November 12, 2016 at 2:52 PM

The "finally" in the title is not a "good riddance." I don't know who was more to blame for the dust-up between Valencia and Billy Butler last season, and it's hardly like the bad vibes either or both created were responsible for the lost season the team experienced—there's plenty of blame for that to go around, like Sonny Gray's weird season, Sean Doolitte's injuries, 532 plate appearances of Yonder Alonso, the total lack of a credible center fielder, 14 different starting pitchers having at least five starts, and Ryan Madson, John Axford, and Liam Hendriks pitching below their ideal or expected levels. No, the "finally" is because we all expected Valencia, who's eligible for arbitration for the third time and hit well enough to get a raise on last year's $3 million salary while remaining such a bad defensive player that he's probably not worth that, to be traded last year at the first trade deadline, or maybe during the waiver-trade period. Instead, he stuck around and played some outfield and a little first base while Ryon Healy, 2017 MVP, grabbed hold of the starting third base job and shook it in his teeth until it was dead.

The return in the intradivision (gasp!) trade is Paul Blackburn from the Mariners, not to be confused with soft-tossing right-handed prototypical Twin Nick Blackburn, who it appears has not played organized ball since 2013. The A's new Blackburn was a deep supplemental first-rounder (56th overall) by the Cubs in 2012 out of a southern California high school. He's worked his way up a level per year, pitching all of last season as a 22-year-old at Double-A, split between the Cubs' and Mariners' squads, the latter after coming over as a secondary piece in the Mike Montgomery–Dan Vogelbach extravaganza of late July.

The report from Christopher Crawford at the time was that he's a no-stuff pitchability guy with three okay deliveries but enough command and strike-throwing ability to be a fifth starter.

If I've done my math right, Blackburn has to be added to the 40-man roster this year or the A's risk losing him in the Rule 5 draft (because the 2017 Rule 5 will be the fifth Rule 5 draft after he signed as an 18-year-old), and it seems like a safe bet that someone would take a shot on him and throw him into their fifth-starter competition in the spring. That could work out with the A's getting him back at the end of the spring, but it's disruptive to their ability to get a look at him, to evaluate him for their own rotation and bullpen, and so forth. I would, therefore, expect the A's to 40-man him in the next week—Jeremy Koo says the deadline is this week and I trust Jeremy on these matters. The A's currently have 36 on the 40, and it sure would be strange to pick up a guy they could shortly lose and then not protect him.

That said, if the roster looks in March like it does now (rofl) he's probably a long shot to break camp as a starter with the A's when we can probably lock in a Gray-Manaea-Graveman-Cotton front four, leaving a Triggs-Hahn-Mengden-Neal(?)-Overton-Montas(?)-Alcantara competition for the last slot. All those same guys, plus Daniel Coulombe and some others are also presently in a battle for two rotation spots behind what I think it's safe to call five locks: Madson, Doolittle, Dull, Axford, Hendriks. As usual, this is all a moving target, in part because that's baseball and in part because that's Beaneball. (Hey!)

As for Valencia's "spots," the currently rostered adequate players for the four corners are Healy, Alonso, Khris Davis, Matt Olson, Mark Canha, and maybe Renato Nunez. Figuring Stephen Vogt to stick around but also figuring that Stephen Vogt is costing 13 runs a year behind the plate, according to Baseball Prospectus, we might see him transition back toward an outfield/first base/DH slot himself. Which is to say: even without adding a Eric Thames type (which does intrigue me), and even if the A's were to pass Alonso's anemic bat off on some other unsuspecting sucker, there's plenty here to credibly fill out a lineup and not have to forfeit any games.

EDIT (16:29) -- changed Marcus Thames to Eric. Marcus Thames is not playing baseball any longer. Bless up, @hollinger.

