A Blueprint for Rebuilding (Phase 2)
by grover on Aug 1, 2007 12:15 AM PDT
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PrintWell... that was disappointing.
I am of course referring to the complete and total lack of action on the part of the Oakland A’s as the July 31st deadline passed. This is a team that has holes in the roster, holes that cannot be filled internally unless the players who are currently digging said holes can turn it around. And seeing as how the primary culprits (Eric Chavez, Bobby Crosby and Mark Kotsay) have all been varying shades of disappointing for going on two years now it seems beyond optimistic to think that a turnaround is forthcoming in 2008. But more than that, I’m tired of giving them more chances. I’m tired of wasting my time and the time of some very good players on this roster. Meanwhile, the likelihood of Beane & Co. going on a spending spree in the coming off-season seems even more remote than the possibility that Bobby Crosby will quit chasing sliders.
But I’m not without hopefulness.
There is still time for Billy Beane to enact the more critical details that I brought up in the first part of this series. The Blanton non-trade could still come to fruition in the coming off-season, so its failure to materialize in the last 24 hours is not cause for too much alarm. (Although I have to admit, I don’t see how Beane can expect to get a better deal in December than he would have gotten during a July playoff push. I worry that Beane might have missed the optimal moment to deal Blanton. But moving on...)
Phase 2
Step 1: Get Piazza moving dammit!
Let me make this crystal clear. Trading Mike Piazza in the next 10 days is the single most important thing that Billy Beane can presently do to improve the future of the Oakland (eventually Fremont) A’s. This seems at odds with my previous diary, in which I said I didn’t care where Mike Piazza got traded to or who the A’s got in return. Well, I still don’t care where Piazza ends up or who we get in return, I’m more interested in the 3-5 draft picks the A’s could sign once they freed up Piazza’s salary.
Today’s history lesson: How the Oakland A’s have spent their draft signing bonus budget for the past 5 years.
Year Total # 1st Rd Picks Budget
2003 2 1st/1 Sup 1st $4.9 million
2004 2 1st/2 Sup 1st $6.3 million
2005 1 1st/1 Sup 1st $4.8 million
2006 0 1st/0 Sup 1st $1.6 million
2007 1 1st/2 Sup 1st Est. $4 million spent
As you can see, the A’s broke the $5 million mark once in the last four years and that came when they had 4 1st round picks to sign. This year, with only 3 1st round picks to look forward to, it is likely that the A’s budgeted no more than $5 million to sign their draft picks. Expecting the A’s to dip into ownership’s pockets and up their signing budget in order to give above slot bonuses to draft picks with signability issues seems the height of foolishness. However, if the A’s could take the roughly $2.5 million they’d save by trading Piazza and slip it into their draft budget... well, that’s money that has already been allocated by the ownership towards baseball operations. Now we’re talking about moving money from one pot to another, I don’t see why Beane would have to ask permission to spend money he’s already been told to spend.
What the A’s need to do more than anything is restock their farm system with high ceiling talent and that kind of prospect costs money. The A’s currently have 22 unsigned draftees from this year’s draft. Two of those draftees, 12th rounder Gary Brown and 21st rounder Stephen Porlier, were considered talented enough to be taken in the first 3 rounds. There were even some whispers that Brown could be worthy of a Sup 1st round pick. The problem with both is signability. Brown is a high school player who signed a letter of intent to Cal State Fullerton; Porlier is a draft eligible sophomore for the Oklahoma Sooners. It will probably cost anywhere from $600 – 900 K to sign Brown away from Fullerton, which is pretty much the going rate for a Sup 1 pick but well above the norm for your typical 12th round pick. Porlier doesn’t have quit that kind of leverage but he’d probably be expecting at least $350 K to sign. Again, that’s the going rate for a high 3rd round pick (which is roughly where he’d have been picked based on talent alone) but considerably above slot for a 21st round pick.
The A’s could spend the remainder of their original signing budget on Brown and Porlier alone and there might not be enough left to cover even that much. Adding the savings from Piazza’s salary gives Oakland much more flexibility and would allow them to sign more young talent. Now there are some folks who worry about spending too much money on draft picks, who are afraid that doing what I’m advocating will end up costing the A’s more money down the road as the bar will raise for the next crop. There is some merit to this argument, but bare in mind that the A’s are paying Jay Witasick $1.5 million to pitch for the Devil Rays. They cut a $1.3 million check to the Padres so they’d take Milton Bradley and put him in their outfield. And last but certainly not least, the A’s gave the Chicago Cubs $4.5 million to make Jason Kendall a platoon catcher. Oakland is spending $7.3 million (almost 1/10th of their Opening Day Payroll) to make 3 players ex-A’s! If you’re worried about financial Armageddon then spending a few extra dollars on draft picks is not the slippery slope you need to worry about.
This is a time critical action. The A’s will lose all rights to sign their draft picks on August 15th. Having to put Piazza through the waiver wire before dealing him complicates and slows down the trading process. I’m giving the A’s 10 days to move Piazza because they’ll still need some time to negotiate with their draft picks and get them to sign. So the sooner Mike Piazza becomes an ex-A the quicker things can happen with players who could contribute to the long term success of the franchise.
Step 2: Add Michael Madsen, Gregorio Petit and Jason Perry to the 40-man roster.
There are currently 38 players on the 40-man roster and if Loaiza comes back in August that number will bump to 39. This is why I was so anxious to put Chavez on the 60-day DL as part of Phase 1. I want to see Madsen get a cup o’ coffee in the Show, I want to see if he’s got what it takes to help Oakland in 2008. He’ll probably be nearly maxed out innings wise, so he might end up pitching out of the bullpen ala Joe Blanton in 2004. If I’ve counted right, Petit will need to be placed on the 40-man roster before next season anyways to keep him from being snagged in the Rule 5 draft. I think Petit has a good chance of taking over Scutaro’s role as the primary back-up infielder in 2008. I just don’t see the wisdom in paying Scoot $2 million or more next year when he struggles to handle the defensive responsibilities of 3B and SS. Keeping Scutaro as a back-up in 2008 smacks of laziness, nothing else. Again, a cup o’ coffee would give Petit a taste of what life is like in the Show and it would provide a means to measure just how far he’s come and how much more work he needs to put in to stay in the big leagues. Jason Perry is something of a sentimental choice and if there was some kind of roster crunch that necessitated someone else being on the 40-man than so be it. I believe in rewarding the organizational soldiers who end up bouncing between minor league stops to accommodate the parent club’s needs. Brad Ziegler could also be a choice to fill this spot, although I would like to see how well Perry’s bat can handle big league pitching come September.
Step 3: Call up Dan Meyer in September and put him in the rotation.
Meyer is already on the 40-man roster, so when rosters expand in September I’d like to see Meyer get a shot in the big league rotation. Gaudin will probably be gassed so it shouldn’t be too hard to open a spot for Meyer. I want to see how far away the A’s are from actually getting a return from the Hudson trade. And if he actually shows something in September then it will be easier to trade a starting pitcher for a bat (or two) in the off-season.
Admittedly, Phase 2 is more about evaluating the existing personnel than it is about improving the roster. It makes no sense to plan ahead and pursue players, be they free agents or trade targets, without first having an accurate picture of what the A’s have in place. Figure that out and move from there.
Phase 3 opens the day after the World Series ends.
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Grest post as a follow up
to Phase # 1 Grover. An excellent read as always...........
Man, Beane sure did leave me flabergasted at not getting anything done at the deadline this year......I mean, even at the very least he could have shipped off dead weight in DJ, plug in your CF in Kotsay, JoKe for a bucket of sunflower seeds, and Piazza for a salad!
Oh well, I guess we still have our collective health.............right????? (Not including anyone else on the A's current roster...)
Glad to see that Brad
is at the very least a sentimental option. I hope that guy gets his shot. What he does with it is entirely up to him.
Many props to you Grover, I've really enjoyed the last two diaries you've posted. Is our low minor system also bereft of talent?
Talent in the minors
There is some talent in A-ball and below, but the attrition rate is so high that its a very thin margin between having someone to look forward to and viewing a desolate wasteland. A lot's been said about the A's spending some early draft picks on high school arms the last few years, of those 6-7 arms only Trevor Cahill is having a decent 2007.
I pulled out my copy of BA's 2007 Prospect Handbook before answering you post. Did you know that 15 of Oakland's Top 30 prospects have missed significant time due to injury? In classic Oakland tradition, there have been a few players that have missed a week or more due to injury but never made it to the DL. Three other prospects have been traded away. so yes there's talent, but with odds like that I can't promise you it will be around next week.
As for Ziegler, he's been death to RH hitters down in AAA. I think he has a shot at a bullpen job in Oakland next year.
Good Points
The break down of the signing bonus money is especially good information. I would hope that Beane and Co. could use some of the money saved by shipping out Piazza to sign someone like Gary Brown, although I'm not so sure it would as simple as that.
I remember the whole "Smoak" incident, when Beane actually travelled to the East Coast to meet with Justin, after which he came out with the impression that "he's going to college - case closed." That could be the same case with Brown, and even if it's not, I'm not sure Beane would go out and offer as much money as you suggest (up to 900K) to a 12th rounder, when that's about how much we spent to sign our 1st rounder. It would seem like that would be kind of a slap-in-the-face to every player we took in the supplemental round and 2nd - 11th rounds. It's worth trying though.
I agree with most everything else you mention here with regard to personnel, with the possible exception of adding Perry to the 40-man. I understand that he's an "organizational soldier" but there are just certain guys that HAVE to play for the Rule 5 draft, and unfortunately Perry is one of them, since there are already about 6 outfielders (or outfielder-types) on the 40-man ahead of Jason and whom I'd rather see ahead of him on the depth chart.
I'm looking forward to seeing what both Madsen and Meyer can bring to this team after both have performed pretty well this season and have finally bounced back from injuries. I think I heard someone call Meyer's current pitching style as "effectively wild". It might be an interesting experiment to see what a guy like that can do mixed into a rotation with such disciplined control artists (Haren, Blanton, Loiaza, DiNardo) working ahead of him.
No slap to the face... its just business.
If Brown or anyone else is dead set on going to college or staying in school than no (realistic) amount of money will change their mind. But if the draftee in question is of a split mind, if they have a number that will serve as a tipping point then by all means the A's should explore that option. And if Oakland is serious about improving their ballclub through the farm system than Brown and his elk are exactly the kind of talent the A's need to be targetting.
