Nico at Athletics Nation notes the A’s have gotten little out of their rebuilding process. He goes position by position and concludes:
Basically, when you look at position players now or in the near future, the best position player the A’s have to show for 5 years of rebuilding is…Scott Sizemore. If you even count him, which you probably shouldn’t . In which case it’s Daric Barton, who appears to be able to OBP somewhere between .325-.393, with no slugging, at 1B and is currently in free-fall. And then it’s…Sweeney?
Do you realize what an epic failure it is to rebuild for 5 years, and at the end of it not have improved yourself in the lineup any more than “maybe Scott Sizemore at 3B if you squint and even call that part of the rebuild”?
So it’s either deal Trevor Cahill and Gio Gonzalez, and assure yourself of being terrible for another 3-5 years, or try to draw blood from a stone and find valuable players when you don’t have valuable players you can offer in return.
The time to do that was these past 5 years. How did the A’s fail at this so completely?
I’m starting to wonder if Moneyball wasn’t a Paul DePodesta story, not a Billy Beane story. Could it be that it’s time to remove Billy and bring back Paul?
CLEARLY you just haven’t appreciated the rebuilding effort David because you are stuck with your old fashioned and ineffective stats, and have not understood the new stats that Beane is working with…
😀
Alex Hayes » LOL!
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Remember that the point of Moneyball was that Beane was exploiting inefficiencies in the market — namely that teams tended to overpay for defense and underpay for OBP. I’m sure there are fewer of those inefficiencies around to exploit these days.
I think it’s a bit of DePodesta being gone and Beane seems to follow soccer more than baseball.
@Tom: Bingo. The book gave away the 11 herbs and spices. Today, GMs chasing the Jeff Francours and Darin Erstads of the world are laughing stocks.