bust a move

July 24, 2009 at 8:37 pm | In Baseball | Leave a Comment
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Because trades are starting to come steadily, I’m abandoning my “Sunday roundup” format for the next week. There’s no real reason I can’t give some succinct transaction reviews during the week, particularly since the trade deadline falls on a Friday and I’ll likely have waning enthusiasm two days later for most of the news.

Pujols is no longer alone: The Cardinals, realizing that their offense is basically Albert Pujols and Ryan Ludwick, wisely pursued the best outfielder presumed to be on the trade market in Oakland’s Matt Holliday. Holliday’s numbers have slipped noticably since leaving Colorado, but he’ll still bring more to the plate than St. Louis’ alternatives. The question, however, is whether it was worth it – Holliday will be a free agent after the season, and the prospect cost looks rather steep for a few months of a non-elite player.3B Brett Wallace seems overhyped for someone with only a small stint of dominant hitting at AA and not much of a defensive reputation, but he’s not yet 23 and showed a lot of offensive potential in his college career at Arizona State. Starter Clay Mortensen looks like pitching depth at best, but again, youth mitigates things; at 24, further improvement, while not guaranteed, is far from impossible. The rawest talent the A’s received was in 21-year-old outfielder Shane Peterson, who looks like the sort of player the A’s might have drafted with their second compensation pick had they lost Holliday in free agency.

With that, and Wallace’s upside, taken into consideration, it’s a solid haul for Oakland; while Wallace could very conceivably make the Cardinals look back in regret, it’s hard to fault them for giving up the two replaceable minor leaguers with the NL Central title looking very attainable.  Just how great a cost such a victory would come at is a matter of one’s faith in Wallace turning into an impact player.

Red Sox get better for free: Julio Lugo should not have been designated for assignment, but he was; by this week, he had to be considered a sunk cost for the Red Sox, and managing to turn him into anything before he cleared waivers would be a nice move. Theo Epstein did a little better than “anything,” acquiring from the Cardinals 1B/OF Chris Duncan. While Duncan’s defense and health are huge liabilities, he is only 28 and brings a little pop and the ability to take a walk. Perhaps most importantly, he also gave Boston – dealing with an injured Jeff Bailey and underachieving Chris Carter and Paul McAnulty – the organizational depth to finally cut ties with the utterly futile use of a roster spot that is Mark Kotsay.

Kotsay might not have been replaced on the major league roster, however, had the Sox not also acquired 1B Adam LaRoche from the Pirates. LaRoche is a platoon player who should only start against right-handed pitchers, but he allows Kevin Youkilis to shift to third and spell the quickly-aged Mike Lowell. More importantly, he has eliminated Boston’s most glaring weakness (in specifically Kotsay and in general lack of someone to play over Lowell) at a minimal cost: the club is taking on just $3 million in payroll, and gave Pittsburgh nothing more than organizational filler in Argenis Diaz (a no-hit shortstop who was cluttering the 40-man roster) and Hunter Strickland (who, while young, neither strikes guys out nor keeps the ball in the park). While Boston could make themselves the divisional favorite by adding an impact player before next Friday, they have added the only thing they absolutely needed in LaRoche.

Indians save some money: Okay, that was harsh. Rafael Betancourt’s 2010 option for over $5 million wasn’t going to be picked up by a team that has quit pretending to care about spending money on players, and draft compensation for a Type B free agent would hinge upon them actually offering arbitration to Betancourt, which is hardly a given. Considering that, sending Betancourt to the Rockies for Connor Graham isn’t the worst thing Cleveland could have done; Graham has some chance of being a useful major leaguer in his future. That’s about all I can say, though; while he can certainly strike guys out, he’s had control problems in A-ball, and his main asset – home run prevention – looks like more luck than ground ball tendencies. The one thing that could turn things around would be a move to the bullpen, but we’ll have to see how the Indians handle their new prospect.