As for Smoak, yes he wanted to go to college and it certainly looks like that move is going to pay off for him in the 2008 draft. But he also had a price to forgo school and the A's were not willing to match it. That was their choice and the debate about whether or not it was a wise one has been hotly debated since.
when the niners drafted rice in the first round,
they traded their normal first and a second round pick (i think) to move up in the first round. it was considered an expensive move.
does anybody think it wasn't worth the price?
people have it in their heads that value means cheap. it doesn't. sometimes it means you get what you paid for and other times it becomes frank thomas.
does anybody really think that the a-rod contract hasn't turned out to be good value for the teams that he's played for? if it's a bad contract, why is he going to opt out and get a similar contract again.
the a's are cheap. if they find value, then ok. but they're cheap.
This raises a crucial issue about team finances
What does ownership do with payroll savings? The A's "saved" a bit of payroll on the Kendall and Bradley transactions, and would/will save more on any post-waiver Piazza deal. Better still, if the Phils or Yanks get really desperate for OF help, maybe Kotsay could go.
But what does Wolffish do with such resources? Are the funds added to the draft pick budget as grover urges? Do they roll into next year's payroll budget, adding that much more room to sign help this winter? Or do they go straight to Lew and John's (and Billy's) pockets?
Given that ownership is raked over $15 million in profit off the top in each of the last two years, I'm concerned that the answer is C: into the pockets. I'm further concerned that the lame-duck Coliseum years of 2008-10 couold prove to be even more low payroll, high profit oriented. I've opined often that I don't think the A's have planned to take the slashed costs/elevate profits/don't contend for a few years approach...but I'm beginning to worry.
And frankly, if the answer is C, then it's time to stop celebrating moves that save the A's payroll costs. I root for the team in the clubhouse much more than the one in the boardroom.
Ownership has increased payroll ...
every year they've been around so I don't feel it's fair to accuse them of excess thrift.
Revenue has increased each year
So maybe a better way to phrase the question is: Has the payroll increased at a rate matching or surpassing the growth in revenues?
The answer to that is no
A's payroll as a percentage of revenue in April of this year was 55%, the lowest for the team since 2002. It's probably dropped a little bit further since April. Payroll-to-revenue last year was 56%. In 2005 it was 64%.
That's a league-wide trend, though the A's three year drop is more precipitous than most. Set against a 112% increase in franchise value over three years, it's not unreasonable to wonder whether the profits are going back into the team, or somewhere else. And devo, I didn't accuse the A's of excessive thrift...I think the jury's still out on that one...but the question ought to be on everyone's mind who hopes that new revenues in Fremont will mean a better quality roster. Because that sure ain't happening now.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on Aug 1, 2007 9:18 AM PDT up reply actions
if I could ask Beane one question ...
... right now, it would be: How do you and the rest of the ownership group currently plan to market the team in the new stadium?
Obviously, there's a host of clarifications and follow-ups out of that, but everything depends on Beane's answer to that question.
Your
"bring in big name FAs who might not be that good to entertain the visiting-from-out-of-town guests in tech company corporate seats" theory makes no sense to me. Won't happen (the first clause that is).
where and when did I say *that*?
Strike the "might not be that good" from your precis. The only big-name FA I've ever advocated bringing in (or speculated that Beane might bring in), for reasons sabermetric and market-oriented, is A-Rod.
I totally agree that the first clause ("bring in big name FAs who might not be that good") won't happen.
My suspicion is that there still will be essentially no real marketing of the team per se -- that 99% of the marketing will be focused on the condos/hotel/year-round-events/circus and the ballpark atmosphere/experience/lifestyle.
It's a lot more cost-effective to build the Fremont brand that way than it is to have the brand be dependent on the W/L% of the team.
Which is not to say that Beane is intentionally going to put the team in the tank post-move. I actually think that Beane's management of the payroll and roster is hardly going to change at all. Maybe he'll sign certain FAs ... if certain FAs present as undervalued. Maybe he'll up his draft-signing budget ... if high-ceiling draft picks present as undervalued. Et cetera.
What's the point in building a new ballpark...
if no one is going to come watch the team play?
I think that's monkeyball's point.
I don't think he's suggesting
that the condos/hotel/year-round-events/circus and the ballpark atmosphere/experience/lifestyle marketing is going to lead to people not coming to see the team play.
No
But winning hasn't managed to draw the fans either and I think the perception is that the A's cannot or will not hold on to their fan favorites. So why should the typical fan get involved with a team that's just going to let someone they care about walk away in the near future?
Most folks can't just root for the laundry, they need a face to go with the uniform.
that's part of it
I think a huge part of ownership's thinking with the stadium (and I always in this context use "stadium" as shorthand for "is that they want to maximize revenue (and cost) predictability -- even at the "cost" of not maximizing revenue. Hence, the smaller capacity -- they'd love to see no walk-up ticket sales at all.
Even so, this means locking up as many season ticket sales as possible, in as large groups as possible and for as long as possible. I think you'll see a lot more focus on group ticket sales, and, likely, some innovative thinking on financing LT seat/suite "leases," PSL-type subscription models, block/affinity-group marketing, and tying ST/suite packages to condo purchases -- as well as a lot more conditions attached to (and larger commitments for) "mini" ST packages.
Which means fewer and fewer individual-game tickets available on the "white" market -- which, in turn, means fewer chances for fair-weather fans to abandon buying tickets during performance downturns, and lots of Warrantless Wiretap Park-style 5k-under-capacity-attendance "sellouts." (And also that it's not merely that the price of individual tickets will be a greater barrier to entry for LNWIs, but the necessity of buying a big package [or working for a firm/affinity group that does] or not going at all.)
All of which means, essentially, disarticulating "fan" from "ticket purchaser" -- which is not to say that Winthrop Chardonnay is less of a fan than Joe Sixpack; rather, that Joe's likelihood of ticket purchase is almost entirely contingent on his degree of fandom, whereas Winthrop's is not.
To circle back to grover's post, I think it's more "What's the point in building a new ballpark ... if the team's play, which is subject to all sorts of extremely-expensive-to-eliminate random and unpredictable variation, is the strongest determinant of whether people buy tickets?"
aw, crap: forgot to finish a parenthetic
... in th first sentence should be: (and I always in this context use "stadium" as shorthand for "the stadium as a central but ultimately only complementary revenue-generating element of the entire development")
That sounds about right as far as their plans
the white market in tickets will probably be similar to SF (if they're successful). I guess my confusion was that you hadn't seemed to be one of the people bemoaning that.
(And I enjoyed your preemptive response to Sal's "Hey, rich people are fans too!")
I'm neither bemoaning nor celebrating
I think it's certainly unfortunate for working-class families -- individuals could still get single/double tix in the gray market for not-unreasonable markups, but getting 3+ seats together in advance for one game only is gonna be an expensive and unlikely proposition.
But, as I've always said, that's Lew's right; and while I'd sympathize with some sort of consumer group action I'd be decidedly opposed to any legislative "fix" of that "problem."
How aMUSEing
by FreeSeatUpgrade on Aug 1, 2007 10:15 AM PDT up reply actions
in one of the diaries yesterday,
somebody suggested that beane has historically not been active around the trade deadline. except for the payton and kennedy trades, beane hadn't made a trade since Moneyball.
the problem with that logic in my opinion is that beane was more likely to be a buyer at the deadline and the asking price is generally pretty high. this year however beane was a seller. now it's possible that prices have dropped relative to the past few years, but beane should have been able to shed dead weight.
if the giants can dump morris, his entire salary for 2008 and wind up with 2 players, then the market was there to dump piazza, stewart and blanton.
we all know that beane doesn't respect blanton's talent. all you had to do was look at last year's ALDS and ALCS. he chose loaiza over blanton and relegated blanton to the bullpen.
Why would we want to dump Stewart or Blanton?
They are cheap and productive ... aren't those good players to have around?
you're not wrong...
i'm merely commenting on the rumors and expressing my disappointment that beane wasn't able to get anything done that sets up the team better for 2008.
blanton eats a lot of innings but he doesn't inspire me with confidence. he's a barbell. when he's good, he's lights out. when he's bad, he's wicked bad. to be 8-8 on an under .500 team is impressive. blanton is cheap but i have no idea which joe is going to show up on a daily basis. and he seems to be fading right now (whether it's dead arm, no confidence in the catcher or another factor).
stewart is also cheap and he's been a productive hitter but his defense leaves a lot to be desired. who cares if he bats .300+ but every runner takes an extra base on his arm. is he net-net a positive factor?
Studies have shown ...
that boom/bust pitchers will actually help the team win more than a more consistent pitcher with comparable overall numbers. He's not an ace -- but he's probably one of the top 20 pitchers in the American League and that ain't nothin'.
Stewart isn't a championship caliber left fielder ... but this isn't a championship caliber team, so ...
There are conceivable scenarios which would have made sense to pull the trigger on a deal for either of them ... and, especially for Stewart (and Piazza), I'm sure BB tried -- but if no one was willing to give him a good deal, it doesn't make sense to make a deal.
re: Morris, veteran pitchers are always the most likely to be dealt -- every team has room for a pitcher -- there are 12 spots for them on the roster -- not every contending team really has a need for a league average corner outfielder with a noodle arm.
devo...
i believe those studies. it makes sense to me. but i don't believe that joe blanton is a top 20 pitcher in the AL.
at best, he's second on the a's and there are at least 3 pitchers on the angels that are better than him. i'd rather have wang of the yankees, several of the twins and bosox pitchers, etc...
i understand your point but i don't believe that joe blanton is a top 20 pitcher. maybe top 20 for the money, but that wasn't your point.
i also understand how trade value works. but i'd be willing to take a decent deal today b/c we need to plan for next year and stewart does not help us plan for next year and he's eating up a roster spot/playing time.
if morris can be traded to a crappy team that's willing to eat his salary, then stewart can be traded as a dh substitute that can play the outfield. he will have value as a free agent next year, so he has to have value now.
we need to find out if dj is an option for next year and we're loaded with OF/DH/1B guys that need a shot to play. stewart has no future with the a's and the a's are going nowhere.
don't sell blanton short
He hasn't been a top 20 pitcher before this year, and you can also point to his last few disappointing starts. But still, look at the stats from this year so far (I pulled this all from Hardball Times):
- #2 in the AL in Innings Pitched
- #18 among AL starters in ERA (and ERA+)
- #9 among AL starters in WHIP
- #3 among AL starters in BB/game, #24 in K/game
- #5 among AL starters in FIP
- #13 in the AL in Pitching Runs Created (two relievers are ahead of him: Okajima and Putz)
Looking at WHIP and FIP, which I think are supposed to be more predictive than ERA, Blanton is totally awesome. I'm willing to concede that he might just be having a career year. I was even pretty excited yesterday about the prospect of shipping him off for a load of prospects. But you have to give him credit for being easily one of the 20 best pitchers in the AL this year.