November 12, 2016 at 8:00 AM

Susan Slusser has some ideas about what the A's might do and not do, with the latter column including trades of Sean Doolittle, Sonny Gray, and Stephen Vogt. This is still the A's, so anything could happen at any time, but it is nice to see someone who usually has the pulse of the A's making soothing noises about the A's likelihood of trading some of their few bright spots.

September 20, 2016 at 10:19 PM

If Gary Sanchez is getting consideration, so should Healy! Yes, certainly. But let's not go too crazy with the argument, seeing how Sanchez, in 56 fewer plate appearances entering tonight, had a 45-point OBP advantage and a 164-point slugging advantage over Healy. In True Average terms (park-adjusted, linear weights–based, .260 is average), Healy is at .307 to Sanchez's .341. This means that Sanchez has created about three more runs with his bat than Healy despite the plate-appearance deficit. Healy's running out of time to make up that gap, even before you get to the fact that Sanchez is doing all this at catcher, and in particular as a catcher whose framing numbers have been good three years running, while Healy is still finding his way as a third baseman.

So yes, definitely, of course, consider Healy, and consider Sanchez, but I still consider Healy behind Sanchez, and therefore I think Healy falls off my American League Rookie of the Year ballot, which goes Michael Fulmer, Gary Sanchez, Sean Manaea.

September 19, 2016 at 8:33 AM

Baseball Prospectus has a "player I'm most excited to see in the Arizona Fall League" feature up from their prospect staff today, and Derek Florko picked A's middle infielder/center fielder Franklin Barreto, noting the 20-year-old's strong second-half hitting and the athletic tools that could add up to a playable defender at shortstop. Whether there's a place for Barreto to play at short given that he's already had a taste of Triple-A and Marcus Semien has not even hit his arbitration paydays yet is another question.

Then again, much as we all love Semien, he's also a 25-year-old with a .298 OBP this season and a .302 career mark. The whole package plays at shortstop because of his power (5.5 bWAR over the last two years, and I don't want to hear it about WAR -- it's a thumbnail apples-to-apples figure to illutrate my point in a single parenthetical without needing 20 data tables) but he's a good player, not a franchise cornerstone. That OBP, though, may limit the number of teams that would want to take him on in trade, so he may be more valuable to the A's staying right where he is for a few more years while Barreto plays center field. It's not as if, in these times of Brett Eibner and Jake Smolinski, that position is exactly locked down. Jaycob Brugman may bristle at my contention that the minors don't hold any superstars at the 8 either, but facts, including a .438 slugging percentage in Triple-A, are facts.

September 9, 2016 at 10:43 PM

I'll be honest with you: I thought Fernando Rodriguez hadn't pitched for the A's yet this season. Turns out he threw 40 innings at a slightly lower quality than we've come to expect from the middle reliever before going down with a shoulder strain. Now comes the news that he's had some sort of inscrutable surgery on some muscle, tendon, or other element of his physical corpus. He already wasn't going to pitch again this year, say the reporters relaying the news from the front office. He can't throw for four months, which means January, which means six weeks before spring training begins, which means maybe he'll be a little delayed, and if there are any setbacks or other A's-like issues, who even knows what his 2017 will look like.

He's not a free agent yet, and he only made $1 million this year, so the A's should be able to keep him around if they want to pay him, I don't know, $1.5 million? I'm curious to see whether the A's tender him a contract. On the one hand, even for the A's, $1.5 million is nothing; on the other, he's unoptionable, and the A's are already looking at, barring trades (but also barring acquisitions), Madson, Dull, Doolittle, Axford, Hendriks, and maybe Triggs. Then there are the youngsters who may or may not hack it in the rotation: Cotton, Alcantara, Mengden, Bassitt, Overton, Montas. Given certain relative rotation locks (Manaea, Gray, Graveman), the rotation overflow could end up in the 'pen, which means less reason to carry an injured 100 ERA+ guy at three times the league minimum.

And yet, again, it's $1.5 million, and most of that rotation overflow can be optioned to Triple-A. This is why David Forst gets the big bucks and I'm on my couch watching Stan Wawrinka while I scribble in vim.

