Another Way This is a New Era in Baseball

The Houston Astros are the runaway best team in the American League this year. They clinched their division in February* behind the league's best hitting, top three baserunning, sixth best pitching and middle of the pack defense.

*Caution:  may be slightly hyperbolic.

Their avalanche of offense has six regulars sporting WAR of 2.0 or more, best in the majors by far.

Yet when Houston brass tinkered around the edges at the trade deadline, landing just left-handed bullpen piece Francisco Liriano, many 'Stros' fans were disappointed. Staff ace Dallas Keuchel spoke for many of them.

"I'm not going to lie. Disappointment is a little bit of an understatement."

What's going on here? We would never have heard this 10 years ago or probably not even five. Fans of the team with the best record and a 14-game division lead would be psyched about the approaching playoffs.

But at some point, teams realized that Billy Beane was right: "My shit doesn't work in the playoffs." And now we have a new game.

Front offices unbound from the old playoff traditions started recognizing that some of the elements of success during the marathon regular season -- a deep rotation and a solid closer -- were the wrong concoction for the sprint of the post-season. Once they determined that the key to playoff success is three aces and a stacked, two-handed bullpen, they started turning the non-waiver trade deadline into Relieverfest.


You may have noticed that the flow of everyday players during this year's dealmaking was a trickle. J.D. Martinez was the only significant hitter (unless you're counting Lucas Duda) to change hands. But a flurry of flamethrowers, both in the rotation and the pen, changed uniforms, many at high cost.

After the Yankees nabbed Sonny Gray, the Dodgers picked up Yu Darvish and the Cubs swapped for Jose Quintana, the parade of bullpen moves took off. Tommy Kahnle and David Robertson headed to the Bronx. Ryan Madson, Sean Doolittle and Brandon Kitzler joined Washington. Milwaukee added Anthony Swarzack and Cleveland claimed Joe Smith. Addison Reed joined the Red Sox and Justin Wilson, the Cubs. And so on.

Today, there are two parts to the baseball campaign: the regular season and the post-season. A team's first goal is punch its ticket to the post-season. Once there, the fourth and fifth starters lose their relevance as the best pitchers take all the starts. Meanwhile, as managers aim for every 1% advantage in short series, bullpens pitch an average of nearly four of the nine innings per game.

Don Larsen would have come out after the sixth.

The trend began slowly with the 2001 Diamondbacks, who rode Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling to the title. But it really took off after the 2015 Royals won the World Series behind a mediocre starting staff and a trio of bb-throwers out of the pen.

Combine the two and you get today's situation, which appears to be only the front end of an increasing trend.

This may be the new normal. The best teams win their divisions with five starters of diminishing quality and a recognizable bullpen while targeting a couple of aces and bevy of relievers stashed during the season on weaker teams. And if that's the formula, the Houston Astros may find themselves, after bowing out in the playoffs, quoting Mr. Beane.

An Epoch Ended in 2012 and We Might Not Have Noticed

In 2009, with the sting of the Killer Bees a mere pinprick and Roy Oswalt three years from MLB irrelevance, Astros GM Ed Wade signed a pair of middle relievers to hefty contracts and horded his aging stars in an effort to ... well ...field a respectable team, but not a contender. Predictably, the Farm atrophied and the team finished a combined 79 games under .500 from 2007-2011. When new ownership bought out the regrettable Drayton MacLane, nanoseconds passed before Wade was mercifully jettisoned.

And with Wade, went an epoch, never to be seen again.

Starting in 2012, God has bestowed the general manager position upon no more dolts or Luddites unable to discern what every other GM understands. There exists in 2016, no general manager, or VP of Baseball Operations, upon whom opposing clubs can giddily dump their problems. No one is as patently without a clue as Ed Wade anymore.

Every club in Major League Baseball employs an analytical department that complements the scouting department with statistical analysis, psychological profiling and who knows what else. There is no one left to get fleeced of, for example, a low batting average/high on base guy, because every team understands his value.