i'm not selling blanton short...
the rumor yesterday was that the a's could've gotten 3 prospects for blanton. how is that selling him short? 3 prospects including some potential everyday players seems like a good haul and good value in return for value given up.
i'm not as good with the stats as you are, so i have to believe your numbers. i don't know the flaws of all those stats. that being said, he's a great home pitcher in a pretty good pitcher's park and he's a disaster on the road. he had a good 2006, but that's only cuz he owned the mariners.
this site kills me in that we only conceive of cheap as value. the only thing cheap is, is cheap. cheap matters more to us because we can't afford expensive value (think johan santana at $7 mil per year - that'd be a lot of money for the a's but man would it be value - hell he might be cheap at $12 mil). if we got three players for blanton that could be mlb ready in a few years, wouldn't those players be cheap also? isn't pitching a strength of our upper minors (madsen, meyer, braden)? why not give up cheap starter for a slew of everyday players that are also cheap?
my only argument is that he's probably as good as he's gonna get. his improvement in era, ops seem driven by a lower hr/ip this year. will he be able to sustain that hr/ip rate as the weather warms in late summer/early fall? we have good substitutes for him in the minors and other teams want him. trade him.
if beane values him so highly (cuz he's cheap, young and durable), why did beane not start him in the alcs last year? why is beane trying to trade him now?
Given the way he unloaded on Terry Ryan today,
perhaps Santana for $7M wouldn't be such a hot deal after all.
He seems to be suffering from the same defeatist attitude vis a vis payroll that Tim Hudson had toward the end of his tenure here in Oakland.
wow
i don't blame guys for wanting to win. i blame guys like chavvy saying "oh well, we'll get 'em next year." santana wants to win and do it badly. what's wrong with that?
santana would be the most ridiculous steal of all time at $7 mil per year.
I'm sorry, but
saying "We're never going to go beyond where we've gone" is defeatism, plain and simple. Santana believes that it's impossible to win without a huge payroll. He's wrong, but it doesn't really matter. I have a hard time believing that this doesn't affect his game at least a little.
gee,
chavez has never made a jacka$$ comment like that before. how many times has chavvy said that gee we're injured, so we're going nowhere.
I see a huge difference
between "We're injured, so we're treading water" and "The rest of the players on my team are crap because the GM won't lay out for better ones."
that's not what chavvy said and that's not what..
santana said.
based on what i've seen, santana basically said be a buyer not a seller. he said we're close to being great and we need to add at the trading deadline to put the team over the top. instead, in his eyes, the twins were a seller. he wants to win in minnesota and he's afraid that terry ryan is going to blow up the team. he wants to win a title with morneau, hunter, mauer and cuddyer. in his eyes, if the twins aren't going to build a world series contender then he wants to play somewhere else = where the team is committed to winning. i see nothing wrong about that and he wasn't ripping his teammates.
chavvy has said we're hurt and we can't win till we get healthy. he always says we pitch but our team can't score. therefore it's up to pitchers. of course this leaves out the crappy risp performance and the tons of guys left on base.
santana is still putting up huge numbers and trying, while chavvy continues to post deteriorating and sub-average offensive numbers. chavvy won't stand closer to the plate and he won't get better against left handed pitchers that pound him on the outside corner.
if you don't see the difference, then i'll just have to respectfully disagree.
They're both reasonable things to say ...
Players should want to win ...
Injuries impede winning ...
Yup ...
but...
doesn't chavvy's statement ring of defeatism? it does to me. chavvy should say, it's an uphill battle to win games with all the injuries we've had, but i'm gonna bust my a$$ to win games.
sometimes i think ANers (or just me) want the a's to win more than the a's players themselves seem to.
Well, let' s see
Santana's career ERA+ is 144, it is 150 this year. So, you're saying his defeatism is making him better?
Also, you're taking his comments out of context. Show me where he said that "it's impossible to win without a huge payroll". This is a link to the Minneapolis Star Tribune with his comments. His comments were in response to the fact the the Twins traded Luis Castillo for 2 crap prospects who project to be roster filler, while not doing anything to trade for talent in return.
If Santana's comments are defeatism, what about Terry Ryan's actions? Trading away Castillo for crap, persisting with the "Piranhas"?
Career numbers don't really tell the story
with Santana. His first season-ish was terrible, because he was a Rule 5er who had to stay on the Major League roster the whole year even though he was patently not ready.
I suppose there's no real reason for him to dial back his effort, since he wants a big contract regardless of who gives it to him. Even so, I felt like he threw his teammates under the bus. You have to admit that it's an implicit slam when you criticize ownership for not buying better players.
His numbers are almost exactly in line ...
with 2003 and 2005 ... he seems to have "down years" (by down, I mean only slightly sub-3 eras) in odd numbered years.
While the example might not have been perfect, rfloh's point remains that Santana is pitching like a Cy Young candidate.
Perhaps, but his criticism
Why should Santana be happy / or care that the Twins are saving money this year?
Also, if the Twins pitching prospects are too valuable to trade, how about playing them?
Santana's ERA+ in his 3rd season, in which he had 14 starts was 148. Since then season by season, he has had 151, 182, 153, 161. Don't really see a pattern there.
I see a pattern ...
he's really good.
if they'd gotten the 2nd semi-intriguing prospect
... then wouldn't Ryan have been Carping, and thereby undermining team morale?
All I'm saying
is that going public with criticism of the front office is not exactly calculated to improve the team's performance-- or your own public image.
Apart from which, even as a salary dump the move made sense. Castillo has no power, and he's been bothered by injuries which have sapped his range and baserunning abilities.
Speaking of "no power," Castillo is now the consecutive-ABs-without-a-home-run leader. Unbelievable as it may seem, Jason Tyner not only hit a home run, he came inches from hitting another one.
Yeah, the move made sense as a salary dump.
It doesn't improve the team now, and is unlikely to improve the team in the future, unless the money saved is directly plowed back. That's the issue. Maybe Santana actually cares about the team, which is why he's complaining; maybe if he didn't, he would just mouth platitudes, and go to the Yanks when his contract expires.
Castillo still gets on base at a good clip. OBP of 352 from 2b is good. His OPS+ with the Twins this year is 91, career 93, so it isn't as if he is cliff diving.
I haven't watched him much recently, so I'm going to have to rely entirely on metrics for his defense. UZR has him at exactly 0 runs per 150 games, and 0 runs for the games he has played. BPro says he is +7 above replacement, -6 below average.
I'm not saying he's a star, but there are far worse 2bs around, and far worse players on the Twins.
rumors aren't always true ...
and, in fact, I personally believe that more often than not, they aren't true. I mean, I'm sure the Dodgers would have given us three minor leaguers for him -- but the question is, which three? Different combinations of the players discussed on this site would have represented huge variations in returned value.
As far as Blanton not being among the top 20 in the AL, can you name 20 who are better?
"This site" does not collectively think much of anything. Personally, I've argued that Chavvy's contract, despite the fact that his performance has been nearly a worst case scenario, is still a good deal.
The team's goal every year is to accumulate at least 90 wins. If, for example, we have a $75m budget, then we need to make sure that we're not paying more than $1.2m/win (10 runs created/prevented = 1 win). Teams pay a premium for high end players, though, so I believe that the best way to build a team on a budget is accumulating a lot of 4-5 win players, who generally come a lot cheaper (about 1/3 the cost), as 8-10 win players.
The real statistical difference is that he's walking fewer guys and giving up fewer hits. The hits is mostly due to the fact that he had a very high babip in '06 and it has returned to a more normal level. The walks are probably a real change.
20 pitchers i'd rather have than blanton
pitchers i'd much rather have - bedard, guthrie, beckett, matsuzaka, schilling, wang, halladay, buerhle, sabathia, carmona, westbrook, verlander, bonderman, santana, garza, escobar, lackey, weaver, hernandez, haren
slightly better - hughes, kazmir, lee, saunders
i think that's 24 guys i'd rather have than blanton. some are having better years, some are worsee but i'd rather have them. i did off the top of my head, so i may have missed a few.
by the way, blanton is better in 1H than 2H of the season. we'll see what happens this year, but i'm sure the dodgers made a serious run at blanton whether it was 1 guy or 2 guys or 3 guys. either way, i think beane should have made a deal so we the a's can get ready for next yr.
i have no problem with chavvy's contract.
you're right, i shouldn't say "this site." but there are many that confuse cheap and value.
i agree 2006 was a real negative anomaly for joe, but i think the reduction in hr/ip has been a real boon as well. his gb/fb ratio has improved dramatically from anything he's done in his major league career. fluke? dunno.
I would disagree with your list ...
but, fair enough, it's not as cut and dry of a case as I was thinking.
Blanton has a career 4.15 first half ERA and a 3.98 second half era -- despite the fact that his first half era benefits from his fantastic first half of 2007.
The difference in his HR/9 rate from last year to this only represents a difference of 3 homeruns to this point in the season -- that doesn't account for that much of his improvement -- and given the fact that his fb rate as improved, the fact that that has so many data points (As opposed to HRs, which has very few), it produces much more real facts and less noise.
devo
there may be guys you'd include that i wouldn't and vice versa. i have an unnatural love of sinkerball pitchers (westbrook), so my list is loaded with them.
good double check of my first half vs second half #s. not sure where i got the numbers that he was not a second half pitcher or to whom that math applied.
he's clearly giving up more ground balls this year and that's a good thing for a guy like me (see my first point).
my central point (so it doesn't get lost) is not that i disagree with your view or that joe is a bad pitcher or is not valuable. i think the a's have a good crop of future starters in the majors now and in AAA, while we have a dearth of hitters coming up quickly. net-net, we trade a valuable (cheap, young and durable) pitcher in blanton for what we don't have (SS, 3B or CF).
FIP may be more predictive than ERA,
however, the issue is Blaton's PAST performance, not FUTURE performance.
I agree with your general point that Blanton is about top 20.
on the Crosby front ...
... there's this "blind item" from Slusser's Chron game wrap this morning:
A team source confirmed that the Dodgers had some reservations about the fact that Blanton's performance has dropped off since a 122-pitch complete game against Toronto on July 3, and the source also confirmed that the A's wanted to include Class A shortstop Ivan De Jesus Jr. in any deal, but the Dodgers did not want to part with the defensive whiz.
