any of the dozens of things that he’d have a clear advantage over WC or even (perhaps) myself.

You’re talking about Beane’s Divination skills.

The 25 man roster is pretty much set (and if things change than WC is entitled to re-think his call) and all that’s left is to try and guess how it will perform. The only advantage Beane has in making his guess is inside information regarding the health status of his players. But stop to think about the implications of that inside knowledge. We know Chavez was hurt last year and that he had surgery, we’ve heard lots of positive things about his recovery during the off-season. He’s still going to be handled with care early on and there’s no guarantee he’ll stay healthy all season but the A’s have shared the good news.

The A’s share the good news because it helps build hope among the fan base and a hopeful fan base tend to buy more tickets and merchandise. So we hear the good and we know from past experience that the A’s suppress the bad news. We the fans assume that the healthy guys we saw at the end of last season are going to be healthy when they report to Spring Training. Therefore its reasonable to assume that most inside info Beane has is bad for Oakland’s chances.

So as a hypothetical, we’ve all heard that Ellis might not be at 100% when the season starts. The implication is he could sit out some games in April but he should still be able to play. What if Beane has a doctor’s report that says Ellis is probably going to be out all of April? Losing Ellis for a month would do more to support WC’s bottom end 75 win season scenario vs. an 87 win season.

Now, having said all that I can think of one area where Beane could have insider info that would be a definite positive for the A’s chances and that’s having seen Anderson, Cahill, Mazzaro and their other prospects at instructs. The A’s typically share the progress reports with the media but it would not be atypical for a team to keep the lid on a particular prospect’s progress in an attempt to keep the hype machine at bay.

They may think that Anderson, for example, could be ready (based on progress made during instructs) by Opening Day. They might be pencilling him for the rotation as we speak. But they’re holding off on that kind of talk publicly because they want to see how he performs in ST and there’s no need to add media pressure to the situation.

Of course, rookie big league pitchers tend to be rather unpredictable in their performance and there has to be at least a half dozen players ahead of any of the rookie arms when it comes to influencing the A’s 2009 play-off chances.

The only thing I would say different is if you’re projecting an 85 win team with a +/- of 3 then you should look at yourself as an 82 win team and should add pieces accordingly, if possible. That way if you can add a 3 win player then any variance in your projection is in your favor and a bottom end 85 win team becomes a 91 win contender.

He’s using the same basic math that WC is to project the fortunes of the 2009 Oakland A’s.

I pointed out two areas where Beane’s superior information could theoretically help the accuracy of his projections: injury reports and scouting reports. The injury reports will tend to be bad news, taking playing time away from better players and giving it to presumably weaker players thus tilting the call closer to WC’s low-ball call than an 87 win season.

As for the scouting reports that could say positive things about the young’uns, how many times have we heard positive things about Bobby Crosby’s hitting only to be disappointed when the games mattered? The young guys needs to test themselves against big league competition.

scenario where the pitching staff manages an ERA in the top half of the league. I don’t see a single pitcher likely to provide 180 innings with a 100 ERA+ or better. Let’s look at pitchers on recent teams that have won 87 or more Pythag games that did meet or beat that standard:

2008 Rays — Shields, Jackson, Sonnanstine, Garza
2008 Red Sox — Lester, Wakefield
2008 Yankees — Mussina
2008 Blue Jays — Burnett, Halladay
2008 White Sox — Buehrle, Danks, Floyd
2008 Twins — Blackburn
2008 Angels — Santana, Saunders
2008 Phillies — Hamels, Moyer
2008 Mets — Perez, Santana, Pelfrey
2008 Cubs — Lilly, Dempster, Zambrano
2008 Brewers — Sheets, Bush
2008 Dodgers — Lowe, Billingsley, Kuroda

2007 Red Sox — Matsuzaka, Wakefield, Beckett
2007 Yankees — Pettitte, Wang
2007 Blue Jays — Halladay
2007 Indians — Sabathia, Carmona, Byrd
2007 Tigers — Verlander
2007 Angels — Lackey, Escobar
2007 Phillies — Hamels
2007 Braves — Hudson, Smoltz
2007 Cubs — Lilly, Zambrano, Marquis, Hill
2007 Rockies — Francis
2007 Padres — Peavy

2006 Mets — Glavine
2006 Dodgers — Lowe, Penny
2006 Yankees — Wang, Mussina
2006 Twins — Santana
2006 Tigers — Bonderman, Rogers, Verlander, Robertson
2006 White Sox — Garcia, Garland, Contreras
2006 Indians — Lee, Westbrook, Sabathia

2005 Braves — Smoltz, Hudson
2005 Phillies — Lieber, Myers
2005 Mets — Glavine, Martinez
2005 Cardinals — Carpenter, Marquis, Mulder, Suppan, Morris
2005 Astros — Oswalt, Pettitte, Clemens
2005 Yankees — Johnson
2005 Red Sox — Wakefield, Arroyo, Wells
2005 Blue Jays — Chacin, Towers
2005 White Sox — Contreras, Buehrle, Garland, Garcia
2005 Indians — Lee, Sabathia, Millwood
2005 Angels — Colon, Lackey, Byrd
2005 Athletics — Zito, Haren, Blanton

The last team to win 87 or more Pythag games with no pitcher getting 180 IP and an ERA+ of at least 100 was the 2004 Yankees. I picked 87 wins because it’s what others have predicted for the A’s. You can argue about the validity or arbitrary nature of 180 IP and 100 ERA+ plus the fact remains that it’s very rare to have a good team with no good durable starting pitchers.

If Beane has information that leads him to believe that the A’s are going to get that kind of production out of someone on this staff, or that you can get the innings out of 10 pitchers instead of 6 that’s fine, but I’m not ready to predict that that’s the most likely scenario. Are you?

I’m not the guy who opened up with a coin-flip analogy that was completely inadequate for the topic of discussion.

Which do you prefer PT, the idea that Billy Beane can “sense” the quality of his team or that he’s using some sort of analytical process?

We are talking about the winning potential of the 2009 A’s. We’re talking about projected numbers. I’m saying that Beane is using the same, basic formulas that you or I or WC can find on-line. Even nevermoor agrees that this is probably true. I don’t care how smart you think Billy Beane is or isn’t. I don’t care how successful Beane has been as a GM. He does not look at 2+2 and come up with a different answer then just about anyone on AN.

Things don’t change much when we’re looking at 2X + 3Y – 1.3Z = the cosine of M. The formula is a bit harder but if everyone is using the same numbers for X, Y & Z then we’ll get the same answer.

Unless its 7 AM, in which case I’m skipping class to have breakfast.

The problem is we’re not all using the same numbers for X, Y, Z. It seems we’ve got some play in what the exact numbers are, thus disagreement in what the final answer is. Nevermoor argues that up-to-date scouting reports can help refine the numbers we use in the equation and I think he’s right but I don’t believe the refinement the scouts can provide are going to radically change the end result. Mark Ellis isn’t going to go from a projected batting line of .280 with 10 home runs to .350 with 25 bombs based on a scouting report. (Yes, this is an obvious exaggeration.)

Beane’s opinion may have a positive influence on the probability of a successful outcome but it cannot alter the math of the current equation. He can change the equation by trading a bag of baseballs for CC Sabathia, but until that happens he has to find his answer based on the current 25 and 40 man rosters, just like the rest of us.