And the days when front offices debated the value of analytics is long gone. Every front office appreciates the competitive disadvantage attendant to knowing less than what a dozen websites (one one third-rate blogger from Charleston) know about players' true value. 

A decade ago, I could wring a column a week out of reviewing major transactions and identifying the patent lunacy of half of them. Signing a player after a good season without accounting for his ridiculously high BABIP. Valuing a pitcher with a nominally good W-L record without accounting for the conditions under which his team won. Spending money on declining veterans when it's time for a rebuild. And so on.

It just doesn't happen anymore.

Ironically, the last obviously head-scratching trade was made by the Grand Wizard of analytics himself, the guy who made his name bamboozling his counterparts a decade ago. Last winter, Billy Beane flipped star third-sacker Josh Donaldson, a seven-win player with five tools, for three-win third baseman Brett Lawrie and some spare parts.

All Donaldson did was win the MVP Award for a nine-win season in which he paced the league in total bases, runs scored, and RBIs while slugging 41 homers and 43 doubles/triples for Toronto while Lawrie backslid a win.

But even then, there might be extenuating circumstances. Lawrie is four years younger and can play other infield positions. Two nearly Major League-ready hurlers accompanied him to Oakland. And there were reports that Beane and Donaldson weren't gracefully co-existing.

The point is, the days of the doofus GM are over. Now even Billy Beane can get jobbed. And all I got out of it is one column.

Buying and Selling at the Trade Deadline

It's that time of year when Major League teams are compelled to decide whether they're contenders or pretenders, and therefore, buyers or sellers in the non-waiver trade market. At least that's the prevailing wisdom. But not all contenders should be renting expensive properties in exchange for long-term investments, and not all bottom feeders should be swapping out their best players.

Let's take a look at some of the most intriguing teams.

First, let's speak truth to power pitching. If anyone thought the Reds were a serious contender this year after trading Alfredo Simon and Mat Latos in the off-season they were smoking more than pork. Likewise, the team is not going to contend for Johnny Cueto's continued services after this season. They should jettison their oft-injured stud starter and concentrate on signing Mike Leake and developing some talent for the future.

Speaking of power pitching, there are the Mets. Their management is smart enough to know that  the playoffs are beyond their reach in 2015. But with their bevy of young rotation pieces they have the bulwark of a future contender. Flipping young talent for a veteran rental would be lunacy, but if the Mets could dangle some excess farm arms to obtain a Major League bat, they would be a force to reckon with starting in 2016.

The Astros are for real in 2015 and beyond, but they're another team that should not sacrifice the future for some veteran bottled lightning. The youngest team in MLB, Houston should stick with the plan, and if this year doesn't pan out, it wasn't supposed to anyway.

It's a different story for the Dodgers and Nationals. Their future is now, but L.A. needs some rotational help and Washington needs a bat. They should be willing to pull the trigger on a potential-for-present value deal. The Dodgers need help after Kershaw and Greinke; the Nats are so weak at the plate that Dan Uggla has found employment with them.

If the Rockies have visions of a playoff berth anytime between now and 2021, they'd be idiots to trade Troy Tulowitzki. Tulo is signed for six years, so exporting him, as rumors suggest, means they don't believe they're contenders anytime in the next half dozen seasons. Unless they know something about him that diminishes his value (he's hitting .319 with good defense this year) they should build around him.

The Brewers are a dumpster fire, poisoned by the bad karma of Ryan Braun's return (and possibly a complete lack of pitching.) Third baseman Aramis Ramirez, starter Kyle Lohse and reliever Jonathan Broxton will be seeking the highest bidder come October. They aren't much, but they could bring back something, which is more than Milwaukee has now.

The Blue Jays went all in for this year and now find themselves among the AL East muddle, thanks to the best offense in baseball. With Mark Buehrle, R.A. Dickey and Jose Bautista on expiring contracts, Toronto needs to fill holes ASAP. They should do whatever it takes to stop the bleeding at closer and get another rotational arm.