Since we all know that "a team source" is always either Beane or one of his Lts. disseminating the Word of Beane, I don't think there's any way to interpret this except as Beane officially lighting the broiler on Crosby.
Great, just great
Ivan DeJesus is at least 1 full season away, if not more, from being big league ready. Does this mean that Beane intends to give Crosby another chance in 2008?
Why the fuck for?!?!
I look at it several ways
- With Cros injured (again), despite it being a ticky-tack, common, simple-standard-recovery break, some consistent and healthy play from Cros in ST (if not the first 3 months of the season) might bolster his trade value somewhat.
- Cros is still an outstanding defensive SS, and it's not the worst thing in the world if he's the starter on OD '08 (if not the whole season), especially if (a) Beane improves the offense at positions other than SS, or (b) Beane's focusing on contending in '09 and beyond.
- Who knows what other pre-'09 SS options Beane is kicking the tires on? DeJesus might have beeen a fallback option, or he could have been the intended OD '09 starter with a stopgap or Cros starting in '08.
- Nobody fucks with DeJesus.
That's a very well thought out reply
Only one problem...
You're saying that Bobby Crosby will suit up for Oakland again. That is completely unacceptable to me.
I asked this last year, when do we say that enough is enough with Bobby Crosby? He has not lived up to the expectations placed upon him by management and as a fan I'm sick and tired of watching the A's try to get blood from a stone. Crosby is not getting it done, end of story.
I'll be perfectly honest, if the Dodgers had both LaRoche and Hu on the table when they asked for Blanton and Beane turned them down... then that will have been the biggest mistake of his career. That's right, even worse than the fiasco that was Jason Kendall.
I'm sanguine about it
I'm done expecting more from Cros than outstanding fielding and .240/.300/.400 (and, yeah, even that may be overly optimistic). I can live with that for another season, maybe even two, so long as the fielding stays good and Beane improves the rest of the offense.
But, yeah, I'm right with you on the last paragraph: if the offers reported for Blanton were accurate and complete, Beane really should have pulled the trigger.
OK, but how are you going to improve the offense?
Assuming we leave Crosby at SS (yeah, it was a struggle to type that) than the obvious holes are at 3B, CF, C and 1B. We'll leave Ellis at 2B for now because we obviously value up the middle defense very much.
You might be able to improve the production from 1B by inserting Barton into the role.
The A's are giving Kurt Suzuki every shot at being the every day catcher. Besides, finding a plus offensive catcher is not that easy.
That leaves 3B and CF and there is no one in the system that can be expected to step up and contribute in 2008. That means the A's would have to spend money on those two positions and they already have $19 million invested in the two players we want to replace.
It sounds to me that the conditions by which you'd accept Crosby's return will not exist in 2008. So again I ask, why should we endure another season with Crosby as the SS?
I'd like to improve CF ...
and we have a decent chunk of change to spend ... I don't have any specific guys who I actually think I would want to target, though ...
I'm sorry, but
as the resident Chris Denorfia Advocate, I find it (to say the least) hard to believe that he's not capable of bettering Kotsay's .236/.305/.326 line of this season. And with the way Kotsay's lumbering around these days, I think he'll be a defensive improvement as well.
Maybe YOU don't expect him to step up and contribute, but I think that IF the A's don't hang on to Kotsay's decaying corpse and continue running him out there stats be damned, they'll find that Denorfia can play some ball.
Nothing against Denorfia
And going along with your assumption that he can outhit Kotsay next year, do you think that Denorfia will hit well enough to make up for Crosby's lack of offense as well? If not, we've got a problem with creating the ideal situation to hold on to Bobby Crosby.
Oh, I don't disagree with that at all
Crosby's a bust. Remember when I advocated sending him to AAA to prove he could still hit there a while back?
The A's missed a major opportunity by not dealing him at the peak of his value in May. I think they could have extracted Pat Neshek and someone else, maybe Matt Tolbert, from Minnesota in exchange for Crosby replacing the woeful Jason Bartlett.
The problem is more one of "no one better" in his case. Neither on the free agent market, nor internally, is there a better option than Crosby. Ergo, Crosby it is. Unless Murphy turns it on, of course, which is a possibility.
You will find that I often will dispute points of contention even with posts that I otherwise agree with, and in this case, the point of contention was your assertion that there was no help coming in CF. I cannot accept that statement. Overall, though, I agree with the gist of what you're saying.
OK, there's improvement and then there's
IMPROVEMENT!
I assumed that monkeyball and I were talking about the latter.
I thought it was *your* job to figure that out
Well, what your question gets at with my position is that I don't blame Crosby for the entire offense sucking (not that I'm saying you do ... blame Cros, that is) -- I blame Beane. And I fully expect that, barring some major shakeup of the roster, the offense will continue to suck through '08 and into '09, because that seems to be OK with Beane.
Upgrading offensively at one position and one position only, even if it's of our awful CF or SS performers, ain't gonna fix the offense. (I know you're not saying that, either.)
Beane needs to make a change at several positions; if Cros isn't one of them to be changed, I'll be happy, so long as Beane is making the multiple changes somewhere.
But if he really is satisfied with the basic architecture of this lineup ...
I haven't gotten paid yet
You'll see me fix things AFTER I get my money.
you'll get your money as soon as ...
... we institute the AN user subscription fee, with the tiered mandatory-multiple-game-thread access package.
I think we can count on upgrades at several ...
positions:
a full season of Jack Cust at DH is an upgrade of about 10 runs (through this point in the season)
a healthier Travis Buck is an upgrade of about 6 runs (8 if completely healthy)
a full season of not having Jason Kendall is an upgrade of about 20 runs.
Daric Barton could be an upgrade as well.
Those 36 runs would allow us to leap Baltimore, Toronto, Tampa, and Kansas City, moving us to 9th in the league. If we could add a bat of, say, Shannon Stewart's caliber in CF, that would add another 20 runs, putting us in a tie with Texas at 6th in the league. It wouldn't be a great offense, by any stretch, but it would be enough to support our pitching staff and contend for the playoffs.
agreed...
the a's of the past few years have had a top ranked pitching staff and a middle to lower tier offense. they've made the pythagorean math work for them.
this team isn't far away from contending in the west and for the al crown, but we can't do it with the farm system.
we need to trade valuable pieces that we can replace with pieces that we don't have.
yes/maybe, but ...
- I'm a huge Cust fan, but it may be optimistic to project him to produce at his current rate over a full season
- It's definitely optimistic to count on any Athletic to be healthier; and while I don't believe per se in "sophomore slump" as a generalized phenomenon, it's not a sure thing that Buck improves or even maintains his productivity
- I'll trust your estimate on Suzuki being a 20-run improvement over Kendall, but it seems high to my uneducated eyes
- Depending on who plays where, Barton may not be an upgrade if Swisher, say, is pushed to 1B; he may not, in '08 anyway, even be an upgrade over DJ
- I think we have to count on continued deterioration of Chavez' and Crosby's offensive production
- Who really knows what production we'll get out of Swisher next year? Sure, it's likelier that he OPS's .900 than .700 -- but I also think he's likelier to OPS .810 than .870
- I'm not as sanguine about our pitching staff as you are; I think the last 4 weeks has been a truer picture of their abilities than the first 6 weeks of the season was
perhaps, but ...
- I discounted his stats a bit.
- Can't argue with the Larry Davis effect ... but, similar to number one, I discounted his performance a bit, too.
- Kendall was just that bad.
- True ... but I didn't actually count on any extra runs from him. Any improvements there are a bonus.
- Crosby is pretty much matching his 2006 OPS+ and Chavvy isn't that far off of his (Which matched his 05 numbers). I would suggest that it's more likely that they've established new levels of expected production.
- Swisher has put up comparable numbers each of the last two years, I think similar numbers in '08 are a safe estimate.
- I would suggest that a combination of the 107-8/9 games this season, both the good ones and the bad, are the best representation of our staff's actual talent level.
Tell me the A's are gonna spend money in CF
on top of what they're going to have to kick in to move Kotsay somewhere else and I'll readily agree that CF could be improved.
I'm reserving judgement on Cust, he's still a work in progress.
I covered Barton.
I agree that a full season of Buck would help but I didn't want to say anything and risk jinxing him. Way to go devo!
We're spending money somewhere ...
I can't think of any better place to do it ...
Not many things makes me happier
Than a Lebowski reference.
Eight year olds, Dude.
by EddieVegas_NRAF on Aug 1, 2007 5:07 PM PDT up reply actions
already had a name for him
Ivan the Terrible, assuming he plays up to Crosby's standards...
Cooking the books
It's not right to say we're paying $7.3 million on former players.
I'm not sure if you're intentionally misleading, or if you're mistaken about the contract, but I think it's faulty accounting to count the money going out on Jason Kendall while ignoring the money coming in.
According to Cots, we're paying the Cubs $4.5m on Kendall's contract but we're also receiving $5.5m from the Pirates. (If it's not 100% clear to you from the A's page, look at the Cubs page; they're not receiving $10.0m, and Pittsburgh hasn't stopped paying its $5.5m.)
The A's take on the Kendall contract now is that they're collecting $5.5m from Pittsburgh, then passing on $4.5m of that to Chicago, pocketing the $1m difference.
So the real story is that the A's are paying $2.8 million on former players, and collecting $1.0 million, for a net outflow of $1.8 million. Not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.
Cooking the cooked books ...
Kendall's salary for 2007 is $13 mil of which the 'rats paid $5.5m ... leaving $8.5 for the A's/Cubs
He was on the A's for ~58% of the season, so he had been paid ~$7.58m at the point of the trade -- ~$3.2m from the Pirates and $4.4m from the A's.
Kendall still had $5.4m to be paid and the 'rats still had $2.3m to fork over. We are payding ~$4.5m of the remaining contract, $2.3m of which comes from the Pirates, meaning we're paying $2.2m for Kendall to play for the Cubs.
I think that's the right way of looking at it
Assuming that the reported amounts of cash in and cash out are accurate, that accounting makes sense to me.
(There is a subtraction error in the first line, but it doesn't effect the final answer. Good work, but try to be more careful. A-.)
the story of my academic life ...
We have (yet again) a fundamental difference
in philosophy on a topic.
You are saying that there are two pools of money and the A's have been drawing from both sources equally as they've paid Kendall. I see the logic in the theory but I disagree with it.
