By Alex Hall on Sep 20 2014, 1:24p player would have been on the bench while Yoenis played). So he could have made a difference of a game or two, absolutely, because he's a good hitter. But consider this: Brandon Moss turned into a pumpkin and didn't hit a home run for seven weeks and he still has more dingers than Cespedes does this year, by a comfortable margin. Face it -- we all love Cespedes, but his bark is simply worse than his bite when it comes to actually hitting in real games. He has now played three full season in MLB and is yet to exceed 26 home runs in a campaign, and two of his three seasons include sub-.300 OBPs.entire season, so they can't have fallen far. Sam Fuld replaced Cespedes in the outfield, for the most part, and has been a statistical wash (Cespedes has rated reeeeally well with the glove this year, but so has Fuld). We know that some key errors have led to heartbreakers, and that Eric Sogard struggled at shortstop, but overall the leatherwork has been adequate or better.
What about the bullpen? It's neat that they have the fourth-best ERA in baseball in the second half (2.70), but they haven't gotten the job done when it's counted most -- they've only converted nine of 17 save opportunities, and that 53 percent success rate is fourth-worst in MLB since the break. Stretch that out to the full season and the A's have the third-best reliever ERA but the sixth-most blown saves (21 total). I don't even know how to comprehend those numbers, but they tell me that the pen has secretly and consistently been the weakest link on the team all year. And it hasn't all been Jim Johnson, who shockingly accounted for exactly one of those 21 failures (reliever stats are weird, man). No, this has been a full team effort; heck, four different guys (Abad, Gregerson, O'Flaherty, Doolittle) have blown saves just in the last couple weeks.
That leaves the starting rotation. The overall numbers aren't good -- 3.90 ERA in a pitcher's park, 20th in MLB. What about the individual performers, starting Aug. 1?
Jon Lester: 10 starts, 69? innings, 2.20 ERA, 4.0 K-per-BB
Jeff Samardzija: 9 starts, 61 innings, 3.10 ERA, 7.5 K-per-BB
Jason Hammel: 7 starts*, 41? innings, 2.81 ERA, 3.0 K-per-BB
Sonny Gray: 10 starts, 64 innings, 4.64 ERA, 2.0 K-per-BB
Scott Kazmir: 9 starts, 48? innings, 6.29 ERA, 1.8 K-per-BB
* not counting Hammel's mop-up relief outing against Texas on Thursday, in which he threw three scoreless innings.
deep run, you better believe that Lester will be one of the leading reasons why.
By Alex Hall on Sep 20 2014, 1:24p player would have been on the bench while Yoenis played). So he could have made a difference of a game or two, absolutely, because he's a good hitter. But consider this: Brandon Moss turned into a pumpkin and didn't hit a home run for seven weeks and he still has more dingers than Cespedes does this year, by a comfortable margin. Face it -- we all love Cespedes, but his bark is simply worse than his bite when it comes to actually hitting in real games. He has now played three full season in MLB and is yet to exceed 26 home runs in a campaign, and two of his three seasons include sub-.300 OBPs.entire season, so they can't have fallen far. Sam Fuld replaced Cespedes in the outfield, for the most part, and has been a statistical wash (Cespedes has rated reeeeally well with the glove this year, but so has Fuld). We know that some key errors have led to heartbreakers, and that Eric Sogard struggled at shortstop, but overall the leatherwork has been adequate or better.
What about the bullpen? It's neat that they have the fourth-best ERA in baseball in the second half (2.70), but they haven't gotten the job done when it's counted most -- they've only converted nine of 17 save opportunities, and that 53 percent success rate is fourth-worst in MLB since the break. Stretch that out to the full season and the A's have the third-best reliever ERA but the sixth-most blown saves (21 total). I don't even know how to comprehend those numbers, but they tell me that the pen has secretly and consistently been the weakest link on the team all year. And it hasn't all been Jim Johnson, who shockingly accounted for exactly one of those 21 failures (reliever stats are weird, man). No, this has been a full team effort; heck, four different guys (Abad, Gregerson, O'Flaherty, Doolittle) have blown saves just in the last couple weeks.