Let me just ... this is rude, but like I said, I'm on my couch and it's 11pm and I'm feeling ornery. I hate the way injury information is reported. I think delving deeper into a player's injuries in the specific is kind of gross and weird and there's no reason fans have any right to know any of this. What's shared is, I think, already more than really needs to be shared; the model should probably be the minor leagues, where a lot of times there's no announcement, there's no discussion, there's just a guy on the disabled list instead of the active roster.

But given that we live in a world in which lots of injury information is disclosed and reported, I think we could be doing a lot better than reprinting press releases. Again, it's not about delving into the specifics for a particular guy; it's about contextualizing from past injury information and providing functional explanations of what was injured, how it was injured, what that injury means for baseball motion, how the rehab looks, etc. Beat writers have a lot on their plates, digital-driven deadlines, and no medical training, so I get why they're not doing this, but isn't it weird that since Will Carroll left us, there's nobody filling this gap? Say what you will about Carroll, but the man had comparables for days.

Seeing as how I'm not eager to volunteer for this duty, I'm probably being unfair and just whining about wanting all the things for free.

September 9, 2016 at 9:01 AM

If you want to know how Ryon Healy went from "maybe he could be a pinch-hitter?" to "every-day 2017 third baseman," Eno Sarris has got your back at FanGraphs with a look at his swing changes, including video, an interview with Healy, and the physics of it all.

September 6, 2016 at 9:55 PM

I've got ... well, no, Susan Slusser's got good news and bad news for you. The good news is that the A's don't have anything to play for in 2016, so every additional "he won't play again in 2016" piece of information that comes out neither adds nor subtracts anything from this year's bottom line. The bad news is that the players are playing for 2017 (and beyond) roster spots and salaries, and that being injured is shitty, and that for someone who wants to play baseball for a living, it's probably cold comfort that you get paid even if you're hurt because, well, you want to play baseball for a living. Plus, like I said: 2017.

So the latest 50-foot pile of garbage: Andrew Triggs and Henderson Alvarez are done for 2016.

This is particularly heartbreaking for Alvarez, who's spent all year trying to work his way back to build on the promise he showed in his All-Star 2014 season. Instead of that, even for a partial season, he may be facing more surgery, and he's definitely facing more rehab. The injuries hit for Alvarez before he reached free agency (and right as he hit arbitration eligibility), so he doesn't even have the comfort of having cashed in before it all went to hell. He's made just shy of $10 million in his career, so who knows, maybe even after taxes and agent fees, he could decide that another year of the pain and suffering of rehab isn't worth it, and he'll just retire to a life of careful leisure -- no big purchases, no wild investments, live off the interest, you know. But as I said at the top: baseball player! Not so many players get this far without some combination of love for the game and intense competitive instincts. Twenty-six leaves an awful lot of empty space, and there are only so many prestige TV dramas to catch up on. I try not to think about Mark Prior's desperate end, so instead I'll just root for Alvarez as hard as I can from here on out, regardless of where he signs for next season.

Triggs is hopefully a different story, in that he's having a back problem that, as Slusser says, was previously fixed in 2014 with a cortisone injection, and it's really just a timing issue that means that the same treatment doesn't make sense here on September 6. Triggs had himself a mini-breakout this year, pitching non-disastrously enough out of the bullpen that he was called to join the starting rotation on August 11. (He also made a three-inning start on June 18.) Over his four starts, not counting the final, abbreviated go that he left after one inning with the back issue that has now shut him down, he managed a 2.91 ERA, with 20 strikeouts and just one walk (plus one HBP) in almost 22 innings. The superficial signs of regression are there (.228 BABIP; just one homer allowed on 50 balls in the air), and while it's tempting to say that anyone can succeed in 20 big-league innings, that's not really true: any big-leaguer can succeed in 20 big-league innings, and some Quad-A players can too, but there's a suggestion here that the 19th-round pick might actually belong, if not as the next Justin Masterson exactly (and that's not faint praise; sure, he was only really good in 2011 and 2013, but he also made 184 big-league starts and 30 million big-league dollars), then not definitively as not the next Justin Masterson either. Here's hoping Triggs makes it back in 2017, because "who knows what he might be" is a damn sight better fate for a ballplayer than "we know exactly what he might be, and that's a Triple-A reliever."