I see one pool of money being fed by a variety of revenue streams, one of which comes from Pittsburgh. The A's have been paying Kendall out of this pool and it makes no difference if the dollars have been coming from the Pirates or the hot dog vendors, it's all money down the drain!
well if we're not disaggregating revenue ...
why are we disaggregating spending?
Money appears ... money disappears ... who knows where it comes from or where it goes?
'Cause it's kinda fun and easier to do
with the info on hand.
Assuming that the sources of revenue are relatively fixed (ticket sales, concessions, TV, etc.) then it's the allocation of those funds into scouting and development and player salaries that will have the most impact on the success of a franchise.
We want the A's to succeed, therefore we focus on the expenditures.
Okay ... well if you don't like my compromise
way of looking at it, then you're wrong and MDL is right.
How can you complain that we're paying $7.3 mil for players to play elsewhere and separate that from the fact that we're being payed $5.5 mil to have one of those guys play for us? That's just silly.
Getting paid to play someone is not silly
It's an ideal business practice. When I first got hired as a permanent employee in Fire I ended up for working a completely different government agency than the one that was actually paying me. I was free, skilled labor for the people I was in the field with.
The A's were being paid (this year) to play Jason Kendall. That's cash in the pocket.
The A's are now paying the Cubs to play Jason Kendall. That's cash out of pocket.
But it doesn't really matter where the money came from initially, because the A's had $79 million to spend on player salaries when the season began. As they let some players go one would hope that part of that $79 million could be freed up to allocate towards other ventures. That $4.5 million going to the Cubs could have gone towards signing draft picks or scouting the Far East or boosting the funding for the A's Dominican Academy.
But it's not, is it?
It's going to help Jason Kendall buy some great deep-dish pizza.
and then I could hook up with Jessica Alba ...
no, that wasn't going to happen, either -- but it is just about as likely as someone taking Kendall off our hands and paying his full salary.
And the money from the Pirates IS going towards signing draft picks, scouting, etc -- by paying the Cubs to pay $800k of Kendall's salary, that, otherwise, we would be obligated to pay him. This deal saves the team money, that's the bottom line.
no, see devo, what you want to do is ...
... get someone to pay you for not hooking up with Jessica Alba. Easy money.
I don't think I would take the money ...
Talk about opportunity cost!
Sure!
And the A's saved a couple more bucks when San Diego agreed to pay Bradley $600 K for the remainder of the season.
I've got some good news for you devo. We managed to save all the fingers on your right hand. The bad news is we had to amputate your right arm.
Is it a good thing that the A's are paying these players to play for another team? Would you like to see that trend grow and continue as the years go on? Sure it could have been worse, but we're already in the 5th circle of Hell, I don't see why I should be leaping with joy.
Unless this is the level where all the sluts hang out...
And don't get smart with me about getting Kendall and his contract off the books. I never wanted him in the first place. If I had had my way this mess never happens.;)
Absolutely ...
at least at this point of the season. Jason Kendall is going to contribute a lot less to the A's next championship than what we acquired for him/saved in the trade would, I'd rather we pay him as little as possible. Same with Bradley, except that we weren't out of it at the point of his trade ...
It's the same principle as your demand that we trade Piazza -- it's just a lot tougher to unload a player with a large contract who's lucky to slug his weight.
I'm well aware that you've never been a fan of getting Kendall ...
but if you're taking over for BB as the A's GM, you've got to deal with missteps he made in the past. Sorry, there's no getting around it.
I'll take over
when the first check clears. I'm supposed to be getting an advance for all this!
Sure, saving $800 K is a small victory and it beats paying out $5.3 million so he'd play elsewhere. However, $4.5 million is still bad news no matter how you try and pretty it up.
Oh, man
Thanks for clarifying your position, Grover.
'Cause it's kinda fun and easier to do
Do you have any idea how many companies go FUBAR with that philosophy of accounting?
I'm sure glad you're not my client.
The other option
is to track the revenue sources and try to determine how the A's could boost those incomes. Seeing as how MLB doesn't like to open its books and let people know how much money the teams make it seems rather silly to try and go that route.
How would you like to do the accounting for a client that doesn't want to tell you how much money he made?
Funny you should mention it
I'm not the boss here, and I'm only peripherally involved with the actual accounting -- but yes, we've got a few clients like that.
Ultimately it comes down to the question: why do you hire a CPA? Do you want to better understand your financial situation or don't you? Some clients do; some have other goals.
And no, I don't like clients like that. But once again, I'm not the boss here.
Actually, it's your math that is wrong
Using Cots as the common source...
Kendall is making $13 million, regardless of which team is supplying the money.
Pittsburgh was responsible for $5.5 million of his 2007 salary.
Kendall's been getting paid all year and is still due roughly $5.4 million through the rest of the season. It seems likely that Pittsburgh cut one check to Oakland for $5.5 million at the beginning of the season and the A's have been incorporating that money into Kendall's bi-weekly paycheck. (I think pro ball players get paid every other week but this is an inconsequential point.)
Oakland cut a check to the Cubs for (round numbers) $4.5 million to help pay the rest of Kendall's contract, Chicago is picking up the remaining $850 K.
By this point, aside from the cash the Cubs are paying out, it's all Oakland's money going towards Kendall. The money received from the Pirates isn't a different color and I assure you that if the Cubs had been willing to take on Kendall's remaining contract without financial assistance from Oakland that the A's wouldn't have returned any cash to Pittsburgh. That $5.5 million nut counts as a revenue source, you wouldn't suggest that the revenues from concession sales and ticket sales be split up to fund different things like player salaries and insurance fees, would you? No. You'd say the A's have one big pile of money to spend and divvy up from there.
The money the A's got from the Pirates it theirs, they are now giving it to the Cubs. The A's are out of pocket $7.3 million for players no longer on their roster.
Just like statistics,
accounting is in theory a system to help us better understand the underlying reality, but it can also be used instead to obfuscate rather than illustrate.
You can say this counts but that doesn't, this is already sunk or this is unsunk, but the reality is still going to be what it is no matter how you choose to label it. As long as we all understand what the money is really going, that's the main thing.
I like your posts, Grover, and I recommend them often, but I feel that you often adopt an advocacy position when presenting numbers. Rather than using the data to help you reach a conclusion, you know the conclusion you want to reach, so you frame the data in the way that best supports that conclusion.
That's your right, of course, but it has the unfortunate effect that it makes the reader suspicious of anything you say, so that I feel I've got to keep an eye out for the other half that you're not telling us.
I thought your figure of $7.3 million out on non-players was another example of this. Not inaccurate, but selective in its view in order to make a point.
But now it looks like everyone knows where the money is coming and going in this case, so it's all good.
I always try to include the relevant data
Which is not that same as providing providing all the data on a particular subject. But that's something most writers do so I'm not sure why my self-editing raises such suspicion from you.
I don't write that many diaries but I like to think I've earned a reputation for thoroughness in my research when I offer up a piece. It doesn't matter if I'm comparing two pitchers or talking about a prospect or focusing on a trade target, I try to paint an accurate picture using the numbers on hand. I like to think that my position on a subject is derived from the information on hand and not the mere product of my imagination.
As for the tone of my posts, I do tend towards an advocacy position when I'm writing a diary. Taking a stand, adopting a clear and well defined position on a subject tends to produce a more interested response from the crowd. Being wishy-washy is just a waste of cyberspace.
Consistency
I don't keep track carefully enough to remember who says what, so maybe you yourself are completely consistent on the issue, Grover, but across AN generally I can remember seeing lots of posts that go something like: "We should trade for player X. His salary is $5 million, but the Yankees would agree to pay $2 million of that so our payroll cost would only be $3 million."
That would be perfectly reasonable, but to be consistent with your logic here, you would have to object to that post and say, "No, that $2 million nut counts as a revenue source, so the payroll cost of that trade would still be $5 million."
I happen to think such an objection would be silly, which is why I object to the same reasoning here, even though it's not as obviously silly.
Any time I see an inconsistency like that, it raises a red flag that someone is trying to have it both ways: counting the other side of the equation when it suits them and not counting it when it doesn't.
Consistency?
OK, for one thing there are a lot of posts I take a flier on. I'm not going to respond to everything I disagree with, I don't have the time or energy. I do not see it as my role to correct everything that is misunderstood or flat out wrong on AN.
Unless we're talking about the Kendall trade, then I'm all in.
The problem with your generic scenario is that it doesn't relate to the issue at hand.
The payroll cost of trading for Player X would be $5 million, that's what he's getting paid. That number doesn't change. The $2 million coming from the Yankees would indeed be a revenue stream but the central premise of your idea is that the cost to the A's (and their pre-existing revenue streams) would be $3 million.
Whether you say its 5-2 or 3, you're saying the same thing. It would be nit picking at best to argue for one over the other, in fact I think we can all agree that saying "3" is the easiest way of presenting the relevant information.
But your model breaks down when we trade player X to the Cubs.
Let's say that the A's generally earn $100 million from their standard revenue streams. The Yankees have temporarily created a new revenue stream that has added $2 million to the pot. So instead of having their usual $100 million to play with, the A's have $102 million they can spend.
That 102 million in cash is theirs, it belongs to the Oakland A's. At this point the money that came from the Yankees is no more precious than the money that came from the hot dog vendors, it all pays the same. The A's choose to allocate $72 million towards player salaries, the other $30 million is going to be spent elsewhere.
The A's then trade player X to the Cubs but to facilitate the deal they have to include $2 million in cash. That money comes from the funds allocated towards player salaries. It just so happens that the 2 million figure matches the amount the Yankees originally sent to Oakland, but there is no real connection between the funds unless you arbitrarily draw a line connecting them.
The important thing to note is that the A's no longer have access to that $2 million. If they had been able to trade player X without including the cash they could have benefited from it's distribution elsewhere in the organization. Unfortanetly that economic benefit is now in Chicago.
I originally said that the A's are paying $7.3 million for three players to ply their trade with other teams. This is a statement of fact, you've seen the numbers yourself. Perhaps I should have made it more clear that this was a temporary state of affiars, but as I was talking about the potential for a one time increase in funds directed towards signing 2007 draft picks I assumed that people would understand I was focusing on short term affects.
All I am saying is that once you have the money in hand it's point of origin is irrelevant, especially if we're talking about a short term (ie. 1 year) source of funds. What is relevant is how you spend the money.
What you are really arguing is that the money that comes from another team to help pay for a player's salary is somehow more valuable than all other sources of revenue. You are placing more value on the dollar bill that comes from NY over the dollar bill that comes from the local hot dog stand. Their actual value is the same. If you can ditch the player while keeping the money than you can spend the money in another area.