Padres raise eyebrows: While many comments online are highly critical of San Diego GM Kevin Towers, I liked the move that sent reliever Cla Meredith to Baltimore. Meredith, 26, is a useful middle reliever, but he’s headed to arbitration this winter and the Padres are trying to cut payroll. Their bounty, 31-year-old infielder Oscar Salazar, looks like a late bloomer; he made some noise with a big 2008 at AAA and then continued to be a surprise in the bigs. While he may be nothing more than a backup corner infielder, he has less service time than Meredith and thus is a cheaper option for a team on a budget. The most intriguing part, however, is that his arrival in San Diego could be seen as a precursor to the club finally trading 1B Adrian Gonzalez – reported to be unlikely – or 3B Kevin Kouzmanoff.

Uninteresting player dealt to uninteresting team in uninteresting trade: That’s the best way to describe the snoozefest of a trade that sent 2B Felipe Lopez to Milwaukee, and I’ll understand if readers zone out for the rest of this post. Lopez seems, to me, like he’s been a Brewer before, but he has not; I assume that my mind just saw “middling infielder who isn’t great at anything but isn’t awful, either” and thought of Milwaukee. The Brewers sent Arizona a pair of similarly unremarkable prospects; Roque Mercedes looks like your run-of-the-mill minor-league reliever, while Cole Gillespie’s walk abilities and doubles power don’t make the 25-year-old look like a great bet in left field.

one second it was perfect; now you’re halfway out the door

February 23, 2009 at 12:01 am | In Baseball, Rooting Hierarchies | 1 Comment
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11. Arizona Diamondbacks (65.40% schedule-weighted support)
Last Ranking: 6
Added: SPs Jon Garland and Travis Blackley; 2B Felipe Lopez; Cs James Skelton and Luke Carlin; RPs Tom Gordon, Scott Schoeneweis, and Bobby Korecky; IFs Ryan Roberts and Josh Wilson
Lost: SPs Randy Johnson and Edgar Gonzalez; 1B/OF Adam Dunn; 2Bs Orlando Hudson and David Eckstein; RPs Brandon Lyon and Juan Cruz; OF Jeff Salazar; IF/OF Chris Burke
Strengths: Despite losing Randy Johnson, the rotation likely remains the NL’s best. With a pair of aces in Brandon Webb and Dan Haren, the team could be a postseason nightmare if megaprospect Max Scherzer continues the dominance he has displayed since going pro in 2007. Scherzer had 66 strikeouts and 5 home runs in 56 innings, and has a track record as a homer-prevention machine; three of those long balls came at the low-humidity Chase Field and high-altitude Coors Field. Jon Garland and Doug Davis lack the flash of the team’s power trio, but are well above average at the back of the rotation. Should any of these five go down, the team has a little-known but very solid backup in 24-year-old Yusmeiro Petit, who has battled home run problems but has fine control and solid strikeout ability.

C Chris Snyder’s bat isn’t a lock to repeat the 16 homers of 2008, and I’m more than a little concerned by his strikeout total in what was considered by many a breakout year. But any team who has even an average offensive 28-year-old behind the plate who went all season without an error and threw out 31% of potential base-stealers has to be pleased with their catching situation. Along with 25-year-old Miguel Montero, who was rumored in connection with the Red Sox much of the winter, the team has a third intriguing young catching option in James Skelton, a Rule 5 draftee from Detroit. At 23, he is widely considered a defensive liability, but despite a high total of passed balls, he has been good at throwing out runners. If the team were to try him at second base or in the outfield, his lack of power could be a concern, but for now, he remains a player worth watching. The team has another interesting bench option in infielder Ryan Roberts, a non-roster invitee who has never been given much of a chance in the big leagues despite minor league numbers worthy of at least a bench spot. If the Diamondbacks ever give up on the announcer-beloved, “little things”-doing defensive option of Augie Ojeda, Roberts could be a very nice guy to have in reserve.
Weaknesses: While the pitching is strong and the bench has some nice options, there are problems throughout the lineup. Despite nice power and solid defense, CF Chris Young’s on-base percentage and strikeout rate are dreadful, and it’s tough to see why he was fast-tracked and kept in the majors. Similarly, RF Justin Upton’s unremarkable bat and bad defense should have spent more than fifteen games in AAA; if not for veteran OF Eric Byrnes falling off a cliff – production-wise, not a literal and tragic result of one of his unconventional routes to the ball – one has to think that the 21-year-old would still be a hyped prospect instead of a below-average regular.