The Padres are the 2015 version of the 2013 Blue Jays, 2012 Marlins, 2011 Brewers. They created a window of opportunity and threw all the assets they could find in the house. It worked for Milwaukee, who won 96 games that year, but crashed in Miami and Toronto. It's come up snake eyes so far in San Diego, and it might be time to make some adjustments. Does A.J. Preller double down, pull the plug or tweak? There aren't any minor league assets to swap, so further investment in the present is unlikely. The Pads may have to ride out the season and see what develops.

The A's were an off-season mystery and have continued their whodunit ways. They've outscored opponents by 50 runs and have the league's second worst record. The supporting data suggests a bounce back, but even if life worked that way they have a lot of ground to make up. Billy Beane is just the man for that job.

Braves announcers talk as if Atlanta is in a Wild Card chase. Puh-leeze. When two games under .500 is a pleasant surprise you know October will be vacation time. GM John Hart has his eyes set on 2017 and the players to make it work. Don't expect him to lift a finger.

The Marlins made bizarre noises about a playoff run this year when they picked up Dan Haren, who has delivered, and Mat Latos, who hasn't. With a juvenile roster featuring Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Fernandez, Christian Yelich and Adeiny Hechavarria, Miami will improve with some seasoning. If they can get anything for the two veteran hurlers fine; if not, they should carry on. I'd keep Ichiro around to show the youngsters what preparation means.

And then there are the Phillies. They should sell everything not nailed down, including the rotting remains of Ryan Howard's gargantuan contract, the Gatorade dispenser, the final days of Ruben Amaro, Jr.'s tenure as GM  and next week's clubhouse buffet. The problem is, recompense would flow away from Philadelphia to unload everything there but the food. On the other hand, Cole Hamels and Jonathan Papelbon have some value. They need to get something for those guys because the Phils' next meaningful game will not be during Barak Obama's presidency.

One of MLB's Best Players Has Been Traded

What do you think of this player:

In his six full seasons starting in '09, he's batted .270, hit 16 homers and swiped 16 bags in 21 tries per annum. A good hitter but not Mike Trout, right?

A switch hitter, he sports an .801 OPS, 23% above league average, thanks mostly to 84 walks and 40 doubles/triples a year. Getting better, right?

And now the big reveal: He's a second baseman.

With a golden glove.

And he's a right fielder too.

And a shortstop.

And in a pinch, a left fielder, center fielder, DH and first baseman.

And that's why Ben Zobrist is one of the best players in baseball, and one of the least well-known. He's the kind of practitioner whose reputation is a pale shadow of his real value because he doesn't do the showy things we look at -- slug 40 home runs, collect RBIs, steal 80 bases, bat .300. What he does do is often overlooked -- piles up doubles and triples, works the count (fourth most pitches seen last season) and accepts free passes, offers his manager positional flexibility, flashes leather without the flash, leaves the yard or thieves a bag just often enough to cause the opposition stress.

In his career, Zobrist has handled duties 547 times at the keystone, 331 times in the right corner, 229 times at short, 66 times in left, 34 in center and a smattering elsewhere. The value of the flexibility he provides his manager doesn't show up even in the sabermetric stats. Other than catcher, pitcher and third, Zobrist is ready, willing and able.

Like, really, really able. He's averaged 6.2 wins against replacement -- that's solidly All-Star material -- for six seasons with Tampa.

And now he'll play for Oakland, who traded John Jaso and prospects (including Herschel "Boog" Powell, a low-minors on-base machine at age 21) to snag Zobrist and shortstop Yunel Escobar.

Why would a savvy franchise give up on Zobrist? Because he's 33 and eligible for free agency after this coming season, and because his WAR has declined from 8.7 to 5.7 to 4.8 to 5.0 over the last four seasons. That's still high quality, and suggests plenty more the next few years, but the vector is concerning.

Zobrist is one cog in a package of swaps by Billy Beane that revamped the A's in a zigzag pattern, which appears, on balance, to have added some youth, slashed some payroll and stripped some talent from the club, at least in 2015. But if Oakland fails to make the playoffs it probably won't be Ben Zobrist's fault.

Beane Ball: Do the Opposite of What Billy Beane Would Do

There's a new general manager in Oakland. He is Not-Billy Beane.