A few points
I've got to pare this back because I'm on "lunch" break and I don't get paid for hours I don't work. (Good thing there isn't a day game going on today, too ... what? there is?)
(1)
I originally said that the A's are paying $7.3 million for three players to ply their trade with other teams. This is a statement of fact, you've seen the numbers yourself.
Assuming by "are paying" you mean "have paid or will pay some time in the course of the current season", yes, that's a fact. I don't think I denied that.
I did point out that it's also a fact that the A's are being paid (same definition) $5.5m for a player to ply his trade from another team.
You seem to feel that the one fact is relevant and the other is not. I feel the two deserve to be considered together.
(2) I don't see how you conclude that I'm arguing that a dollar from one source is more valuable than a dollar from another.
(3) A lot of your argument seems to be based on the idea that an increase in revenues turns into an increase in payroll budget. I don't think that's true, as I explained in another post further down.
(Come to think of it, I think we had this disagreement once before, after the Forbes figures came out, when you tried to extrapolate how much the A's would spend on payroll based on your estimate of revenues.)
Relevance
I think I can clear this up.
The A's were paid (note past tense) $5.5 million to subsidize Jason Kendall in 2007.
The A's are paying (present and I think future tense) for Kendall, Bradley and Witasick to play for other teams.
One of my primary concerns in this diary was to come up with money that could go towards signing extra draft picks. Moneys that were still in play but could not be reallocated towards this end (meaning the money going to these three players) was lost cash.
Part of the problem was I lumped Witasick in this group when his contract status was different from the other two. The A's have already paid Witasick roughly $1 million for his services, so I should have focused on the $500 K still owed him.
It would have been more accurate if I had said the A's were still on the hook for $6.3 million for three players no longer on the roster.
- You keep emphasizing that the Pirates paid the A's $5 million for Kendall. You sound like the source of the money matters, at this point, it doesn't.
- I agree that an increase in revenues does not automatically lead to an increase in spending. However, in this case the A's payroll jumped from $62 million and change in 2006 to over $79 million in 2007. Since the A's are still expected to make a profit I think it's safe to assume that an increase in revenue (of which I include the Pittsburgh subsidy) contributed to the increase in payroll.
But you have to include the Rhodes & Redman
contracts when you are assessing the overall financial picture. Just kidding. I found your argument to be 100% correct on Kendall being a bad pickup but it took me a while to come around.
I really appreciate you taking the time to provide your analysis. I dream of retirement so that I can brush up on my math skills and learn more about the statistical side of baseball. It's an area where one organization may find another Bill James before another and I'm hopeful it's our beloved Fremont A's of San Jose.
by ohtobe21likehuston on Aug 1, 2007 8:22 PM PDT up reply actions
I was this close to making you go stand
in the corner. This close, do you hear me!
Too close.
<snerk>
Sorry for the delay
I didn't mean to abandon the conversation, but after screwing off for several hours earlier today, I had to log off AN and get some billable hours in, and then I had an event to attend this evening.
Your point #3 I think we've settled elsewhere. You think the increase in revenue was a contributing factor to the increase in payroll. I don't. We'll probably never know who's right on that. I don't have any embedded sources in the organization, and I assume you don't either, so we'll just disagree on this. No problem.
On #2, I'm still choking on your inconsistency. You criticize me for highlighting where the money comes from even as you're doing the exact same thing with expenditures. It's like Devo said earlier, you want to disaggregate spending but you don't want to disaggregate income.
You started this whole debate with your comment about how we pay $7.3 million to players who aren't even on the team. Well, so what if they aren't on the team? You sound like the destination of the money matters, at this point, it doesn't.
Yes, it's stupid that we're paying Kendall $4.5m to play for the Cubs. But is that really any stupider than paying Kotsay $7m to play for the A's? Either way it's a bad contract that we're stuck with.
A never ending circle
On the whole payroll bump linked to increased revenues.... If we assume that the A's are still intended to be run as a profitable business than the goal will always be to keep the finances in the black. I'm not saying that if the revenues go up then the payroll will automatically go up, I'm saying the payroll will NOT go up unless the revenue is there to fund the bump. I do not see the ownership allowing the budget to run in the red. I don't understand what part of that you disagree with.
Yes, it's stupid that we're paying Kendall $4.5m to play for the Cubs. But is that really any stupider than paying Kotsay $7m to play for the A's?
Is there any chance, however slim, that the money going towards Kendall could possibly help the A's win at any point in the future? No. Kendall's production can only benefit the Cubs. Is there any chance, however slim, that the money going towards Kotsay could possibly help the A's win in the future? Yes. Because Kotsay's production would benefit the A's.
That is why where the money goes matters. One block of funds goes in a direction that cannot in any way benefit the Oakland A's. The other block moves in a direction that at least offers the hope of benefit for Oakland. The $4.5 million going to the Cubs can't be used to sign Oakland's draft picks, it can't be used to buy new equipment for the Oakland trainging staff, it can't be used to bribe Larry Davis into quiting, it can't be used to buy two-ply toilet paper for the clubhouse. That money now resides in the coffers of the Chicago Cubs.
Now, rather then spend another $2.5 million on a player like Mike Piazza who has no long term future with the Oakland ballclub and who's near term production is likely to have little if any tangible affect on the fortunes of the 2007 ballclub (that's right, I'm saying the playoffs are out of the question) I would like to see the A's free up that money by trading Mr. Piazza and spending that $2.5 million on draft prospects who could impact the team in the coming years.
And I retire from this post on that run-on sentence.
Over and out
OK, I'll retire now, too. It was a great discussion, but I think it's run it's course. A couple of things you and I just don't see eye to eye on, but plenty more where we do.
P.S.
I get your point about taking an advocacy position. You're right that it makes for a more productive conversation that way, but only if there's someone taking an counter-advocacy position to challenge all your points.
I guess maybe that's my role here -- on this one point anyway.
Right now I'm objecting only to your peripheral argument that the team is wasting money by paying $7.3 million to ex-players. The way I see it, the expense for Kendall's 2007 salary is already incurred. Getting him off the team and recouping even a small piece of that salary should not be characterized as a mistake. Now if you want to say that agreeing to pay him $13.0-5.5=7.5 million was a mistake in the first place, well, OK, I won't dispute that.
If no one challenges me
Then I simply stand back and let AN bask in my genius.
As for Kendall... I've made my stance on his acquisition well known.
The way I see it, the expense for Kendall's 2007 salary is already incurred.
Was the $13 million three teams spent on Jason Kendall put to good use or wasted?
Was the $7.5 million the A's were going to spend on Kendall put to go use or wasted?
Was the $5 million that the Pirates were going to spend on Jason Kendall put to good use or wasted?
Was the $800K the Cubs plan to spend on Kendall put to good use or wasted?
The Pirates are the only team that can claim their money was well spent and that was because they got to avoid all contact with Jason Kendall.
OK, you're a genius
You were quicker than I was to pick up on the stupidity of the trade that assumed most of Kendall's contract.
I gave Billy the benefit of the doubt for about a year before I wised up.
According to what you said above
the A's spent $12.2 million on Kendall.
And the Pirates spent $5 million on Kendall.
And the Cubs spent $5.4 million on Kendall.
All notwithstanding the fact that he made only (or maybe that should be "only") $13 million.
If you now agree that the A's actually spent $6.6 million ($7.5 million - $900k), then devo's breakdown makes the most sense: they paid him $4.35 million to play here, and $2.25 million to play for the cubs. No one here is disagreeing that the money was poorly spent. Welcome to the concept of "sunk cost."
First off
The Pirates sent $5.5 million, I dumped $500 K by accident.
In the post you're replying to I did what I said devo and mdl shouldn't do, try and split Kendall's salary between the teams. I was trying to point out how much Kendall has sucked this year, I thought it funny that the one team who contributed to Kendalls financial well being and never had him on their 2007 roster was the team that benefitted the most. In the process of ragging on Kendall I slipped into the trap that snared others. My bad.
Kendall is earning $12.2 million in cash that came from the A's pockets. I've argued that how the money came into the A's pockets doesn't really matter at this point, what matters is that it's leaving.
Maybe ownership ...
Feels like it can increase various revenues (tickets, etc.) with Piazza on the team the rest of the year, so that putting his salary into draft picks isn't an equal trade off.
I think Beane's unwise moves with Kendall and others, resulting in us paying ex-A's, does not play into our philosophy with draft picks. If we keep the bar low on draft picks this year, then we're being consistent in that area, and next year's class will know what they can roughly expect to sign for.
That being said, I hope Beane does make an attempt to sign those picks with Piazza's salary, so long as he doesn't act desperate. From a fan's perspective, I hate seeing Piazza out there eating up precious payroll on a team that isn't going anywhere.
by Bleeding the Green and Gold on Aug 1, 2007 11:45 AM PDT reply actions
A few moves I would do right now
would be to designate Bowen for Assignment, and call up Jeremey Brown to be the Backup Catcher.
Brown can also play 3B, so he can also serve as a backup infielder for 3B and 1B. He's a better hitter than Scutaro, and he too needs to get some expirience for next year, when he figures to be the Backup C anyways.
I would place Chavez on the DL and make him stay there until he is healthy. At this point, who cares if any player on the team can theoreticaly come back sooner than 15 days. We arn't in contention, their absance won't hurt us. Get them healthy, damnit.
I would put Loaiza on waivers and see if someone would claim him. If they do, great, and call up Dan Meyer to take Braden's spot in the rotation, and move Braden to the bullpen. I would also put Kotsay on waivers, and again, hope someone claims him. If they do, awesome. And as Grover said, put Piazza on waivers as well.
Give us a 25 man roster of;
- C1 Suzuki
- 1B Barton
- 2B Ellis
- 3B Brown
- SS Murphy
- LF Stewart
- CF Swisher
- RF Buck
- DH Cust
- IF Scutaro
- IF Melillo
- 1B Johnson
- OF Perry
- RHP Haren
- RHP Blanton
- RHP Gaudin
- LHP DiNardo
- LHP Meyer
- RHP Street
- RHP Casilla
- LHP Embree
- LHP Kennedy
- RHP Brown
- RHP Calero
- LHP Marshall
Every player on our roster, just about ...
will be placed on waivers ...
