Regarding Buck:

on Geren…

Early in the season he (Geren) seemed to forget about Buck and ANers sure made this point be known.

I’m unsure about Barton!

The consensus at AN over the last few weeks is that Geren and Beane need to “hold players accountable” for playing badly. I don’t know whether you’ve agreed with that perspective, Arcman, so this is a general statement: letting young, potentially talented players play through their mistakes, and holding players strictly accountable for their productivity, are to a large extent mutually exclusive approaches to building a ball club.

Now, you can always bench guys for not hustling or whatever, and you can do that to anyone on the team, rookie or veteran. But do you bench a player for failing to move a runner over, or not getting a bunt down, or misplaying a fly ball? Letting young players play almost always involves living with a certain number of screwups like that, even in the fundamentals of the game.

So I’d just like ANers to stay as consistent as possible with this: if you (and again, Arcman, this is a general comment, not directed individually at you) want the A’s to hold players strictly accountable, then you need to be okay with a young, potentially talented player like Buck losing playing time because he’s making some mistakes and he’s hitting badly. If, on the other hand, you want to let the youngsters learn and grow, you need to stop calling for Geren to change the lineup and bench some of the young guys because they’re not performing.

Daric had been among the youngest players at pretty much every level he’d played at in the minors, and he’d been a tremendous hitter — not getting a ton of homers, but hitting for a high average, working tons of walks, and hitting a lot of doubles. In his one, full year at Sacramento (as a 21-year-old!) he hit .293 with 38 doubles, 5 triples, and 9 HR (.293/.389/.438). And that September he raked with the A’s, hitting .347 with 9 2B 4 HR, and drawing 10 BB in 18 games.

There was no evidence at all that he wasn’t ready. And the A’s were really patient with him last year. At this point, though, he’s clearly not ready to hit in the majors. I have to say I have no idea what happened to him — he completely collapsed. Did he hit his head harder than he realized diving into that pool during the AS break?

In any case, I agree with you that he should play at AAA until he rediscovers how to hit. He’s still young (he won’t turn 24 until August, one month after Cunningham turns 24), so he still has time to figure it out.

Buck (who’s two years older than Cunningham or Barton), I think, has less of a track record as a professional hitter. IIRC they called him up largely as the result of a really good spring training performance in 07, and he continued to hit until he got hurt. His MiL stats were similar to Barton’s, except he was a good deal older when he started his career and was supposed to be more advanced when he was getting similar results at similar levels.

Again, I agree he needs to refind his hitting stroke. I think he could probably do that at AAA as well as in Oakland.

One thing I wouldn’t do is set up any kind of expectation that either of these guys have a “monster year” before getting called back up. Once either of them has hit really well in AAA for 6 or 8 weeks, I’d feel okay about giving them another shot in the majors (esp. if we need their bats, which is pretty likely).

I’m not sold in Ellsbury — he has no power and pretty crappy plate discipline (8 BBs/15 Ks) and only 6 2B, 1 3B, and 1 HR this year. If a guy who’s that fast only has 6 2B in 150 PA’s, he’s not hitting the ball real hard. His OPS+ last year was 87. This year, it’s 82. Sweeney’s OPS+ last year was 101, and he’s 2 years younger than Ellsbury.

If Ellsbury played for the A’s, no one outside of AN would have even heard of him.

Also, what xbhaskarx said.

“The consistent failure of underdogs in professional sports to even try something new suggests, to me, that there is something fundamentally wrong with the incentive structure of the leagues. I think, for example, that the idea of ranking draft picks in reverse order of finish — as much as it sounds “fair” — does untold damage to the game. You simply cannot have a system that rewards anyone, ever, for losing. Economists worry about this all the time, when they talk about “moral hazard.” Moral hazard is the idea that if you insure someone against risk, you will make risky behavior more likely. So if you always bail out the banks when they take absurd risks and do stupid things, they are going to keep on taking absurd risks and doing stupid things. Bailouts create moral hazard. Moral hazard is also why your health insurance has a co-pay. If your insurer paid for everything, the theory goes, it would encourage you to go to the doctor when you really don’t need to. No economist in his right mind would ever endorse the football and basketball drafts the way they are structured now. They are a moral hazard in spades. If you give me a lottery pick for being an atrocious GM, where’s my incentive not to be an atrocious GM?"

When you’re jerked around the way Buck has been, 70 PAs become even less of a measure of anything.