The actual Beane, he of Moneyball fame, the first of the sabermetric-inclined GMs; the savant whose early trades humiliated his trade partners; the first to recognize the power of on-base percentage, the fungibility of closers and the real value of managers; the ex-prospect who assembled one playoff team after another without a payroll, a stadium or a fan base; that Billy Beane would never swap a young stud like Yoenis Cespedes for a two-month pitching rental, even of the Jon Lester variety.

That Billy Beane takes the long view, cobbles offensive machines out of platoons and role players, inks low-cost, high-value free agents and recycles young arms. He wins division after division after division -- seven playoff teams in the last 14 years.

And then -- disappointment. His teams have succumbed in the division series six times, each of them in the final game. In several of those series the A's led two games to none and then got swept. And in the one league championship series of Beane's reign, the A's were tomahawked out without a win.

Beane famously said "my shit doesn't work in the playoffs," and yesterday Not-Billy Beane went about proving that he believed it. Blessed with his best team in years, a squad leading baseball in runs scored, fewest runs allowed and the best record in the game, Not-Billy Beane did what Billy Beane would never do.

First, a month ago, he swapped a pair of promising minor leaguers for two good but not great Cubs' pitchers. Then yesterday he relinquished his five-tool outfielder for a two-month Jon Lester rental. 

Except it's not the two months that Not-Billy Beane needs Lester for. The A's know perfectly well how to win in August and September without high-cost rentals like Jon Lester whom Oakland will never be able to re-sign.  

Not-Billy signed Lester for the 19 games of October that really count. Not-Billy realizes that all there is no finger hardware for division titles. There are no t-shirt sales proclaiming the team Division Champions. No documentaries, no parades and no delirium in the streets. They require a World Championship.

So Not-Billy brought in Jon Lester and Jeff Samardzija to supplement Sonny Gray and Scott Kazmir for those five- and seven-game series that have formed the bulwark against Beane's World Series quest. Come Games Three and Four of the ALDS, Beane won't be outmatched on the mound against anyone. The same thing in Games Four through Seven of the ALCS and World Series.

Over the years, we've seen Billy Beane change his strategy numerous time from focusing on OBP to defense to BABIP en route to accomplishments well beyond his revenue stream. Today we're seeing Beane change his fundamental principles. We'll find out soon whether Not-Billy Beane fares any better.

Depth: The New Inefficiency

Last season, the New York Yankees roster went on the disabled list.  In the absence of players like Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixeira, the Bombers plugged in whatever they could rummage from the junkyard -- Jason Nix, Eduardo Nunez, Lyle Overbay, Travis Hafner and a cast of thousands who contributed even less. The result was their second playoff absence since 1995.

Meanwhile, the talent-challenged Rays and A's made the playoffs, winning 92 and 96 games respectively. The Athletics featured one star -- the hitherto unknown third baseman Josh Donaldson -- and no one else who either batted over .300 or socked more than 30 homers. On the mound, Bartolo Colon shocked the league with an 18-6, 2.65 record, but you'd be forgiven if you never heard of the rest of the staff.

So how did Oakland win the West? How about this: seven of nine regulars posted an above average OPS, and all nine cleared 90% of league average. Another five backups with 100+ at bats contributed likewise. On the hill, the A's threw six quality arms at the league, the worst of whom was Tommy Milone, 12-9, 4.14 with a K/BB rate over three. The bullpen chipped in well-distributed excellence, with seven above-average pitchers finishing more than 10 games each.

It wasn't just the numbers on the bench. Skipper Bob Melvin slotted 18 different players into the DH role over the 162 games, using it to maximize lefty-righty and offense-defense match-ups. Four catchers shared shin guard duty -- Derek Norris, utility man John Jaso and Kurt Suzuki for their hitting skills and Stephen Vogt for his defense.

This year, Billy Beane inked four solid relievers to longish-term deals, a rarity in MLB and certainly in Oakland. The lead the AL in scoring and in ERA; following a four-game skid they remain atop the AL West.