September 6, 2016 at 9:22 AM

Here's Baseball Prospectus' scouting report on Jharel Cotton, who will start for the A's on Wednesday. From Wilson Karaman's write-up, you'll want to keep an eye on Cotton's delivery leading to command issues, and on whether he can succeed in the majors with only a mediocre curve by employing a changeup that can get to 70 on the scouting scale.

August 17, 2016 at 9:06 AM

If you want to know what Sean Manaea has been working on, in terms of his changeup grip and his breaking ball consistency, Eno, from the fourth paragraph on, has got you covered.

August 15, 2016 at 9:55 PM

Susan Slusser has some quotes with Coco Crisp, his agent, David Forst and Bob Melvin about the fact that, as we near the end of a season in which Crisp needs to play 130 games for his $13 million option to vest, and in which he has not yet been hurt, he is not playing at all against left-handed pitchers (Davis-Smolinski-Eibner has been the lineup against portsiders, though there have only been three of those since July 26) and he is not getting any "cheap" games off the bench by pinch-hitting or coming in late as a defensive replacement, pinch-runner, or what have you. Crisp has six games all year off the bench, and the last one was on June 15.

Morally and ethically, there are two tacks we can take as fans. We can note that Crisp is not a $13 million player any longer, that nobody would pay him that sum as a free agent, even on a one-year deal, this coming offseason, and that the A's of all teams can ill afford to pay $13 million to a player who won't provide that amount of value in on-field production. We can therefore be happy that those funds will be allocated in 2017 to players who will contribute more on the field than Crisp will and that the A's will thereby win more baseball games, which is what we hope for. We can note that he hardly played last season because of injuries.

Alternatively, we can say, as Crisp did, that the point of the 130-game marker in the option was to mitigate the risk of Crisp being hurt, and to, in a sense, reward Crisp if he was healthy enough to play that number of games and good enough to be in the lineup. We can therefore conclude that the A's dicking around with his playing time is taking $13 million out of the pocket of someone who's done everything in his power to earn that $13 million, and that generally we don't look kindly on people not receiving money they've earned. We can point out that the A's participated in the drafting of the option as an either-or proposition such that it is partially irrelevant how many games Crisp played in 2015.

You know where I'm going to fall on this. I'd like to hope that you fall on Crisp's side as well. Watching a team that wins baseball games is fun, sure, and we invest ourselves in these sports teams in the hopes that they'll give us whatever little chemical rushes we get in our brains when they emerge victorious. But how can wins and losses in a game possibly compare to the basic question of did this person get paid what they earned? We go to the park to have fun; Coco Crisp goes to the park to earn his living. The size of that living is immaterial, and the size of the living he's earned prior to 2016 is just as much so. If he's done what he needs to do under the terms of the contract to continue earning that living in 2017, we simply do not get to live with ourselves rooting for our team to sit him down so that our team can win a few more games next year.

I'm speaking in a certain amount of abstraction here because I want to talk about the principles and ideals by which we should evaluate this situation. The actual evaluation is yet to be litigated, and the contentions on both sides are myriad. Would Crisp even be in a position to approach 130 games if the A's hadn't so carefully managed his playing time all year? Has Crisp actually earned additional outfield starts in August when Khris Davis, Danny Valencia, Billy Butler and Jake Smolinski are all outhitting him? And when Crisp doesn't really have the defensive chops anymore to make up that difference? And when he's only 7-of-11 on the year stealing?

