Why don't the A's win any more?

It's very simple.

The A's of 2000-2003 were good because of Hudson, Mulder, Zito, Tejada, Chavez, Giambi. Even after Giambi was gone -- when they supposedly had to go all Scott Hatteberg to "rebuild" -- they still had the other five guys.

They stayed competitive for the next few years because they had those guys or they traded for or developed guys to replace them (Blanton, Haren, Swisher, Crosby).

What's happened since is they have basically had a horrible stretch of injuries and offensive underperformance. Is Beane responsible for that? Yes. He picked the guys.

They had Andre Ethier and they traded him because they valued Travis Buck ahead of him. They had Carlos Gonzalez and they traded him because they didn't see him becoming what he's become. How different are they if you just give them back those two guys?

It also doesn't help that they play in a ballpark no one wants to play in, so even when they have the money to throw at free agents (like Adrian Beltre), they don't take it.

 

Beltre would have been a disaster.

 

I always had the feeling Billy Beane should've been the mad genius in the corner of the room who came up with wacky, brilliant ideas -- but who also had someone with veto-power over him.

Like, uh, say Sandy Alderson.

I think the Red Sox have perfected Beane's initial dream, but they have the sense and cash to implement it correctly.

And you don't have to draft well if are really good at trades. See: the Cleveland Indians of the Mark Shapiro era. Those teams won (relatively) a lot of games and drafted pure garbage for about a decade.

 

Billy Beane's Oakland teams are overrated, IMO. His "great" philosophy only produced one playoff series win in five trips. They were 1-9 in playoff series closeout games and TWICE lost first round series after taking 2-0 leads.

That's not just bad luck or being a small market team, as much as Beane used those as excuses. You don't put up that kind of horrible postseason track record just because of bad luck. And as for being a small market team...the friggin Florida Marlins won a World Series during that stretch. The Colorado Rockies and Detroit Tigers got to the World Series. And all the Oakland A's, with three All Star-caliber starting pitchers and the pre-Mitchell Report Jason Giambi, got was ONE playoff series win? ONE???

 

You mean like the RedSox and yankees do?

 

My response was to the idea that Moneyball was solely about the marketplace and not about OBP, which I think has been the sabermetric spin of the last 3-4 years as all of the statheads' fawning over Beane has started to look a bit silly.

And I guess we will never know for sure, but I don't think the Yankees and Red Sox would have given up on Tejada, and then Gonzalez, for not walking enough.

EDIT: Case in point, Robinson Cano, career average of one walk per 20 plate appearances. I think he's doing all right.

EDIT II: Case in point, Jacoby Ellsbury, career average of one walk per 14.6 plate appearances. Also doing all right.

 

Having a cheap ass owner doesn't help either.

 

The funny thing is, the A's pitching benefits from playing in the Coliseum. And the fallacy of a new ballpark curing all ills is BS. Ask Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Houston, San Diego etc. etc.

 

So did the A's "give up" on Tejada, or did they decide they didn't want to sign him to a $75 million contract that the Orioles gave him? Let's not rewrite history here just because it makes Beane look bad.

They decided they couldn't keep both he and Chavez, and they chose to give Chavez a big contract. It didn't work out, but I'm not sure how you can blame them. Chavez was a great defender, Tejada was average. Chavez wasn't several years older than he said he was, Tejada was. Chavez (as far as we know) wasn't a steroid user, and Tejada clearly was.

They bet on the guy they thought was more likely to be able to maintain his production, and he broke down. It looks bad in retrospect, but it hardly had to do with walks alone.

 

Still wonder how the No. 6 TV market in the country is a "small" market. Or is it because they share the market with the Giants? That never seemed to be a problem with Finley or the Hasses. In the World Series season of 1989, according to Baseball-Reference.com, the A's drew 2,667,225 and the Giants 2,059,701.Yet the current management seems to have some form of Stockholm Syndrome, telling themselves so many times they're a small-market team, they believe it.

Yes, the Giants have a new yard and will probably sell out the season, but they also market the hell out of themselves. For example, the Giants took the World Series trophy throughout Northern California (plus a side trip to the site of the Polo Grounds) last winter, and mock it all you want (And A's fans do), but in every town it went into, it was front page news and led the TV news as well.

I think it also helps being on a 50kw radio station in KNBR, as they have since 1979. Can't even count how many Oakland's had since then. They even had the one that carried spring training games this year go bankrupt (a long story) right before opening day.

 

did you even read moneyball?

 

As for the Yankees & taking pitches, I'd say it has/had more to do with driving up pitch count and getting into soft bullpens than it did with an over valuation on OBP.

Especially in 1998, Jeter & Knoblauch alone were responsible for a lot of pitches, often in the first inning. This wore down opposing pitchers and let their teammates see what the pitcher had.

Quite often, starting pitchers were out of the game with high pitch counts before 5 innings. This allowed the Yankees to feast on middle inning relief. And, many times, they'd get into a bullpen early in the first game of a 3-game series, leaving the opponent with a depleted pen for the final two games of a series.

In later years, they were able to wait out pitchers like Pedro by driving up his pitch count. And, they either went to town on a tired starting pitcher or on the bullpen.

If their starting pitcher could keep them in the game, they had a chance against any opponent's staring pitcher.