Still, Young and Upton are young enough to at least be considered works in progress. The same defense cannot be granted to 1B Chad Tracy; while he is far from old at 28, he has five years of service time and has posted an above-average OPS only once. While he can blame knee problems for some of his declining production, there’s just no reason to believe that he should be anything more than the left-handed part of a platoon at first with LF Conor Jackson – and even average defense may be too much to ask, based on a rough partial season at first in 2008. Free agent signing 2B Felipe Lopez looks capable of providing an average glove, but his bat has been nothing special since a 2005 that looks more like a fluke with each passing season. While he’s a non-awful stopgap until the team finds someone better – or just entrusts Roberts with the job – he is certainly not worthy of the $3.5 million he’ll make. On the other side of the diamond, SS Stephen Drew, 26, and 3B Mark Reynolds, 25, are both bad defenders and have offensive track records that make them look unlikely to be major contributors. I prefer Drew thanks to the lower standard of offense expected from a shortstop, but even then, his glove is a liability. It will be interesting to see how much Brandon Webb is hurt by a poor infield defense handling the frequent ground balls he induces.

The bullpen features a couple of nice underrated pitchers in Chad Qualls and Tony Pena, but on the whole, the relief corps is largely unremarkable. That alone doesn’t make it a weakness, but the team seems overinvested in veterans – neither Tom Gordon nor Scott Schoeneweis is likely to contribute beyond what the team could have gotten from its AAA pitchers.
My Stake: Despite his fixation on certain players who are bench filler at best, such as Ojeda and 1B Tony Clark, Josh Byrnes was one of my favorite GMs not too long ago. But as well as keeping too many replacement-level-or-worse players in significant roles on the team, Byrnes has rushed players who appear unprepared for the big leagues while giving up on serviceable (at worst) talent like OF Scott Hairston and 2B Alberto Callaspo. While the team blamed its inability to retain 1B Adam Dunn and SP Randy Johnson on budget concerns, and have shown little interest in bringing back RP Juan Cruz, they somehow managed to find money for players like Clark, Schoeneweis, and Lopez, who will be lucky to contribute a fraction of a win. I won’t assail the preference of Jon Garland over Johnson because there’s an argument to be made favoring the durability of the former, but there’s a bizarre illogic plaguing Arizona’s offseason, and it has gotten hard to remember how Byrnes was held in such high esteem.

On top of my intellectual arguments against many of the Diamondbacks’ recent moves, there’s a great deal of emotional… indifference at best. The team’s 2007 overachieving was infuriating at the time and remains irksome, and living in Phoenix exposed me to a fan base that is more interested in between-innings scoreboard antics than the game itself – and apathetic enough not to sell out the 2007 NLCS. That they rank this high is something of an indictment of Baltimore’s track record and Florida’s inexcusable cheapness; it is largely a holdover of days past, when the front office deserved to be emulated, rather than to have its sanity questioned.
‘09 Predictions: The sad thing about my disillusionment with my college hometown team is that I see the Diamondbacks as a very strong contender this year. If Eric Byrnes can recover and come close to even average offense, it could let the team move LF Conor Jackson back to first and put Chad Tracy into either a bench role or a platoon situation. While there are question marks, as discussed, I’m inclined to think that the incredible rotation will minimize the weight of the spotty middle relief, and that a young lineup will take advantage of a hitters’ park and see enough pleasant surprises to get them to 86 wins. At that point, they could very well win their division and let their three aces carry them deep into October.

