is that our injured players generally do worse as they get older and more injured. That’s not to say that the A’s draft or develop hitters well, just that Chavez, Ellis, and Kotsay aren’t all that relevant to the question.

He has been better than expected, and only seems to get better every year.

Those guys aren’t past their prime, they were in their prime. Those guys were all in their mid to low 20’s when they started those downward trends, a time when they should have been getting better.

And that correlation vs. causation saying is getting a little cliche. Sure, when shark attacks and ice cream sales go up in the summer neither are related to each other. Other than Kurt Suzuki can you guys name any players that have shown significant improvement year to year coming through the organization? The thing the stat tests give you is a way to identify trends. You can say correlation doesn’t equal causation to every single one of them, but that is the easy way out.

but I’m still worried about Cust. Hits and walks went down in 2008. He’s looking good so far in 2009, but I’m preparing myself for another A’s career downward slide.

Hatteberg was solid, but he didn’t do much different than what he did in Boston. In fact he may have actually been better in Cincinnati after he left Oakland.

I don’t want to misconstrue my purpose for doing this. I didn’t believe there was a lot to gain from looking at veteran players, or guys who only played one or two years. I think it gets to the point with a lot of the veteran guys were nothing a coach is going to say is going to change their approach, or they are already in their decline. There are guys that have come in and seen success like Byrnes, Cust, Durazo, and Thomas, there are also guys who have been “blah” like Jason Kendall, Jay Payton, Bobby Kielty, Mike Piazza, and Chris Singleton.

My main concern is the lack of any improved development year to year. I noticed on baseball -reference today they display mean stats for each player at every organization and also league level. I’m thinking about performing some ANOVA tests on the data to see what it shows. What guys not previously looked at would we be most concerned with about development though? They don’t
necessarily still need to be in the organization because their results at the new clubs could be telling.

I’m thinking Sweeney, Buck, Barton, CarGon, Denorfia, Cardenas, Carter, and maybe Pennington.

Thats not exactly what I’m trying to determine though. Those fringe prospects that don’t work out, or superstars that come out of nowhere aren’t really what this post is about. Those are more personnel and scouting decisions. It’s been done a million times already, but we could get into debate theorizing why Beane has been a poor talent evaluator the last 7 years, but again thats not what it’s about.

I wanted to try and figure out why the A’s offense has been in the bottom half of the league since 2003. That is not an opinion, hypothesis, or blind assertion, that is fact. There are obviously some reasons for it. What they are, I have no clue. Whether it be based on the aforementioned personnel decisions, poor organizational teaching, more stringent steroid testing, or something completely different. Regardless, Beane and Co. have been failing miserably at getting quality offensive talent into the big leagues, otherwise the offense would actually be decent. It’s pretty sad when there isn’t one home grown talent that is worthy of starting on anyones fantasy baseball team… I came up with this post because I didn’t think anyone had really investigated the possibility of poor organizational player development. Which as I’ve come to find out, due to a ton of factors, is extremely difficult to analyze.

There are tons of home grown players developing into stars around the league. Look at the Marlins, Red Sox, Phillies, Cardinals, Brewers, Rangers, Braves, Indians, Rays, and Twins. These teams are constantly reloading with young talent that continually propagates through their systems. While guys like Braun, Utley, Rollins, Ramirez, Youkilis, Ellisbury, Pedroia, McCann, Sizemore, Cabrera, Quentin, and Kinsler are tearing it up for their respective teams we are sitting over here trying to justify Oakland’s player development by citing the success of Eric Byrnes… Maybe these teams were futile for long enough to build up a huge stable of high level draft picks, but it still doesn’t explain why the players within the A’s organization aren’t showing any signs of improvement or making an impact in the major leagues.

Again, I don’t have a huge level of access to those premium prospect type sites, but I really wonder what makes Evan Longoria turn out so much better than Bobby Crosby? Or Grady Sizemore so much more successful than Travis Buck? Or Carlos Pena that much better than Daric Barton? Aren’t those guys supposed to be on the same talent level? I’d really like to continue evaluating this somehow. Guys that have been in the A’s farm system and organizations seem to be the best candidates; like Ryan Sweeney, Matt Murton, Carlos Gonzalez, Eric Patterson, Andre Ethier, and John Baker. Otherwise there isn’t much of an argument to make in regards to the development of players who have never left the organization, because other than Kurt Suzuki there isn’t much to talk about.