If the A's can get ANYTHING for Kendall
they can get more than a straight salary dump for ELo and Kotsay. Certainly every effort should be made to trade Kotsay and Piazza this month, but I don't really foresee that happening. Loaiza's needed for pitching depth, and plenty of teams would be thrilled to take him at the relatively low salary he's getting paid at present. I like the Brown-as-3B/Backup Catcher plan, but DLing Chavez is kinda pointless. Also, Melillo, like everyone else in this godforsaken organization, is on the DL.
I hope that Loiaza is a part of 2008. He could
be a nice addition to our rotation if he is able to stay healthy. Is his contract really non-affordable compared to what you might have to pay in the FA market for a comparable pitcher? I know that Lilly's contract isn't worth the price.
I see our rotation as the following in order- Haren, Blanton, Gaudin/Loiaza and either Meyer or Madsen as our 5th starter. If Harden comes back, great, but if not we still have DiNardo to fill-in for a Meyer or Madsen if neither can get the job done. What should we do with Dallas Braden because I don't see him as more than an emergency starter in 2008? Maybe he could be our LOOGY if Marshall turns out to be a Rule 5 bust?
by ohtobe21likehuston on Aug 1, 2007 8:31 PM PDT up reply actions
I want Loaiza back in 2008
Just because we had to endure almost an entire year of him re-building his body. I want to reap some of those benefits (assuming there are benefits to be had of course).
by Bleeding the Green and Gold on Aug 2, 2007 12:15 AM PDT up reply actions
Re total payroll budget
There was some discussion up there about how the payroll budget is determined. Obviously, all of us can only guess, but if I can put in my own guess, I think it's not tied to an absolute figure nor a percentage of revenues.
My guess is that payroll budget is tied to a performance goal. As someone else noted, Billy's goal year after year is to win 90 games in the season, and then see how that falls with respect to the playoffs. (That, too, is probably just a guess, but I think it's correct.)
I think that each year Billy tries to estimate how much it will cost him to put together a team that can win 90 games, and that's what the company pays. If the cost goes up or down, or if revenues go up or down, well, that's business and it'll come out in the profit margin. Any business has certain supply needs that just have to be paid for. For the A's, I think the 90-win goal is one of them. I don't think they let go of that goal if it costs more or if revenues are down. More to the point, if revenues are up, I don't think they automatically boost spending to match (as has often been suggested in other threads).
The way I see it, Billy miscalculated for 2007. He thought he spent enough for 90 wins, but (barring a huge surprise comeback) it didn't work out.
I think next year's payroll budget is, again, whatever it takes to win 90 games. If Billy thinks it will cost more, then payroll will go up; if he thinks 2007 was a fluke and the same payroll will be good for 90 wins in 2008, then payroll will stay put. Barring a major financial crisis that forces them to rethink corporate strategy, I don't think projected revenues figures into this calculation at all.
I don't think that how much is saved by trimming Piazza's salary out of this year's budget figures into it either. Either it makes sense to get him off the payroll for this year, or it doesn't. The same money is saved regardless of how much next year's payroll is going to be. (The fact that he wasn't traded before the deadline tells me that they decided it doesn't make sense; we'll keep him for the rest of the season, and maybe he'll help us miss the 90-game target by not quite as much as we would have otherwise.)
generally agree, but ...
... it's not an issue of whether Beane spent enough this year, but whether he allocated monies appropriately.
For example, spending anything above MLB minimum for the production he got (and should have been expecting to get) from Kotsay and Kendall would have been a misallocation of resources.
Yes, the decision to spend that much on those 2 was made in advance of the '07 season -- but it was still Beane's decision.
Oh, no doubt
Obviously there's a difference between spending well and spending poorly. Whatever his budget, Billy needs to try to do a better job with it next time.
But the main point still stands: I think allocation for payroll is based on what is needed to meet business goals, not how much revenues are available to "play with".
I agree with the general themes
Although I'd point out that my primary reason for trading Piazza was to free up his salary and spend it on draft picks this year. I think a budget was set on signing bonuses and the only way to increase that number is to add funds that were originally allocated elsewhere in budget. I don't think the ownership will simply dump money into the coffers at this point.
But are they really connected?
If more money to signing bonuses will sufficiently benefit the team, then it's worth doing regardless of whether Piazza is moved.
If the remainder of Piazza's salary doesn't justify his continued presence on the team, then it's worth moving him regardless of what our signing bonuses are.
You're saying that you think there's some organizational factor that connects the two, that spending for signing bonuses can be obtained only through cutting salary on today's payroll.
I can't say that's not true, since of course I don't know what goes on in the organization, but I really don't see any evidence that it is true. Seems to me that if Billy wants to make the argument for either, he can argue it independently of the other.
If I'm Lew Wolff, your logic doesn't fly with me. If Billy wants to spend more on signing bonuses, then he has to persuade me that the money is worth it. If it really is a smart move, then we do it.
If Billy's answer is to say, "Well, how about if I come up with the money by unloading Piazza" then I tell him, "If you feel Piazza isn't worth what we're paying him, then by all means unload him and stop wasting our money ... but do that whether we spend more on signing bonuses or not."
(I've had remarkably similar discussions with my wife. Different budget items, same logic.)
You're absolutely correct
If more money to signing bonuses will sufficiently benefit the team, then it's worth doing regardless of whether Piazza is moved.
But these are the Oakland A's we're talking about. There is not a track record that suggests the ownership would be willing to spend extra money on draft picks by dipping into their piggy banks.
Note the 2006 draft.
The A's spent $1.6 million on signing bonuses that year in large part because they had no 1st round picks. Rather than budget $4-5 million and go after high talent signability risks as many teams often do in that scenario, the A's stuck to drafting players who would go for slot money. Now if the ownership was unwilling to add money to the draft budget when they had time to do so ahead of time I see no reason to believe that they'd willingly do it now in an attempt to go after draftees like Gary Brown.
Therefore Beane would have to find a budget neutral way to achieve the same result. Trading Piazza and freeing up his salary would be one way to do that.
There is some poor grammatical structure
within the post... I apologize for that.
I'm with you on
the fact that the A's don't want to spend more money on signing bonuses. I'm not sure why they don't, but it seems pretty clear they've got an organization philosophy against it.
Where you and I disagree is that you think recouping money from Piazza's contract is going to somehow override that philosophy. I don't. Let's set aside the very real possibility that said philosophy is Billy's own thinking; pretend it's Lew who imposes this rule. Is Lew going to change his mind about it just because Billy scrimped some money from somewhere else? No. He's going to say, "Hey, that's nice that you saved some money on payroll, but I still don't want to waste that money on signing bonuses."
You could be right
As Faust pointed out below, the A's do not have a history for doing as I suggest.
I think there is no chance, none, that Beane could go to the owners and get them to pony up additional funds to sign a draft pick like Gary Brown. Well, he could ask but they'd say "no". I'm sure Beane already knows this.
Therefore the only way Beane and the A's could take this unusual step would be to do it in such a way as to divert funds earmarked for one task (paying Mike Piazza) and apply it to paying for the necessary signing bonuses.
Because there's no question that the A's could use more talent in their minor league system. The A's control the draft rights for some of the top amateur talent in baseball. The need is there, so is the opportunity. But are the financial means available to make all this happen?
I guess we'll find out.
Yikes, I hope not
In a healthy organization, the general manager does not circumvent company policy by "diverting funds". Having a well-run company is far more important to the A's success than getting a few more signing bonuses this year.
If Billy, or anyone else, wants funds for signing bonuses, he needs to persuade whoever is making the decisions that it's the right thing to do, and address whatever legitimate counter-arguments there are. Sneaking the funds from another pot is not the answer.
Beane
He's GM, team President and a part owner. A person with that much control should have the authority to make a cost neutral move. He'd be basically trading Player A for Players X, Y, Z at the same cost. That's a move Beane should have the autonomy to perform.
Faust asks the relevant question. Are the A's willing to go against MLB's bonus slot recommendations? If the A's have an organizational policy to not go over the slot recommendations than this plan is toast.
Exactly
And since we know that the organization is opposed to more money on signing bonuses, we can deduce that Beane is opposed to more money on signing bonuses.
Therefore, your idea that we need to cut Piazza in order to "free up" money for signing bonuses is silly. If Beane wants to spend money on signing bonuses, he can just do so, without resorting to diverting funds. Evidently, he doesn't want to.
As a standard rule
the organization is against above slot bonuses. And I'd agree that, as a rule, Beane is against paying above slot bonuses.
However, I also know that Beane hates to lose and the A's are 6 games under .500 going into August. The A's drafted Brown knowing full well that there was no chance he'd sign for 12th round money, so the implication is there that A's would be willing to pay out an above slot bonus. What their ceiling is I don't know and I don't want to speculate.
You are correct that the A's could just pony up the cash and pay to sign Gary Brown without having to dump any contracts. But the A's rarely do business that way. Beane had a budget in 2002 when he had 6 1st round picks and he drafted in large part because he could not go over that budget in signing his draft picks. It's safe to conclude that Beane had another dollar figure he had to stay under this time around. I estimated that number to be in the ballpark of $5 million. There is simply not enough money left in the bonus money piggy bank to go after the high ceiling draftees I'm advocating.
So rather than sit here and say, "Just reach into Wolff's wallet and pull out a couple million" I've tried to come up with a cost-neutral plan that gets me what I want. Asking for more money is the easy way out and I never do things the easy way in a diary like this.
When Opening Day kicked off the A's ownership was willing to spend $79 million on their roster. As the draft approached they agreed to spend $5 million to sign the picks. This may be an over-simplification, but they've essentially given Beane $84 million to go out and put a winning product on the field. As I see it, unless Beane has been completely neutered he should have the freedom to manipulate that $84 million however he wants to. That's why my plan calls for trading Piazza, it frees up cash Beane already has access to.
Calling up Wolff and asking for more money is a whole other ball game and I'd just as soon avoid playing it because I don't know the rules to that one.
One problem ...
The $79m was based on yielding an immediate return in the form of the revenue that a winning season and playoff trip can bring.
Given that the team is likely out of the race, it is quite likely that revenues will be at least $5m shy of the levels the budget was based on and moving Piazza would be more of a stop-loss move than anything else.
There is that possibility
Which leads to the obvious follow up... what will happen to the payroll next year? We may not have that chunk of change you were anticipating to spend on a CF upgrade.
We'll cross that bridge when we get there.
I don't think this year's revenue ...
will drastically affect next year's.
Our management is smarter than that. Next year's payroll is an investment in next year, based on next year's projections -- this year's performance shouldn't affect that, except to the extent that it affects next year's projections.