‘08 rooting hierarchy vi: i appreciate the best; i’m settling for less

March 29, 2008 at 11:11 pm | In Baseball, Rooting Hierarchies | 1 Comment
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Making my self-imposed nightly deadlines for this series has been (unnecessarily) tedious, but I must confess that intensive list-making and element-of-list-analyzing is quite fun; perhaps this will inspire me to finally work up a list of my favorite Zevon songs or some such undertaking. 

7. Pittsburgh Pirates 79.31% unweighted; 90.06% weighted (100/80/71.43)
Last year: #21. 68-94, 6th in NL Central
In 2008: It’s amazing what a little pandering will do. I’ve wanted Neal Huntington to succeed as a GM since he showed himself to be über-geeky instead of claiming, for instance, that each player is different and that using statistics is a misleading, inaccurate method of player evaluation. The Pirates have been rather quiet this offseason, so it’s tough to say whether Huntington has a sound plan or if he’s just trying to get the attention of a growing niche of fans. Thus far, however, the club has seemed more than willing to trade away and release some of its more expendable, redundant players, so I’m hopeful that Huntington will be similarly liberal in his trade policy in order to restock the farm system.
Prediction: 74-88; 4th in NL Central

6. Arizona Diamondbacks 82.76% unweighted; 85.86% weighted (75/100/71.43)
Last year: #4. 90-72, 1st in NL West, lost NLCS
In 2008: The Diamondbacks continue to be one of the brightest organizations in the game, and should be competitive again this season… except they should actually outscore their opponents for a change. I was rather surprised by how many young players the team surrendered in a trade for starter Dan Haren, and how few they received for closer Jose Valverde. Still, there’s a lot of talent on the roster and in the front office alike; my greatest complaint about the D-backs remains their hard-to-explain 2007 run and the resultant hype, which too often bordered on sabermetrics-bashing.
Prediction: 84-78; 3rd in NL West

5. Tampa Bay Rays 87.59% unweighted; 80.31% weighted (75/82.22/93.75)
Last year: #7. 66-96, 5th in AL East
In 2008: In the well-funded AL East, the Rays are going to have a hard time winning a playoff spot. But considering how quickly GM Andrew Friedman has stocked the team with quality prospects and signed young talent to long-term deals, maybe the Rays can actually challenge the Red Sox and Yankees in coming years. The signing of OF Cliff Floyd was rather inexplicable, given the team’s existing outfield surplus, but the Rays more than compensated with two very nice trades over the winter.

The big headline was the trade of talented but temperamental Delmon Young for the Twins’ SP Matt Garza and SS Jason Bartlett. Garza, while overrated by ERA in 2007, is a 24-year-old with plenty of potential; Bartlett is a defensive asset in his prime. But the Rays also made a quieter acquisition, as alluded to in my write-up of the Braves: Willy Aybar will start the year at third base in the place of Evan Longoria, and was acquired (with a middle-infield prospect, no less) for a potential mediocre lefty specialist. Considering the circumstances and history of the Tampa Bay franchise, Friedman may be leading the most impressive organizational turnaround I have ever seen.
Prediction: 85-77; 3rd in AL East

4. Oakland A’s 88.28% unweighted; 85.87% weighted (100/76/93.75)
Last year: #5. 76-86, 3rd in AL West
In 2008: Going into the 2008 season, the A’s have only made one big error: they gave up on the 2008 season. After a disappointing 2007, Oakland had some reason to doubt its competiveness; the season had been plagued with injuries that served as reminders that the roster wasn’t getting any younger, and there was a decent argument to rebuild rather than hope the Angels faltered or the AL East beat up on itself and vacated a wild card spot (the rebuilding argument is even stronger since the team would probably like to break in their new ballpark with a good team by 2010).  While I don’t expect them to contend in ‘08, I wouldn’t be stunned to see them again torn between a fire sale and a push for the playoffs.

