The big mistake was trading away key MLB talent to strengthen an area that was already their biggest strength. The trades for the Chicago pitchers (and later getting Dunn) were great. Trading Cespedes for even more pitching was just silly. The most amazing thing about KC was that they didn't change what got them here. It would be so easy to go conservative in the late innings and not want to lose the game on a caught stealing. But they kept going and it kept working. In an age of declining offense, all these steals make such a big difference instead of waiting for the big hit. Makes them a fun team to root for - if they do well, it might change the way teams approach offense if pitching continues to get better and better.
I think these kinds of games also validate MLB's decision to add a WC and create a single winner-take-all game. Granted, there's a lot of luck involved and the "best team" may not advance, but it's crazy fun and since these are wild card teams, it's not like they necessarily earned anything more.
So much 2nd guessing for a guy with an OBP under .300. Cespedes is a guy with a big arm, and a sometime-y bat. That Lester trade was phenomenal. OAK's offense was terrible leading up to that deal. They fell on hard times around the AS break.
Wasn't silly if their goal was simply to try and gain an advantage in these short series/one game takes all type games. When they made the trade, they only had a 4 game lead on the division... and with the Angels playing torrid baseball, there was a very good chance they'd end up as a wild card anyways (maybe this game is in Oakland if they don't completely fall off a cliff, but they're still likely playing in the WC game). And, their "biggest strength" (pitching) fails them in this one game takes all... where you rely even further on lock-down closers and elite bullpen pitching. Their traded for starter pitches into the 8th... and gets burned by a critical error, and a resultant bullpen explosion. Cespedes wasn't going to be as potentially as big of a difference maker in games like this vs. Lester/Samardja.... and I agree that the wild card game is one of the BEST things baseball has done in a long time.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Billy Beane says playoffs r crapshoot Mainly agree. But 1-13 last 14 elimination gms When does that stop being small sample size <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Athletics?src=hash">#Athletics</a></p>— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) <a href="https://twitter.com/Joelsherman1/status/517286575223623680">October 1, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Irony is that Moneyball has traditionally preached that stolen bases and bunt sacrifices are stupid...and they got their ass handed to them last night by that approach.
I think he feels the same way... hence some of the reasoning why he re-tooled a first place team that was potentially heading down the same road. Alas, they still lost but not necessarily because of a lack of offense or quality starting pitching. Maybe he should overpay for a lights out closer.... that will be the next anti-moneyball move he will need to perform (as his team did blow 3 saves last night).
True... but when you have elite speed... you utilize it. And I'm sure moneyball doesn't preach to blow 3 saves and still be able to win games. Oakland still probably should have won if the bullpen had done their jobs. Nevertheless, KC was running those bases like Whitey was the manager and they still had astroturf on the field.
Agreed. Except Oakland SHOULD have won, but didn't because Royals went small ball on them and it worked. Just ironic to me that's the kind of baseball Beane would scoff at.
You can't look at a team or a lineup in a vaccum. Cespedes was their #3 hitter and top 3 in all the major offensive categories - amazingly, he's STILL top 3 in a lot of those categories. The reason is that they were a team built around 3 primary players on offense: Moss, Donaldson, and Cespedes. Everyone else was sort of interchangable parts that did their jobs. You can trade any of those parts - but if you trade any of the big 3, everything falls apart because no one else can play the roles those 3 guys play. As for the ASB thing, the A's were 7-5 between the ASB and the trade. If I did my math right, they scored 69 runs during that period - 5.75 per game, which is actually substantially higher than the league-leading 5.05 they were averaging for the season at the time of the trade. Their offense and their team collapsed the day they traded Cespedes.
More of a fluke than anything... as they were playing horrid baseball that goes beyond simply losing his run production. And in the end, those moves seemed entirely about the playoffs... at the time of the trade, they had a 95% chance of making the playoffs, and they did. I said before that it was likely the Angels would have made up the 4 game difference at their pace, Cespedes or not. The only thing left to question is whether or not you feel home field advantage or Cespedes in the lineup would have made the difference in last night's game... I don't feel he would have had as big of an impact as Lester could/should/did have. Also, I think the A's will use that financial flexibility from his owed money and re-tool vastly.
The Angels were 7-6 between the ASB and the time of the trade; Oakland was 7-5. The Angels weren't necessarily playing torrid baseball, at least for that immediate period, though they had made up some ground in the previous month. But if Oakland was making a move that would hurt them in a 5 or 7 game series to help them in a 1 game series, then I think that's terrible - too much luck involved in one game, and you're telling your team that you don't think they can win despite having the best offense AND pitching in baseball. It's especially crazy when you already have several elite SPs and can only use 1 of them in that one game series. All that pitching depth is worthless in that scenario (unless they had used them in the bullpen). Lester is certainly an upgrade, but not a huge one when you have the other guys you have. I do agree here - for one game, having Lester is better than Cespedes. But I really don't think their goal was to prepare for a WC game. I think they wanted Lester to pitch them deep in the playoffs. But that's where I think they went wrong - in a 5 or 7 game series where Lester only pitches once or twice, you're better off with Cespedes in all 5 or 7 games. It would be different if they didn't have a deep pitching staff, but after trading for Samardjza, they had a great pitching staff already. The upgrade of Lester over their #4 guy for, at most, 1 game per series, was less than the downside of random-replacement-part from Cespedes for all the games, in my opinion. On a side note, what happened to Adam Dunn? Was he not on the roster? It seems like in a 12 inning game that you can win with one swing in extra innings, he would have pinch hit somewhere in there. He kind of sucked for Oakland, but I thought that was a good trade to try to add some power. Sad that he never got in the game after it took him an entire career to even make the postseason.
I don't think it's remotely obvious that the Angels would have made up the difference. In fact, the Angels ended up at a 0.605 winning percentage - lower than the A's had at the time of the trade (0.617). So if the A's just kept doing what they had been doing, they win the division. How "hot" the Angels were is way overstated.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Rival execs already speculating: <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Athletics?src=hash">#Athletics</a>' Beane might go the other way now.... <a href="http://t.co/gDceeG4S3W">http://t.co/gDceeG4S3W</a></p>— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) <a href="https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/517321060291993600">October 1, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