But on his side, isn't it weird that he never pinch-hits for Smolinski against a right-handed pitcher or comes in on defense for Valencia? Doesn't that fail the sniff test, and thereby call into doubt the other explanations? If the A's are really into the "gotta evaluate the kids" portion of the year, then why does Khris Davis, who is under team control and about whom everything is already known, start all but one game in July and August? Where's Yonder Alonso's rest in favor of Valencia or Max Muncy, with Tyler Ladendorf getting more time all over the field?

How do you balance those arguments? Who wins? I don't know. I don't know who's got the better of it, but I do know that we need to be asking the questions, and that Crisp is 100 percent in the right to be asking those questions, and that the MLBPA would be 100 percent in the right if it takes a hard look here and maybe even files a grievance.

I think, just as a final point, it's important to remember that contract law has the notion of the "implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing." I don't know whether the A's have breached that covenant, and I frankly don't do enough naked contract law to talk about the particulars and boundaries, but I did want to flag that it's lurking out there, inexorably, so that even if you don't agree with my moral/ethical stance as laid out above, you'll have to face the fact that, contractually, the A's can't move the chess pieces around to their heart's content; they have, instead, a requirement to, basically, uphold the spirit of the deal, and to treat Crisp fairly, not taking advantage of every little opportunity to avoid their obligations under the contract.

Maybe this will all moot itself by Crisp reaching 130 games played, and the A's will just pay up and use Crisp as a fifth outfielder next year. I can't imagine things working out that happily, though, so I suspect this battle will keep raging right on through the next six weeks and then maybe into the offseason, a grievance, a settlement, etc. etc. etc. And then we'll all move on except that the billionaires will find a new way to screw the players and we'll put ourselves through these contortions yet again. And then after that. And after that. Ad nauseam.

Frankly,

me: i dont even care if they cancel sports
howard stern: Thats wild

— wint (@dril) April 25, 2014

August 13, 2016 at 10:12 PM

Andrew Bailey has signed a minor-league deal with the Angels. You probably know about the injured mess he's been since the A's traded him away in the Josh Reddick deal, but he actually looked like he might be making it back this year, hitting the Phillies' Opening Day roster after coming to camp as a non-roster invite, but while he struck out over a man per inning, he also gave up a bunch of dingers, pushing him to 17 allowed in 85 MLB innings since 2012, and the Phillies designated him for assignment on August 2 and released him on August 6. He was designated so the Phillies could call up Luis Garcia, who was literally a barber, so who knows what the future holds for the former Rookie of the Year.

August 11, 2016 at 9:44 PM

Susan Slusser's got some injury notes, including good news that Jesse Hahn looks on track to be back at the minimum, around August 20. For a team that has had games started by Andrew Triggs, Zach Neal, and Ross Detwiler the last three days, even someone who's struggled as Hahn has this year should be a welcome sight.

Slusser also notes that Sean Doolittle should make it back at some point, which is great just from a sort of fan perspective. Obviously late-game options aren't a big deal on a losing team, but Doolittle is a bright spot in terms of the at-home experience, sitting on the couch. I'd like to see him back.

On the other hand, Bob Melvin's comment about Henderson Alvarez seems about as close to me to saying "there's no way he pitches this year" as he could say without actually saying that. "I've got my fingers crossed" isn't really a thing you hear management say when they're actually planning on seeing someone pitch.

August 2, 2016 at 8:20 PM

Susan Slusser tells us that Jesse Hahn will come up to pitch Thursday in Rich Hill's vacated rotation spot. It was, not just in retrospect but also yesterday, the obvious move, not only because Daniel Mengden was too recently optioned to come back but also because Daniel Mengden might not have enough control to be a major-league starter. Maybe it would have been fun to see Raul Alcantara get a shot, but he only just got called up to Nashville at the end of July, and he didn't get there by pitching lights-out at Midland. And then there's Jharel Cotton ... and, well, I don't have a great reason why they couldn't just call him up. MLB service time, I guess, putting him a step closer to free agency than they need to put him, but you know how I feel about that kind of consideration, lost season or no.