For a couple of years after Moneyball spilled Beane's beans, the A's lost a bit of their edge. But he has found new inefficiencies to exploit and has Oakland poised to ride their embarrassingly low payroll to a third straight West Division title. And it's easy to see what the inefficiency is.

While the Yankees were reacting to inevitable injuries on their geriatric roster, the A's prepared for it by inking average players to moderate paydays and scattering them around the diamond. The result is a catching platoon of Derek Norris and John Jaso that has limited their plate appearances to opposite-handed starters. Combined they are hitting .302/.397/.482 and earning $2.8 million.

Just three of the A's 13 moundsmen earn more than $800,000 -- closer Jim Johnson, set-up man Luke Gregerson and starter Scott Kazmir. Hitting star Donaldson, still under team control, takes home half-a-million bucks. It's as if the A's, unable to afford George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, entice Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson to act in their movie for scale, and then ink Annette Benning, Robert Downey, Jr. and Maggie Smith to low-dough deals with the promise of juicy roles. 

It's working, and as soon as the rest of baseball figures it out, Oakland and Tampa will be on to something else.

The End of Moneyball

I remember reading the seminal book Moneyball and wondering to myself, why is Billy Beane letting Michael Lewis spill all his secrets? Beane had created a juggernaut in Oakland from 1999-2006 with a payroll that could hide in CC Sabathia's shadow. He had done so by exploiting inefficiencies in the baseball marketplace.

Beane had determined that other teams were overvaluing batting average and paying little attention to on base percentage, so he signed unwanted walking machines like Matt Stairs for pennies on the dollar. 

He discovered that any decent pitcher with some moxie and reasonable righty-lefty splits could get three outs in the ninth, but that other GMs still drooled over saves. So he let his hard-throwing closer rack up saves, traded him for good young players, and then plugged in the next guy. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. 

Beane recognized that the on-field manager isn't a field general; he's a squad captain with good personal skills. So he told his manager, Art Howe, who to play and how much. When Howe sought genius money after leading the As to the playoffs, Beane let the Mets pay it and hired another middle manager.

He realized that the best predictor of a pitcher's future success was his college baseball aptitude, not his build, or his athleticism or the speed of his pitches or other mysterious elements.So he avoided drafting high school pitchers, who had a very high bust rate.

Beane knew that buying baseball players on the free market could sink a low-income franchise if they didn't pan out. At the same time, players' salaries are immune to free market forces in their first four years in the Majors, and then are still undervalued through arbitration in years 4-6. (On average, players can expect to earn 40% of their free market value through arbitration in year four, 60% in year five and 80% in year six.) So he milked the core of his team --Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito -- until just before free agency, when he traded each of them for a shower of good, young, underpaid performers. This effort provided the A's with Rich Harden, Dan Haren, Joe Blanton and Justin Duchscherer, among others, while only Hudson of the original trio has come within an elephant's butt of delivering value to his new team.

Since Beane's success depended on suckering fellow GMs, why on earth would he let someone publish his strategies? The answer, it turns out, was that other teams were on to Oakland by 2003 and were eliminating those market inefficiencies. In fact, the A's shortly thereafter turned away from OBP and began stressing defense as the next undervalued commodity.

By 2007 or 2008, whatever market inefficiencies existed were difficult to find and hardly worth exploiting. Baseball fans and sportswriters may not accept the conclusions of new baseball research, but all 30 franchises have and they are toiling diligently to develop their own, proprietary insights. Billy Beane's big advantage is gone.

The result, in case you haven't noticed, is that the A's are simply a low-budget team with predictable results -- between 10 and 12 games below .500 each of the last three years. Even if they squeeze value out of players now, with their lowest-in-the-league $57 million payroll (the Yankees are somewhere around $210 million), getting a lot for their money still leaves them under .500. To wit: the A's signed Kevin Kouzmanoff to staff the hot corner this year for $3.1 million, roughly one-ninth of Alex Rodriguez's pay. If Kouz is three times as effective per dollar as ARod, he's still one-third the player.

