Reworking the Athletics: An Introductory and a Call to Arms

…once I figure out what that means.

You are really bringin’ it lately. Good man.

Well…I’m going to be writing a lot of little separate blurbs in this thread, with separate ideas, because I think about this kind of stuff all the time and I got about 30 of ’em.

But take all of it with a giant grain of salt, because no one else thinks they are great ideas. In my younger years I wrote a few detailed “business plan” type ideas and sent them to the A’s front office.

Shockingly, they haven’t replied. ;)

I don’t like the way the A’s (and seemingly all teams) seem to go year-to-year with a static rather than a dynamic budget.

Here’s what I mean:

The A’s off-season thought process seems to be this:

 “We’ve got $20M to spend, because we’ve got $40M committed, and we can support a payroll of about $60M this year. So…we’ll throw some money at Beltre, at Chapman, at Scutaro. Aw, shoot. None of them wanted it. We still have this $10M burning a hole in our pocket at this point. Which undesirable free agents remain on the market, waiting to take someone’s money?”

That’s a loser’s game. And it seems like the game we are playing. It’s a recipe for letting the big market teams get literally any piece they desire. It’s not too difficult in baseball to identify the top free agents. The big market teams get them, and they don’t even have to “overpay,” because there’s so few teams who can financially compete with them for offers.

Ex. Three teams place very competitive bids for Teixiera, while 10 teams place very competitive bids for Suppan. The middle-tier teams fall into the trap of saying, “This guy is actually in our price range,” but ultimately the sheer amount of bidders drives up the price to insane levels for mid-tier talent. The lack of bidders for the top-tier talent ends up meaning that the Yankees get them for deals that aren’t even outlandish. And that’s a problem.

So…teams – especially the A’s – need to play the game differently.

When they have $10-20M left over, and there’s no elite talent left, I’d much rather they roll that money over to the following year. And the following year. And the following year, if necessary. Right now, there’s not an elite player I want the A’s to target in FA for years. I don’t like any of the elite ones that are available in the class of 2011 (next offseason) or 2012.

But what if the A’s budgeted far enough down the road to make an incredible offer to a true superstar in free agency?

For example, right now, they started planning for the 2016 off-season.

After the 2015 season, they make overwhelmingly* the best offer to 26-year-old Jason Heyward, or 27-year-old Neftali Feliz.

*When I say "overwhelmingly the best offer, I don’t mean a half-hearted “we barely beat Boston’s offer” Scutaro/Beltre proposal. I mean a knock-your-socks-off offer, because that what it’ll take to get a really attractive FA to bypass NY or Boston. Remember, A-Rod’s Texas Rangers deal was considered crazy…but he actually earned every penny. It took him from age 25-32, and he was incredible valuable, and then he opted out. They just didn’t put a good team around him.

Having a dynamic payroll would allow the A’s to employ that free agent strategy.

Instead of signing Sheets, Duke, Crisp, Ellis etc., you go into 2010 with a $40M payroll. Same with 2011. Payroll goes up slightly in 2012-2014, as the current young pitching corps reaches arby, but the best of that crew can be traded for future young contributing assets, just as Haren/Mulder were. Then payroll suddenly makes a giant leap with the signing of the elite free agent.

$60M static payroll for 2010-2015 = $360M total dollars. I don’t like strategy, because it encourages spending on the “rest of the scraps” free agents, and prevents us from doing what we do best, which is finding undervalued scraps and getting them to surprisingly play at a league-average level.

Or, my conceptual proposal…

$40M in 2010, $40M in ‘11, $50M in ’12, $55M in ’13, $60M in ’14-’15…and then a huge jump to $90M, with the addition of an elite FA. The exact numbers aren’t as important here; the idea is that you’re basically “banking” money in the early years, with the knowledge that you are going to need it for your projected huge payroll jump when the right free agent comes along.

It’s a riskier approach, and devotes a huge chunk of the budget to one player, but if that player is great, it can work. Think of how smart it was for the Giants to sign Pirate Barry Bonds to what was at the time the richest FA contract in major league history, despite having far less than a $100M payroll. Bonds represented a pretty sizable chunk of the payroll at the time…and it worked out pretty well.