That leaves the starting rotation. The overall numbers aren't good -- 3.90 ERA in a pitcher's park, 20th in MLB. What about the individual performers, starting Aug. 1?
Jon Lester: 10 starts, 69? innings, 2.20 ERA, 4.0 K-per-BB
Jeff Samardzija: 9 starts, 61 innings, 3.10 ERA, 7.5 K-per-BB
Jason Hammel: 7 starts*, 41? innings, 2.81 ERA, 3.0 K-per-BB
Sonny Gray: 10 starts, 64 innings, 4.64 ERA, 2.0 K-per-BB
Scott Kazmir: 9 starts, 48? innings, 6.29 ERA, 1.8 K-per-BB
* not counting Hammel's mop-up relief outing against Texas on Thursday, in which he threw three scoreless innings.
deep run, you better believe that Lester will be one of the leading reasons why.
Man, good thing Billy made those trades or else the rotation would really suck. It's almost like he saw this coming and planned ahead to shore up the staff, because the three guys he acquired have been single-handedly keeping the team afloat. Can you imagine if Sonny and Kazmir were the top two starters on the club? Those two have combined for 10 quality starts since the deal; Lester has 10 on his own. He and Samardzija are averaging around seven innings per start; Gray is closer to six and Kazmir five, meaning that the bullpen (remember, that's the weakest link on the team) has to play more when those two guys take the mound. The A's are already struggling, and replacing Lester with, say, Drew Pomeranz would have made things even worse -- and I don't mean that as a knock on Pomeranz, who tends to be reliable for five solid innings at a time. Jesse Chavez probably wouldn't have been any better than Pomeranz, considering how gassed he looked when he moved to the pen and how unspectacular he's been in relief outings in which he hasn't had to pace himself for five or seven frames at a time. It's not a stretch to assume that the A's would have lost at least an extra game or two with that downgrade in the rotation, and two extra losses would put the A's out of the playoff picture at this moment.
Then, of course, there's that other part of the equation. The Angels are 31-16 since Aug. 1, and during one stretch they went 25-6. Let's be honest with ourselves. It didn't matter what the A's did, they were not going to win the AL West this year. The Angels won it all on their own. Even if you take Oakland's 18-28 record since Aug. 1 and give Cespedes credit for a five-game swing to improve it to .500, the Angels are still ahead by a half dozen in the division, and that's an enormously generous estimate of any one player's value (and it would probably have to be more to make that hypothetical work, since Lester won seven of those 18 games and his theoretical replacement would have almost certainly been worse). The A's were going to be fighting for the Wild Card this year and that's just the way it is.Here's another way to look at it. What do you think would have helped the slumping A's more since Aug. 1: five homers from Cespedes, or 10 starts from Lesteraveraging seven innings and two runs each? I don't know about you, but if I'm trying to win games with a bottom-third offense then I'd probably want the 10 contests in which all I have to do is score two or three runs to be in a position to win. The team is 7-3 when Lester starts, and the losses include one game against Felix (Lester went eight and allowed only two runs) and another in which the A's got shut out. Sure was nice to have him step in on Friday and serve as the stopper against the Phillies, halting the losing streak that resulted from both Gray and Kaz getting lit up by the Rangers. Did anyone watch last night and not think to themselves, "Wow, I'm sure glad we have Lester"? The offense was going to suck either way once half the lineup got hurt and the other half stopped producing. Because Beane got Lester, the rotation didn't follow suit.