While I still question whether the A’s should have moved into a rebuilding phase, it’s hard to complain, because they have executed that rebuilding very well. The team opted for bulk, getting six players from Arizona, including three young hitters and a possible member of the 2008 rotation, in exchange for SP Dan Haren and reliever Connor Robertson; for OF Nick Swisher, they picked up Opening Day CF Ryan Sweeney along with two decent pitching prospects. Billy Beane’s “pick up underrated young players” strategy still works, as he was willing to pay most of the essentially washed-up OF Mark Kotsay’s contract in order to get reliever Joey Devine from the Braves (instead of paying the whole contract and not getting anything; this is similar to the aforementioned willingness of Neal Huntington to take a financial hit in the best long-term interests of the club, and knowing when to cut one’s losses is particularly commendable in low-payroll clubs).
Prediction: 79-83; 3rd in AL West

‘07 spaces: …and the morals that they worship will be gone

December 5, 2007 at 4:27 pm | In Space Awards | 4 Comments
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The first installment of the year’s first Space Award countdown includes someone that longtime readers would not expect to see nominated in this category, but I call ‘em like I see ‘em; there are no free passes against otherwise likable people being annoying once in a while. Note also that these are Annoyances, so serious political outrages (of which there were several) are mostly being ignored. Sorry, Walter Reed scandal enthusiasts!

2007 Space Awards ~ Annoyances Of The Year: Part I

15. Hank Steinbrenner: The Yankees Senior VP is quickly demonstrating the same crazy, immature tendencies that made his father famous. Giving public deadlines for trade talks (and then reneging!) and public ultimatums to players (and then reneging!) is no way to run a business, much less a franchise that prides itself on being boring and straight-laced.
14. Natalie Portman: The former Broad Of The Year nominee has resorted to pretentious, self-promoting ways – with multiple stories on sites as “real news”-y as Huffington Post – regarding her “nude-scene laden short.” First she was for the nudity, then she was against it – and shocked that web sites would “misappropriate” it (I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a nude scene that was necessary to a movie [nor a Wes Anderson movie that was necessary at all]; you can’t “misappropriate” something that was gratuitous in the first place). What did she think the outcome would be?  People saying how brave and meaningful it was? This isn’t a naive Hollywood newcomer being exploited; this is a Harvard-educated millionaire wanting to keep her clean image while cashing in on her attractiveness.
13. Don Imus: I absolutely support his right to non-slanderous, non-obscene speech. I am rather appalled at how quickly black advocacy groups demanded he lose his show. But ultimately, no matter how much I defend his right to be a jackass, I also have to admit my own distaste for the man. Censorship should never come to America, but people being gratuitously, deliberately shocking to cause controversy can only hurt the cause of free speech.
12. Arizona Diamondbacks hype: I generally like the franchise, but the fans and media were disgusting with their campaign to “don’t explain it, just enjoy it” when the club was doing well. Analysts weren’t trying to “explain” the winning so much as remind fans that giving up more runs than you score is not a portent of future success. Finally, in a recent XM radio interview, manager Bob Melvin admitted of the disappointing end to the season, “The run differential may have had something to do with it.”  Ya think? There’s nothing wrong with improbable things that defy logical expectations; there’s something very wrong with people expecting them to continue and shouting down those who think otherwise.
11. Britney Spears: Much like Imus, she is annoying both for what she does and the reaction to it. Celebrity news outlets bear responsibility for it as well, but she ultimately shoulders the most blame for continuing to live every minute of her train wreck of a life in front of the cameras (I really don’t want to hear about custody battles on CNN); if she weren’t still clinging pathetically to fame, the fault would go to an intrusive media.

things to do in denver when you’re dead

October 10, 2007 at 10:59 pm | In Baseball | 2 Comments
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It’s hard to believe that one round of the playoffs is already done, and it’s League Championship Series time already. In large part, I’m sure, this is because I wasn’t particularly emotionally invested in 75% of the Divisional Series – Sox/Angels was pretty nice, rooting-differential wise, but I just could not take the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim as a serious threat to Josh Beckett and Curt Schilling. Indians/Yankees, of course, was the biggest emotional rollercoaster since the 2004 ALCS.