If the A’s play by the same rules as everyone else they’ll always be .500.

Everyone does it the same way. There’s a great thread on the Internet somewhere, maybe it was Sons of Sam Horn, that actually lists the exact amount of scouts that every team has.

Perhaps someone can actually find it.

Don’t quote me exactly, but it’s something like this:

Every team in major-league baseball has like 10-15 area amateur scouts. Total. Scouring all of North of America for talent. And no one has less than ~10, and no one has more than ~15 (IIRC, the Red Sox had the most).

Then they all have cross-checkers, whose job is to travel through and see the very best prospects that their area scouts are recommendation, to make sure two sets of eyes have seen their favorite guys.

Here’s what I don’t understand:

Millions and millions of dollars are at stake here, and the draft represents the best avenue for a small-market team to succeed. Why is there no team that has experimented with a drastically larger scouting department than anyone else? Why do they all do it relatively the same way?

I’m no paid scout, but I’ve watched and played a lot of baseball, and I think I’m better at scouting when I watching a game with someone else (assuming that person is watching as intently as I am, and has an equivalent pedigree in the game or better).

So…why do they send these guys off to do the job by themselves?

Why not double your scouting staff, and have two Northern California scouts instead of one, and 4-5 Southern California scouts instead of two? Wouldn’t these guys benefit from getting to watch games together and compare notes? (I’m assuming they couldn’t talk freely with the scouts from other teams for obvious reasons). Wouldn’t be nice if they didn’t have to take lonely four-hour car rides to go watch prospects – if they could instead take the car ride with a buddy riding shotgun who wants to do nothing but talk about the players you both just watched?

I am amazed that every team has one guy scout all of Northern California. I’ll go so far as to say that I think it’s crazy. It’s Friday night in May, there’s 200 different aces pitching all around the Bay Area, including Stanford and Cal, and your organization is going to go watch a grand total of…one of them.

And then they’ll make a draft decision after seeing him one time. Maybe he had food poisoning that day or was distracted because it’s first game his mom ever missed in his life. Who knows if you didn’t see him twice. But they only have the resources to see top 1-2 picks twice. Crazy.

You have an opportunity to build a new park every 30-50 years. You’d be silly not to research ways to make that park in such a way that it creates the opportunity to have a home-field advantage in it.

For example, a short porch in right field, coupled with a conscious effort to draft and recruit pull-happy lefties; or, a park with crazy-deep fences, which actually makes it more justifiable to play an outfield of Coco Crisps, who can leg out triples and inside-the-parkers on offense while fully maximizing their defensive gifts with all that ground to cover.

Some advantage or distinct feature that makes the park clearly appeal to a particular type of player, such that that player actually is attracted to playing in the A’s park.

If they build a generic park and miss out on that strategic opportunity, I’ll be disappointed.

How much money has Dave Duncan made for mediocre pitchers in his career? It’s like, they find him, they develop a sinker, and they owe him the rest of the career and untold millions.

It seems like there are few very standout, notable coaches in MLB, where the players who work with them end up saying, “That guy was amazing, he turned my career around.”

When you consider that elite players are making 10 times the salary of these coaches, wouldn’t it make sense to pay a few million if necessary to poach the very best ones away?

To the A’s credit, they always seem to have outstanding depth. They never seem to get caught with egg on their face and no legitimate backup at a position. They are like a 1-2 WAR Player Factory. They turn up random unheralded relievers and turn them into successful bullpen cogs. They find unwanted dudes on the waiver wire and make other teams realize that they should’ve wanted those unwanted dudes.

What the A’s do the worst:

*Develop elite 5-6 WAR talent. I suspect this is largely a function of their risk-averse, college white boy draft strategy of year’s past. Thankfully it appears they’ve recently moved more in the direction of prioritizing high upsides and athleticism.

*Build stadiums.

