Loaiza to the A’s
You can cross one part of my offseason plan off the list. The A’s today signed Esteban Loaiza to a 3 year deal with a team option for a fourth believed to be worth $21 million guaranteed with possible total value of $30 million.
I suggested signing Loaiza for 3 years, $18 million, and that’s pretty darn close to what he got. I definitely would have gone 3/21, and it’s a very good signing for the A’s. I have to believe this means Barry Zito is going to be traded, meaning Beane decided he’d rather have Loaiza and what he gets for Zito for the same price as he could have kept Barry. And, considering that the market for Zito is going to be absurd, I think he’s absolutely right.
Yet another good move by the A’s. Shocking, I know.
Comments
176 Responses to “Loaiza to the A’s”
So if the M’s were above average by defensive efficiency, but below average according to THT’s metric, what does that say about the balls in play that the M’s pitchers were giving up? Were they giving up more easily-caught pop flies than line drives? That’s not exactly what I had expected, given our pitching last year.
I find the Byrd argument to be pretty humorous…not because Dave’s sassy critique of him tonight is wrong but because the M’s currently only have ONE arm in their rotation. When that’s the case, you cant pass on everyone! Is he perfect? Nope. Is he a guy that could be expected to give you somewhere around 200 innings to the tune of an ERA around fourish for somewhere around 5-6 mill a year? Yes.
Overpay a little for a guy like Byrd, target a cheap arm like Trachsel (similar potential production as Byrd) via trade then use some jack to overpay J. Jones for his defense. Perhaps resign moyer and hope Pineiro gets right. Its a decent compromise..decent starting pitching with a solid bullpen in front of what ought to be pretty darn good defense. Hopefilly jojima’s bat transitions well and the baby bats in the lineup grow up a bit.
Truthfully, the one stud worth the big overpay is Burnett basically because of his potential. Most everyone else this year is similar to Byrd. Pooh pooh them if you feel like it, but what choice do you have in the end? Well the M’s do have a choice-Meche/Franklin/Foppert.
While its difficult for me to believe the M’s can challenge the A’s next season, I do think they can challenge 85 wins with the arms above if things break right. Id be interested enough to watch that.
Given the crazy contracts given to Wagner and Ryan, that makes Eddie look like a bargain. For now, let’s give the Ms credit for retaining Eddie. And it will be really interesting to see if our Proven Closer remains an M past next week.
Dave,
I’ve read most of the HR allowed pieces you mention, and seen some similar figures for year-to-year correlation of HR rates (the ones I saw were from Dan Fox, and were a bit higher, but the point is very much the same). However, let’s not go overboard here – it could be that some pitchers have more of an ability to keep fly balls in the park than others. After all, the correlation is higher for HR allowed than it is for BABIP, and we all know about the certain, limited exceptions to the randomness of BABIP (the Wakefield Exception- sounds like a Ludlum book).
THT looked at a number of pitchers with exceptional HR allowed in 2004, and talked about how each was in for some serious regression to the mean. For the most part, this was true – people like Greg Maddux did bounce back to a degree. But others, like Erik Bedard and Giovanni Carrara, maintained quite low HR rates despite fly ball tendencies. Most striking was Joe Nathan, an extreme FB pitcher, who’s maintained a very low HR rate 3 years in a row pitching indoors.
I’m not saying that HR rate is a ‘skill’ – and yes, Van seemed to be coming dangerously close to that. But we need to find out more about pitchers who seem to be able to control HR in the face of FB tendencies. Weird.
It seems intuitive that fly ball pitchers generally have no control over whether a ball stays in the park or not. In general, its more likely that a fly ball will be hit out of the park than an ground ball. 😛
#154: … we all know about the certain, limited exceptions to the randomness of BABIP
Eric Van sounds less convinced that the exceptions to BABIP randomness are so limited. Is the consensus in the sabermetric community evolving in that direction?
I hate to admit it, but based on the crazy FA pitching signings, Kevin Brown is starting to look like a good dumpster dive candidate right about now…
“In hind site” (69)- Most readers of USS MARINER tend to ignore spelling and punctuation errors, and most errors in usage, but sometimes–especially with homonym errors–quipping becomes too hard to resist.
Paul Below, where are you when we need you?
Isn’t Brown’s agent Scott Boras? This means, we’ll have to wait until Boras deals with his bigger clients and you’ve got quite the stickler when it comes to money on getting Brown.
Correct me if Im wrong about defensive metrics (im still on thelearning curve) but arent any balls hit into the air considered flyballs? Im curious because a lousy rotation could make your defense look worse than it is by giving up line drives which as we all know are more likely to be hits.
Nonetheless, the M’s may have had an average defense during part of last year but that was mostly corrected by the All star break and with the insertion of Bettie at short. Right now it looks like the only soft spots are left field (average at best) and second base (adequate at best) and of course the rotation.