Where does this leave us? Well, it's simple, and it's nothing you don't already know. Oakland enters Saturday a half-game up in the Wild Card race, which means there is and has been absolutely no margin for error. If the A's miss the playoffs, this whole thing will be a big letdown and it'll be one of the longest winters of our lives as A's fans. If the A's hold serve and then win the Wild Card play-in, then they're in the tournament and anything can happen -- remember, even the 2010 Giants can win it all and even the 2007 Rockies can at least reach the World Series. It'll just be a matter of doubling down on our fAith and waving those rally towels a bit harder as we scream at the TV. But if Oakland does miss the postseason, then please don't blame Billy Beane and his all-in, win-now deal. Trading Yoenis Cespedes did not ruin Oakland's season. In fact, acquiring Jon Lester may just have been the thing that saved it. And if the A's do make it to October and make a deep run, you better believe that Lester will be one of the leading reasons why.
Man, good thing Billy made those trades or else the rotation would really suck. It's almost like he saw this coming and planned ahead to shore up the staff, because the three guys he acquired have been single-handedly keeping the team afloat. Can you imagine if Sonny and Kazmir were the top two starters on the club? Those two have combined for 10 quality starts since the deal; Lester has 10 on his own. He and Samardzija are averaging around seven innings per start; Gray is closer to six and Kazmir five, meaning that the bullpen (remember, that's the weakest link on the team) has to play more when those two guys take the mound. The A's are already struggling, and replacing Lester with, say, Drew Pomeranz would have made things even worse -- and I don't mean that as a knock on Pomeranz, who tends to be reliable for five solid innings at a time. Jesse Chavez probably wouldn't have been any better than Pomeranz, considering how gassed he looked when he moved to the pen and how unspectacular he's been in relief outings in which he hasn't had to pace himself for five or seven frames at a time. It's not a stretch to assume that the A's would have lost at least an extra game or two with that downgrade in the rotation, and two extra losses would put the A's out of the playoff picture at this moment.
Then, of course, there's that other part of the equation. The Angels are 31-16 since Aug. 1, and during one stretch they went 25-6. Let's be honest with ourselves. It didn't matter what the A's did, they were not going to win the AL West this year. The Angels won it all on their own. Even if you take Oakland's 18-28 record since Aug. 1 and give Cespedes credit for a five-game swing to improve it to .500, the Angels are still ahead by a half dozen in the division, and that's an enormously generous estimate of any one player's value (and it would probably have to be more to make that hypothetical work, since Lester won seven of those 18 games and his theoretical replacement would have almost certainly been worse). The A's were going to be fighting for the Wild Card this year and that's just the way it is.Here's another way to look at it. What do you think would have helped the slumping A's more since Aug. 1: five homers from Cespedes, or 10 starts from Lesteraveraging seven innings and two runs each? I don't know about you, but if I'm trying to win games with a bottom-third offense then I'd probably want the 10 contests in which all I have to do is score two or three runs to be in a position to win. The team is 7-3 when Lester starts, and the losses include one game against Felix (Lester went eight and allowed only two runs) and another in which the A's got shut out. Sure was nice to have him step in on Friday and serve as the stopper against the Phillies, halting the losing streak that resulted from both Gray and Kaz getting lit up by the Rangers. Did anyone watch last night and not think to themselves, "Wow, I'm sure glad we have Lester"? The offense was going to suck either way once half the lineup got hurt and the other half stopped producing. Because Beane got Lester, the rotation didn't follow suit.
Where does this leave us? Well, it's simple, and it's nothing you don't already know. Oakland enters Saturday a half-game up in the Wild Card race, which means there is and has been absolutely no margin for error. If the A's miss the playoffs, this whole thing will be a big letdown and it'll be one of the longest winters of our lives as A's fans. If the A's hold serve and then win the Wild Card play-in, then they're in the tournament and anything can happen -- remember, even the 2010 Giants can win it all and even the 2007 Rockies can at least reach the World Series. It'll just be a matter of doubling down on our fAith and waving those rally towels a bit harder as we scream at the TV. But if Oakland does miss the postseason, then please don't blame Billy Beane and his all-in, win-now deal. Trading Yoenis Cespedes did not ruin Oakland's season. In fact, acquiring Jon Lester may just have been the thing that saved it. And if the A's do make it to October and make a deep run, you better believe that Lester will be one of the leading reasons why.
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