But now, I must celebrate one simple fact: one of my top two teams is going to the World Series. Once that starts, I will probably go into full-on one-minded baseball-crazed lunatic-hermit over-hyphenating mode. But first, a discussion of the remaining road to the Fall Classic:

Colorado (90-73) at Arizona (90-72): Right away, let me note how delightful it is to get two LCS featuring pairs of teams with almost identical records. No matter what happens, we won’t see another 83-win champion overcome three teams with an average of 93 wins. It’s unrealistic to expect the best team to win the World Series every year, but we can absolutely hope that such a title has some sort of legitimacy beyond “this team won 11 games in October.” Of course, that’s not to say that each of the NL clubs has an equal claim to the proverbial throne; Colorado outscored its opponents by 102 runs, while Arizona was outscored by 20 runs.

We can debate how timely hitting and pitching, good management, and odd run distributions would alter a team’s record, and I imagine that the Diamondbacks could conceivably have won a handful of games meritoriously. But no matter how we analyze it, there’s no way they won 90 games without an obscene amount of luck. And this year, anything less than 89 wins would have missed the postseason. When a club like Colorado sees young talent and unexpected veteran contributions all come together and has a great year, there is admittedly an element of luck in play. Their playoff berth defies pre-season stat-geek logic, expectation, and even explanation. Yet in the end, it is nonetheless a legitimately great season. Being outscored, on the other hand, says that one’s team has not played well. If Arizona won only as many one-run games as the next-best team in that category, the Diamondbacks would have missed the playoffs. Plain and simple, they got ridiculously lucky and still only made the postseason by a two-win margin.

Ironically, the Diamondbacks are one of the smartest franchises in the game, and I had looked forward to them winning in 2008. But as a thinking sports fan, I can’t just like a team because it’s “good.” I demand some sort of meritocratic system. Whether a club is originally assembled with shrewd analysis or by looking at chicken bones, I ultimately cannot root for it to achieve the ultimate success when it would only get there by dumb luck. All that said, I would not mind Arizona overachieving its way into the World Series – or at least getting the NLCS to the game six for which I have a ticket. (Thank you, people of Phoenix, for not appreciating baseball enough to sell out the cheapest tickets for the National League Championship Series.)

Cleveland (96-66) at Boston (96-66):…oh dear. By the second half of the season, Cleveland had re-taken a spot at the top of my rooting hierarchy. But the Tribe shared that honor with Red Sox… and now I’ve got to make a choice. I should note that I truly love both of these teams, and this is like being asked to root for either my wife or my child to make it out of a burning building alive. It’s painful, it’s difficult, and ultimately, my joy that someone I love will survive is greatly tempered by the knowledge that someone else I love will not.

I don’t know which team is my wife and which is my child, but in the narrow-margin-of-rooting model I have explained, I see no choice but to root for the Indians. They achieved as many wins (albeit not as astonishing a run differential) as Boston while spending $80 million less, they have the same sort of great and just-plain-likable players, and in many ways, they embody, in this series, what drew me to the Red Sox. They are the underdog – the team that must overachieve to compensate for inferior resources; the team that must scratch and claw its way to the World Series against a frightening juggernaut of a baseball team. They will not receive the media adulation of their opponent, and will endure road games at one of baseball’s most storied, iconic ballparks.

Even if we say all other things are equal, the Indians knocked the Yankees out of the postseason. To me, that alone is justification to say, “Theo, Papi, Lowell… I love you guys, but the Tribe deserves this one.” But if Boston’s stronger offense and closer win out, so be it. I will not let even a pulling-out-all-the-stops seven game series turn me against the Red Sox once the series is over. Whoever wins the ALCS remains one of my favorite teams and gets 100% support against the NL champion.