I’d call that Mark Verstergerern (sp) guy at the Athletes Performance Institute in Arizona that every MLBer trains at in the off-season. It says something that MLBers, paying with their own dime, choose to go that place, and that guy, when they want to rehab and get bigger/faster/stronger. I’d say to him, “I’m giving you a million bucks to be our consultant. Answer me this: If I gave you an unlimited budget, how would you build your ideal major and minor league training staff? Can you do a walk-through with us and watch my guys, taking note of what we are doing that doesn’t look like best practice? Then, can you clean house for me and hire exactly the people you’d recommend, using your industry contacts?”

(Again, similar to my adding scouts idea, none of this shit even comes close to the $10M we spent signing Sheets, which is money we’d re-direct under my revised budget, rather than simply lighting it on fire and roasting mallows, which we did instead).

Oh my god NSG

this is amazing, KEEP GOING

It seems like the Mariners have kind of cornered the market on “West Coast team that has capitalized on their proximity to Pacific Rim.” Obviously their signing of Ichiro is 90-100% of that. But man, what a financial windfall their Ichiro investment has been.

The A’s play in a market that has a very strong Indian and Asian population (many of whom have a good deal of expendable income, I might add).

What if they made a play for Yu Darvish when he gets posted eventually? Darvish has both Indian and Japanese bloodlines, IIRC. I realize Darvish has never expressed interest in playing here, and that his excessive pitch counts would make for a scary long-term financial investment, but hey, this is the think-outside-the-box thread, not the “sign Gabe Gross” thread.

Imagine if you could galvanize millions of Bay Area people who weren’t previously baseball fans at all and get them to buy A’s Darvish jerseys. The A’s are in constant battle with the Giants for the hearts and future dollars of future generations of Bay Area consumers. Once a family becomes “Giants fans,” it’s pretty hard to break that spell. But take thousands of families who have never before cared about baseball…invest in an immigrant cultural icon who could capture their interest…it might prove lucrative for the franchise, even if Darvish disappoints somewhat on the field.

I think it would be cool if the A’s could help spread baseball to traditionally non-baseball-crazy countries.

The downside is they wouldn’t see a payoff for like 20 years.

The upside would be, in a country of a billion people, at least a few million become A’s fans. Kind of like the way the Chinese felt about the Bulls during Jordan’s prime. He made the Bulls logo a global brand.

Building the first academy in a hugely populated country might be a small step in the same direction.

The technology is definitely there. Visitor’s dugout wiretaps, with the audio piped in to Geren’s bluetooth; a plethora of magnified resolution hidden cameras throughout the park directed at the catcher’s crotch, third base coach’s box, bench coach, etc., along with post-game video analysis matching the signs up with the outcome of the play (bunt, steal, etc.).

Obviously we get into ethics here, but some teams are engaging in this kind of stuff on a lower level already (Phillies using binoculars in the CF bullpen, A-Rod peeking back at the signs in the batter’s box, etc.). And that’s just the stuff we’ve heard about.

The challenge (beyond the obvious pangs at your conscience) would be all the modern-day player movement. You couldn’t ever keep what you were doing a secret with free agents moving every year.

Unless…unless…it was kept a secret between Geren and the front office, and Geren was the only field personnel privy to the info…Geren is going to be a 20-year Jerry Sloan/Mike Scoscia type after all…hmm…

Since my Montero-for-Bailey deal collapses with Bailey on the DL…

How about Ryan Kalish?

Would the Red Sox accept a deal of Breslow and Wuertz for him + a lower-level prospect?

Kalish fills a couple of important needs:

*Long-term, our outfield situation looks like of grim, and he could form a Taylor-Kalish-Choice OF.

*He bats left-handed, providing some much-needed long-term balance in a lineup with RH’s Choice/Carter/Taylor/Suzuki or Donaldson/Green.

*He’s easy on the eyes, which helps keep Pam, OakA’sHoney, baseballgirl and company happy.

Right now it is the Twins at the forefront, and most of the kids who get signed here (last signing bonus was $800,000, btw.) do so by the Twins organization. But, like everyone else, they are not really present here. Sure, teams have scouts, they organize a clinic every now and then, but when players generally start competing against talented opponents only at the age of 17, 18 it is mostly too late. Much more can be done. Building a training complex in say, Germany, could be a great investment for the A’s, both player-wise and from economical standpoint. Here are my thoughts, dime free a dozen.