Beane's strategy these days seems to be to wring value out of the last bastion of sabermetric research -- middle relief -- and to take calculated flyers on low-cost retreads and imports. The $10 million gamble on Ben Sheets is a prime example of that. Sheets has a golden arm, but has been healthy about as often as the Haitian economy. And so, the once vaunted Oakland sabermetric machine will present the good people of the East Bay with a roster including the likes of Coco Crisp, Kurt Suzuki, Rajai Davis and Jack Cust. No wonder Michael Lewis moved on to the thievery on Wall Street.

Stirrings in the Cellar

The Pittsburgh Pirates failed to sign any significant free agents this off-season, nearly guaranteeing themselves yet a record 17th consecutive losing season.

Good for them. They're finally on the right track towards success. If anyone doubts this, may I present the Tampa Bay Rays.

Remember 2000, when the Devil Rays cashed in their draft chips for sluggers Jose Canseco, Fred McGriff and Vinny Castillo three years beyond their expiration dates? Calling that the "Hit Show" was a typo: they left out an "S." Remember 2003, when the same desperate outfit relinquished a useful cog in their youth movement -- Randy Winn -- for a manager? A manager! Billy Beane must have peed his pants over that one.

The erstwhile Devil, now Rays, learned their lessons the hard way and turned a six-pack of first picks into the talented core that skipped to the World Series last season. And that is what you call a blueprint.

It's a blueprint that president Frank Coonelly and GM Neil Huntington have demonstrated they will follow carefully in the Steel City. The trades during the 2008 campaign of Xavier Nady's career year, Damaso Marte and Jason Bay for a boatload of youngsters is the right idea not withstanding questions about the quality of the haul. During the offseason they dangled aging shortstop Jack Wilson to the rest of MLB, recognizing that his halcyon days, such as they were, will not coincide with the franchise's. When no one appeared desperate enough to offer attractive prospects for him, the Pirates put him back in their pocket for in-season discussions with a contender that loses its shortstop and is willing to pony up what Pittsburgh needs.

The team now has an intriguing roster of young (and inexpensive) pitchers -- Snell, Duke, Gorzellany, Maholm -- and players -- Ryan Doumit, the LaRoches, Freddy Sanchez and Jose Tabata that is at least two years and two sluggers away from contention, a country mile closer than they've been all century.

Peter Angelos, of all people, is learning this lesson as well. After dabbling in the decrepit sluggers market (Miguel Tejada, Javy Lopez, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa) with disastrous results three years ago, the Orioles reversed field last year and dropped the Human Insurance Premium Inflator, Erik Bedard, on Seattle for mega-prospect Adam (not Pac Man) Jones and a package of minor league hurlers.

The Orioles' pitch for Mark Teixeira last week was based on the presumption that he'll be productive long after Jones, Ryan Freel and some minor league call-ups ripen. Baltimore is at once farther along and farther from contention than Pittsburgh because they play in the AL Beast. They will need to cultivate the farm and enter the Big Boy auction each year, making sure to get the right parts -- as Teixeira would have been -- in tandem with the development of their prospects. More than anything, the O's need pitching, pitching and more pitching.

Why are teams suddenly figuring it out? One part of the answer is obvious: there are no longer any Major League franchises operating on the outmoded principles of the 1970s. Every club has a stable of analysts crunching the numbers like Bill James in Boston, Keith Woolner in Cleveland and Oakland's Billy Beane. While baseball reporters still hang their hats on misleading stats like RBIs and pitching wins, every team in baseball understands the superiority of VORP (value over replacement player) EQA (a hitter's value expressed in a single number that looks like a batting average, but taking into account his on-base ability, base runing and power) and other more subtle and revealing measurements. The inefficiencies in the baseball marketplace that Oakland cherry-picked for a decade are now smaller and more difficult to exploit, because everyone is doing the same thing, at least to some degree.

GMs don't have the luxury that columnists and broadcasters have to be 30 years behind the state of the art, because the results of their stupidity are published in the sports section daily. The columnist versions of Dave Littlefield -- he of no clue -- are voting members of the BBWAA enjoying job security and devoted followings.