July 20, 2016 at 9:40 PM

Baseball America's roundup of transaction notes that the A's released Carson Blair last week. Blair got into 11 games for the A's last year, which puts him way over the median for a 35th-round pick. He's still only 26, and he's a catcher, so he can probably hang around for a while bouncing around and backing up in the minors if that's the life he wants to live.

In his honor, let's do some draft fun facts:

• Despite being the last pick in his round, he's the only 2008 35th-rounder to make the majors;
• No 35th-rounders from any subsequent drafts have made the majors, not counting players who didn't sign and who were drafted again in subsequent years;
• Remember A's reliever TJ Mathews? He was drafted in the 35th round in 1990, didn't sign, then went in the 36th round two years later.

Here's the list of major-league 35th-rounders from prior years:

• Michael Blazek, 2007, current mediocre Brewers reliever;
• Antoan Richardson, 2005, outfielder with 21 plate appearances across 2011 and 2014;
• Drew Macias (real name: Andres Apolonia Macias), 2002, outfielder with 115 PAs from 2007-09;
• Darren Clarke, 2000, 1 1/3 innings in 2007 with the Rockies;
• Dusty Brown, 2000, 46 PA as a catcher from 2009-11, and one appearance as a pitcher;
• Cal Pickering, 1995, 264 PAs at first and DH from 1998-2005, and a 96 OPS+;
• Brad Holman, 1990, 36 1/3 innings out of the bullpen for the Mariners in 1993, and three saves, with a 119 ERA+;
• Hilly Hathaway (real name: Hillary Houston Hathaway), 1989, 63 innings in 12 starts from 1992-93, with 12 strikeouts;
• Steve Cooke, 1989, 549 2/3 innings from 1992-98, mostly as a starting pitcher for the Pirates; one third-place vote for Rookie of the Year in 1993, and a career 97 ERA+;
• Hector Ortiz, 1988, 284 PAs from 1998-2002 as a catcher;
• Jimmy Myers, 1987, 14 innings out of the bullpen in 1996;
• Steve Hovley, 1966, 1,152 PAs from 1969-73 as an outfielder; and
• Don Shaw, 1965, 188 1/3 innings from 1967-72 as a reliever (one start).

So that's the whole list: 14 major-leaguers who were drafted in (and signed out of) the 35th round. Putting them in loose order of impressiveness of career, I'd say it looks something like: Cooke, Hovley, Shaw, Hathaway, Blazek, Pickering, Holman, Ortiz, Macias, Brown, Myers, Blair, Richardson. You could flip-flop Blair and Richardson if you want on the basis of the fact that the latter hung around long enough to get two different stints in the majors. Blair's still got time to solidify 12th place, though, and even to move up to the top 10, though I can't imagine him surpassing Ortiz's 284 plate appearances over a five-year period.

Blair is the best 1,072nd pick of all time, though, and the best player out of Liberty Christian School in Argyle, Texas, the latter being a lovely Fort Worth suburb of 3,000 souls.

July 19, 2016 at 10:24 PM

Yonder Alonso has hit better in the last month or so than he hit to start the year. This prompted a Susan Slusser comparison to Mark Kotsay, who came over from the Padres in a trade over a decade ago and started slow.

The note is just about hitting, so this isn't a criticism of Slusser, but I think it's important to note that Kotsay was at the time a good defensive center fielder and thus didn't even need to hit all that well to deserve his spot in the starting lineup. Alonso is also a slick defender, but it's at first base, a position where teams also play Mike Piazza and Danny Valencia when they're out of other ideas.

July 17, 2016 at 11:17 PM

Michael Baumann's essay on Rich Hill at The Ringer is worth a moment of your time. Or eight moments, if Medium's little tool at the top that tells you how long a story is works right. (It doesn't; it just makes you feel bad no matter whether you read something faster or slower than the time allotted by the tool. What's wrong with a good old-fashioned word count, anyway?)