• Put a couple million in the infrastructure somewhere in a densely populated area. What you need is a central training complex with 1-2 playing fields and 3-4 training ones, and an academy-like housing. Also invest in renovating the existing fields in the area.

• Put another million in PR and make baseball one of the recognized school sports in elementary schooling. This is crucial, so pay as much as you need to get it done, one way or the other. Work with the city council, support some of their other projects and in return have a huge talent pool at the age where you can still teach them everything and where you can make them fans for life. Long term goal – make 5 players to play for the A’s and 500,000 who will buy A’s jerseys.

• Organize Little League-like tournaments between schools. Most of the youth sport in Europe is team based, not school based – having sponsored competitions between schools would attract more people — not only the kids that play — thus raising awareness and future income possibilities.

• Provide lodging for older kids from outside the immediate area and make arrangement with one or more high schools in the neighborhood, preferably of good academic quality. Work out class scheduling that will allow for practices, games and travel. Have parents feel good about the prospect of having their teenage kids live away from home. Teach English and Spanish alongside baseball.

• Split up the kids and have them compete in one of the German Leagues, depending on their level of talent. There are six levels of competition for adults and most successful German teams have their second or third team, comprised mostly of talented 16-17 year olds competing against “normal” adults.

• Work closely with the existing local teams. Nobody likes an intruder, yet the prospect of such an influx of investment can only benefit the existing clubs. More games and more attention can bring them better revenues, too.

• Regularly take the best kids to summer leagues in the States. Bring them to an A’s game. Have them meet some players and roam the big league clubhouse. The competition against peers in the US will make them better and more humble. The defeats will make them work harder and so will the taste of what might lay ahead. It will also make the other kids envious of the trip, in turn making everybody work harder.

• Push your people on important decision-making panels both in German-, European- and World Baseball Federation. This will help you shape the national and international competition schedule as well as legal stuff concerning signing and availability.

• Use the popularity wave. I never thought a day would come where I would see German national team signing autographs for an hour with never less than 100 people in line, most of them kids. I did two days ago. Unlike many other European countries, Germany is fielding mostly home grown talent and has a decent baseball infrastructure already, due to many NATO bases around the country. Holland and Italy are well known hot beds, but Germany is coming along very quickly.

• Use the economic power of people here. It is one of the better economies in the world and there is plenty of potential of redirecting a chunk of that towards baseball. Perhaps work out a specific MLB.tv/MiLB.tv package deal available for the area covering the A’s and their Minor League affiliates, where people could follow their countrymen. Have your own channel of distributing baseball gear and work in the percentages with the equipment manufacturers.

• Be the first one. If you do, you don’t even have to do everything perfect and you will still have people here associating professional baseball with the A’s (as cynics would say, something not many in the States do, anymore). Anybody following might have smaller initial investment (at least on the PR side) but nowhere close the connections and presence that will allow to run a sustainable and profitable business.

• Hire the right man to run it. A’s, if you are reading, I am available and I’d do it in a heartbeat.

A field manager that knows how to win. The Howe, Macha, Geren types are just ho hum. If you look back the 1980 club won 29 more games than the 79 club just by changing managers. When La Russa took over in 86 from boring Jackie Moore they took off right away. But are there any managers that can light a fire under a team any more?

Zonis’s original premise: I don’t doubt that many baseball organizations would benefit from some business process re-engineering, but I don’t see how there’s anything any of us can do to help unless we’re actually hired by the team. That’s partly because if they haven’t asked for our advice there’s little chance of getting them to listen to it, but mostly it’s because we can’t even form any constructive advice until we get inside the organization and actually see how it operates. It’s not like we can decide how to re-engineer the organization just from watching the games and noticing what shows up on the transaction wire. We barely even know the organizational structure. Who reports to whom? What is each department’s responsibility? We have no clue.

since we do not have access to the inner workings of the A’s well enough to analyse their processes, etc…

Should we reel back our expectations and go with a case/proposal of best practices for a slew of areas for the team?