I really wish you had been able to swing the trades you were talking about back in the day for Super-Shane Victorino ...
I had to look up an old diary
Based on the work I did here the A's are looking at a minimum payroll of $65 million next year. The 2007 payroll was helped by $5.5 million coming from Pittsburgh and that money won't be around next year. So that leaves a (roughly) $9 million gap between the 2007 payroll and the 2008 minimum. Will that $9 million be available next year?
This is just a guess, but I'd think that projected revenues for next season would naturally be lower because the expectations will probably be lower. The A's have been having revenue issues for a while, toss in a losing season and the income figures could take a hit. If the 2007 payroll was allowed to surge because of the playoff expectations then it follows that the 2008 payroll would correct downward once Kendall and Piazza (as examples) are off the books.
I thought this was high
so I went through and figured it out myself. I came to an estimate of $64.9 million... so actually, it's pretty much exactly correct.
This is not to say that it can't be reduced to fit in a free agent, just a snapshot of things "as-is."
We'll see ....
But I think that BB will do some math similar to what I've done, decide that this team most likely will, in fact, be good next year and create a budget based on a 50% or so chance of making the playoffs.
your last metaphor: intentionally apt ...
... or unintentionally inappropriate?
I'll go with "B"
Unintentionally inappropriate.
'Cause I'm missing whatever it is you're seeing.
bridge ... cross ... bridge ... collapse ...
Wait a sec...
If that's the case than why didn't Beane fire sale Kennedy? Don't tell me JoKe didn't have any value, he's left-handed and breathing. Moving Kennedy would have saved about $900K.
$900k isn't enough to lose
the supplemental pick we're likely to get for him ...
I would suggest that you
don't know the rules to this one either. You've called your budgeting assumption -- that Beane "already has access to" a certain pile of cash -- an "over-simplification", and I think it really is.
Next time Blez interviews either Beane or Wolff, I'd like a question about what sort of factors determine how much is budgeted for payroll for any given year. Is it a function of revenue? Prior year's revenue, or current year's projected? If Billy saves some money on some other expense, does he then get to "keep" that savings to spend on payroll instead? Is general payroll expense grouped with related development like signing bonuses and programs in Latin America, or are they completely separate? When another team picks up part of a traded player's salary, is that grouped as a credit to the payroll expense or as separate revenues?
I'm sure we won't get a complete answer from either of them, but they might tell us at least part of the story. Right now we're all just flailing in the dark.
Great thread, Grover
I know it isn't everyone's taste, but for me discussions like this are the best thing about AN.
grover, I question the assumption for your Step 1
What I question is the notion that money saved on Piazza would then be available for signing draft choices. Or as you put it, the Piazza money is "money that has already been allocated by the ownership towards baseball operations. Now we're talking about moving money from one pot to another, I don't see why Beane would have to ask permission to spend money he's already been told to spend." That's logical enough, but I don't think the system works that way.
Mind you, I emphatically agree that it's worthwhile putting that money into draft picks. I think enough studies have been done that demonstrate that draft choices return significantly more value than their cost, and that the value that you get on a Swisher or a Street or a Blanton or a Buck (or a Bonderman, goddammit) pays for their bonuses with more than enough to spare for defraying the dollars you inevitably fart away on the McCurdys, Fritzes, and Robnetts. Beane is a draft junkie and surely knows this as well as anyone.
But I think there are external restraints on Beane such that he would have to "ask permission" to spend those Piazza savings (and wouldn't get that permission). It has to do with MLB's draft "slotting" system. This is a murky area that I've never seen explained to my full satisfaction (you subscribe to BA and I don't, so you may have more to add here; I don't remember where I read all this but I think my source is probably mostly Goldstein), but to the best of my understanding, the commissioner's office exerts considerable pressure on the teams to keep them within the "slot" guidelines for signing bonuses, but in the end has no veto power if the teams ignore that pressure. In this system, crime pays: teams that are willing and able to flout the slot guidelines (Detroit, and Boston, and the Yankees, and Anaheim - I'm looking irascibly at you, Jered Weaver and Nick Adenhart) are at a distinct advantage in stacking up talent (while perverting the intent of the draft, which is supposed to give some edge to the teams on the bottom).
When was the last time the A's went over slot in signing a draftee? I can't remember it happening. I think there are two current reasons for this, which have to do with ownership, not with Beane: (1) Wolff's BFF relationship with goddamn Selig; and (2) the fact that the A's, needing league support with their ballpark issues and so forth, are less in a position to piss off the commissioner's office than most teams. So the rich Angels can flout the guidelines, while the A's engage in a sort of unilateral disarmament. It's very aggravating.
The A's front office is certainly smart and well-versed on these things, and as I mentioned Beane is a total draft junkie. I'm 100% certain that Beane knows that offering a few hundred grand over slot to sign Gary Brown (or Smoak, when that situation arose) is an absolute no-brainer from the standpoint of rational economics and team development. I just don't think he's really at liberty to act on that rational conclusion.
I'd at least like to see the A's jettison "unilateral disarmament" and tell Selig that if the Angels go ahead and sign that pitcher (whose name I forget, but who fell to them because of signability concerns in the 2nd or 3rd round) to 1st round money, then the A's should consider themselves free to sign Gary Brown at whatever it takes. (Actually, I'd like to see them sign him anyway.) We can't afford to let the competition have such an enormous edge - the Angel's willingness to give Selig the finger is one of the reasons their farm system has been so much more productive than ours. Sure, no doubt Eddie Bane is better at his job than Eric Kubota is at his, but it's a hell of an advantage when you are allowed to flout the rules and just buy up a blue chip or two every year - not guys that your superior scouting has turned up, but guys that everyone likes but whom only you are willing and able to step out of line and grab.
This is an area that fascinates me. I've seen a little on how the slotting system operates but almost no inside poop on how individual teams grapple with the constraints, and any light anyone can she on this would be welcome. I'm off to bed and may not be able to return before this thread dies, but I'll be sure to read whatever anyone has to say on this topic.
You could be right
Which would suck for the A's and their fans... namely us.
I couldn't tell you when the A's last signed a draftee to an above slot bonus. And I don't see myself doing the research on that topic any time soon. I can tell you that every A's draft pick taken in the first 5 rounds in the last two drafts has signed at or just below the recommended slot price tag.
The Angel draftee you're thinking about is RHP Matt Harvey, who's commitment to North Carolina and ties to Scott Boras translate to big money signing bonus even though he was a 3rd round pick. The estimated slot money for the 118th pick in the draft (Harvey's draft position) is $243 K.
Raise your hand if you think a Scott Boras client will get more than $243 K for a signing bonus.
If the A's are able to move Piazza before my August 10th deadline and do not use the savings to sign their high talent draft picks than we as fans should be disappointed in this franchise. We should honestly question whether this team deserves our commitment. Because it's one thing to accept that the A's are unlikely to pursue Alex Rodriguez or some other super star in free agency... or even make an attempt to keep a homegrown star like Tejada. But to accept that the A's won't spend $2 million on a group of young players that could pay huge dividends down the road? That would make no sense.
At least it wouldn't make any baseball sense. It would fit perfectly in a scenario where the team ownership is more interested in making a couple million more in profit rather than reinvest the loose change into the team.
I think that's a false dichotomy
To contrapose desire to win and desire to make money as if they are opposite choices, and then berate the ownership for choosing the wrong one.
Every sports franchise is in it to make money. Sure, you may enjoy running a baseball team more than you enjoy running a billboard advertising agency, but the company still has to be driven by profit. If it isn't, it's a failed company ... until it gets bought out by someone who does run it to make a profit. To wish that the owners didn't care so much about profit is not just in vain, it's nonsensical.
There are, however, several business models for a sports franchise. Some of them involve winning, and some of them don't. We should be grateful that we root for a team that does follow a winning-based model, rather than a team that knows how to make money by losing (eg, Baltimore, Pittsburgh).
That dichotomy exists in this particular scenario
Where the A's trade Piazza and pocket the cash instead of investing it into the franchise. That would pretty much amount to greed. Management would be acting to increase its profit margin and not the overall quality of the franchise.
I don't think it's about the money in this case
So that's another issue. I don't have enough information to know why the A's honor this system while others don't, so I don't know how to judge them. If it's because they feel they need the commissioner's office's goodwill as they maneuver their way through towards a new ballpark, I could understand that. If it's because Wolff is buds with Bud, that's another matter. Either way, I doubt it has anything to do with the short-term economics of what to do with any Piazza savings.
Yeah, Harvey is the guy I was thinking of. I bet the Angels sign him, and we don't sign Brown. And there's a good chance that in about three years he'll be out there mowing down our lineup while we're trotting out our latest DiNardo. That's a real competitive disadvantage.
If we were only talking Gary Brown
I'd agree that the financial issues would be fairly moot, but I think there are 2-3 other draftees that are worthy of pursuing as well. Signing the whole group would take a small but healthy financial commitment. You're right, the outlay would be a pittance in comparison to going after big league talent. As we've seen with Swisher amd Blanton and Street, drafting your big leauge roster costs penny on the dollar vs. going through free agency.
It would be cool if Beane made another appearance at AN Day and someone could ask him about Gary Brown and the team's willingness to sign draftees to above slot bonuses.
And do you live in the Midwest or East coast? 4:44 is awfully early to post for a westsider.
4:44 would be awfully early
The one good thing about the A's stinking it up and toppling out of contention is that I feel much less temptation to stay up and watch those 10 p.m. weekday games, which play hell with the following workday.
I'd also like to see Beane asked about slot policy. Think that's one where we'd get a straightforward answer, or a bob-and-weave job? As you mention above, the very fact that we draft guys like Brown and Smoak implies that we must have at least a theoretical willingness to go over slot in some instances, but we just have no feel for where the tipping point lies.
A thought that popped into
my drubken head while reading this ... before realizing that it wasn't related to where you were going ...
I bet Billy Beane really wishes that Barry Bonds had set the record a month ago.
If that had happened, the Giants would have sunk into oblivion before the A's, which would have caused the A's to suffer less when they do (at least officially) for the balance of '07.
Jason Kendall was up to bat w/ bases juiced in
the 9th inning. He "K'd" and now the Cubs know how we all feel.
by ohtobe21likehuston on Aug 1, 2007 8:41 PM PDT reply actions
Holy crap. Matthews homers off Putz in the 9th
to tie the game at 7-7. This has been one hell of a game to watch. Damn Mariners!
by ohtobe21likehuston on Aug 1, 2007 9:42 PM PDT reply actions
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