Im not convinced that signing J. Jones simply for his glove will have a dramatic impact upon the pitching staff. I understand the argument but the M’s defense at the end of last season would be pretty hard to upgrade. Jojima wont be a signifincat improvement over Yorvit in that regard either. I think the best way to make the M’s pitching staff better is to get better pitchers in this circumstance.
I’m not saying that HR rate is a ’skill’ – and yes, Van seemed to be coming dangerously close to that. But we need to find out more about pitchers who seem to be able to control HR in the face of FB tendencies. Weird.
Sure, there may be a few players who break the rule. In fact, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean you ignore the rule. You just live with the fact that there are a few exceptions and go from there.
And, for what its worth, there’s no reason to think Paul Byrd is one of these exceptions.
speaking of Oakland prospects, A.J. Hinch was just named the D’backs’ manager of minor league operations…
Personally, I’d rather the M’s take a risk on a pitcher with good SO and BB rates in the past, i.e. Brown or Loaiza or even Morris, than go in search of pitchers who might be exceptions to the rule on HR and BABIP rates, like Byrd or Washburn.
Brown! Brown! Brown! Brown! Brown!
Think of all the UPS advertising money…
#163 Good point.
Also Mulder, Hudson, and Zito all are or have been above average pitchers, but I feel like their has never been such an overrated trio. Zito has never had a BB rate less than 3.0, and none of then really strike that many batters out any more. The best attribute to Hudson and Mulder now is their groundball tendencies. I wonder how much they cumulatively beat their fielding independant ERA’s and other such normalizing ERA metric while they were in Oakland.
FWIW, SO and BB rates for the five pitchers last 4 seasons based on translated stats.
Paul Byrd 4.5/1.2 = 3.8 K:BB
Kevin Brown: 6.5/2.1 = 3.1 K:BB
Esteban Loiaza 6.5/2.2 = 3.0 K:BB
Matt Morris 5.5/1.9 = 2.9 K:BB
Jarrod Washburn 5.0/2.3 = 2.2 K:BB
“Also, Tim Hudson, had a 4.32 Fielding Independant ERA last year, good for 35th best in the National League among the 48 pitchers who qualified for the ERA title. Hudson was a league average pitcher in 2005”
Yet, your Run Values post just below, “By evaluating batted ball type rather than outcome, we’re evaluating more what the pitcher could control and less what is influenced by his fielders.” lists Hudson as about the 17th or so best in the entire ML. So what’s his true value?
Yet, your Run Values post just below, “By evaluating batted ball type rather than outcome, we’re evaluating more what the pitcher could control and less what is influenced by his fielders.†lists Hudson as about the 17th or so best in the entire ML. So what’s his true value?
The list in the run values post is just a toy, and I stated as much. By adding numbers together that don’t have the same value, the toy assumes that all the events are equal, which, of course, they aren’t.
FIP is a great tool. The list I threw at the bottom of that post was just something I was playing around with, and I posted it because I liked that Felix came out #1. I didn’t expect anyone to take it very seriously, considering Derek Lowe was rated as the #5 pitcher in baseball by that metric.
Neyer wasn’t a fan of the A’s signing Loaiza. Normally he’s a Beane apologist (not that one needs much help doing that.)
He is also seemingly getting dumber each week, though.
For the record, don’t take my caveat to the HR allowed is not a skill rule as some sort of pitch for Paul Byrd or Jarrod Washburn. That’s silly. It was a general point that didn’t touch on anyone the M’s are considering (that I know of).
Whereas the M’s once had a historically great OF defense and the perfect park to exploit that comparative advantage, they should now be looking for GB machines….
Because Ichiro and Reed are not good defensive OFers anymore??
What do these two things have in common?
1) ESPN.com
2) Valuable baseball information
Nothing at all.
171 –
Because their comparative advantage is clearly infield defense these days. And Reed is a good OF defender, but he’s nowhere near Cameron. When the M’s had Cameron/Winn/Ichiro, THEN they could offer FB pitchers an easy way to trim their ERAs. Now, not so much. But I’d love to see what a true GB pitcher could do w/Beltre, Betancourt, Lopez behind him.
171/173 — Especially with left field still being relatively unsettled.
Agreed. As long as there’s a chance that we’ll run Morse or Ibanez out there, we can’t claim to have a good outfield defense.
From CNNSI’s rumor mill:
A little birdie says the Kansas City Royals have offered Twins free-agent outfielder Jacque Jones a $24 million, four-year contract.
— St. Paul Pioneer Press
Yeah, it’s KC, but it’s hard to imagine Jones signing a two-year deal at this point. Even three years should be a deal-breaker, and so I expect (hope AND regret?) that’s another item off the list.