One thing about the Red Sox: why do they have a victory song called “Dirty Water?” As far as I know, they didn’t have a local river catch fire.

strike another match, go start anew

May 10, 2007 at 6:54 pm | In Baseball, Rooting Hierarchies | 8 Comments
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I erred when I said my non-PSE love was music lists. It’s still baseball; I simply consider the PSE to be the bastard child of baseball statgeekery and heterosexuality. But now that the father (or mother?) of that bastard child has a new outlet, it’s time to get back to basics. I give you… the revised, Statistical Rooting Hierarchy, May Edition.

This lacks the projected-standings-weighted scientificness of David’s methods, but I also don’t consult the standings as much as he does when deciding who to root for in a median-team matchup. Basically, I determined who I’d root for in each head-to-head matchup, allowing for partial preferences (ex: Boston over Cleveland 60% of the time because New York is a bigger threat, and more depressing, than Detroit/Minnesota in the playoffs). I then weighted the teams’ schedules, assuming 11% of their games are against each of the teams in the same division and 11% are interleague matchups (weighted with no regard for actual 2007 interleague opponents). The results, by percentage of support:

Notes: The Red Sox may currently be underrated; if the Yankees take the division lead, Boston will be rooted for ahead of Cleveland and San Diego 100% of the time, rather than the current 60%… the Padres surprisingly don’t take 100% of my support against Detroit or Minnesota, as the AL Central rivals could also be New York’s wild card competition… The Oakland A’s, while theoretically favored, take a hit because they face Boston and Cleveland more than anyone in the National League… In head-to-head play, the Diamondbacks are a 60% favorite over the Brewers… stuck in a division with the Indians and only holding a 60-40 lead on the Twins, the Tigers took the third-biggest hit in ranking… divisional apathy allowed the Pirates to move up five spots… even as I let go of emotional antipathy for them, the Braves fell from 17th to 19th… the only way I can root for the Yankees would be if they’re out of it and Oakland is in it when New York visits Los Angeles of Anaheim in late August. As it’s highly unlikely, they keep their 0% support for now.

2007 rooting hierarchy vi: love me twice today

March 31, 2007 at 5:34 pm | In Baseball, Rooting Hierarchies | Leave a Comment
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Well, we’re almost there. I’ve broken up the top five into two tiers – at this point, the teams sort out almost entirely by sentimental preference rather than competence.

5. Oakland A’s I very much want to put the A’s at #4 so my autograph from GM Billy Beane can mean that much more. But if I dictated listing orders by autographs, I’d be 100% behind Barack Obama, and the MEI and PSE would be in total disarray. Also, Eric Chavez Jody Gerut (how on earth did I forget I had three there?!?) would be my favorite baseball player ever. Nay, it is preference that creates the autograph hierarchy – and in spring 2004, Billy Beane was even higher on this list.

But I digress. The A’s have a legendary loyalty to sabermetrics and analysis, and are my far-and-away favorite in the AL West. Yet when we throw reputation aside, the organization is not, in my analysis, the smartest franchise in baseball. They’re on the fringe of that race, but have made too many mistakes to be considered the best. Most recently, they passed on 25-year-old J.D. Durbin on waivers, and have seen their 1B/OF situation become rather ugly. The A’s are still a very smart team, but they’re neither the smartest nor are they very emotionally appealing.

4. Arizona Diamondbacks Durbin’s new home is also the home of Josh Byrnes, who is a contender for the “best GM in the game” title. The Diamondbacks will likely fall short of a playoff berth in 2007, but it’s not for lack of trying. The team is an absolutely lethal trading partner, as detailed by David – it’s hard to put into words just how incredibly Byrnes has fleeced other GMs in his short tenure.

Unlike the A’s, the team is equally appealing to my emotional side – it is always nice to be able to root for the home team, especially if that home team was part of the second-greatest playoff series I’ve witnessed (and finally, in the grim period after 9/11, gave me something to cheer about). However, the Diamondbacks may have reached the apex of their likability unless someone in the top three does something drastically bad.

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