After Dipoto leaves, Angels nab Aaron, Killebrew

The Angels broke out their bats during the July 4 weekend in Arlington, scoring 33 runs in a three-game sweep of the Texas Rangers. We won't say for sure that the Angels players were glad to see general manager Jerry Dipoto go, but we're pretty sure they weren't upset to see him leave.

Angels slugger Albert Pujols reportedly had words with general manager Jerry Dipoto shortly before the latter resigned (Marianne O'Leary [UC International crop]/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

It's easy to say the wheels are coming off the Angels' season now that general manager Jerry Dipoto has left the building after a much-reported dust-up with the fellows in baseball uniforms. It's much harder to say the wheels are staying on.

We prefer to do things the hard way, so we're going in that direction. An air clearing like this isn't the worst that can happen with a baseball club that's really been flat-lining all season, just winning a couple and then losing a couple, ad nauseum, all the way from the start of April until now.

Not a bad idea to roll a head or two under the circumstances, and Dipoto ended up rolling his own.

In a short run of games since Dipoto gave way on July 1, the Angels have performed well, demolishing the Texas Rangers three straight in Arlington during the July 4 weekend by a combined score of 33-8.

Incidentally, the three-game sweep gave the Angels possession of the Harmon Killebrew Award
and the Henry Aaron Award.

It's easy to say Dipoto's departure must have made the Angels bats happy, at least immediately. How this plays out in the long term is anyone's guess, though it's hard by now to believe the players were thrilled with their former general manager.

One can imagine how it went over with the players when the guy in the polo shirt – the guy who didn't provide a lead-off hitter, or a clean-up hitter, or even a No. 6 hitter, the guy who traded away the old second baseman and didn't replace him, the guy who worked harder at poor-mouthing Josh Hamilton than at replacing him – when that guy went into the clubhouse and told players that the real problem was that the coaches weren't giving them good enough information. One can imagine.

But we don't have to imagine, because the reports tell us that what happened is what we would imagine. At least we know now who's the boss, and it isn't Mike Scioscia, the 15-year manager who's still under contract through 2018 at $6 million per year. Scioscia won the power struggle with Dipoto when Hall-of-Fame-bound first baseman Albert Pujols got his back. When the GM enters the clubhouse to run a meeting with the players and the most expensive and accomplished player on the team basically tells him to do his own job better, it's over.

So, the boss is Pujols, and everyone kind of knew that the moment he signed that 10-year deal for $240 million before the 2012 season. Angels owner Arte Moreno has much more invested in Pujols than in Scioscia or Dipoto. Now Pujols leads the American League with 25 home runs, his credibility is high and the general manager went across him. Cross Scioscia? Part of the general manager's job. Cross Pujols? Probably not the general manager's job.

Compare the situation with what happened last year in Oakland. Reports say a huge conflict arose between their general manager, Billy Beane, and their best player, Josh Donaldson, with manager Bob Melvin in the middle. After the season, Beane traded Donaldson to the Toronto Blue Jays. Beane has said the conflict did not motivate the trade, and it doesn't even matter. The Athletics will never be so invested in a player that Beane can't trade him for any reason he wants.

By the reports, Dipoto was dissatisfied at how basic scouting information was filtering through the coaching staff to the players. By the reports, Pujols told Dipoto that the roster this year just isn't as good as the roster last year.

We can't judge if Dipoto was right, but we definitely can judge that Pujols was right. The most obvious problem is a dreadful lack of depth in the batting order. When your lineup has Pujols and Mike Trout, but you still have one of the worst offensive teams in the Major Leagues, that's almost an achievement. Even after their hitting explosion in Texas, the Rangers still are 11th of 15 American League teams at 4.10 runs per game.

One doesn't have to be a player to see that the front office has failed his team. Time will tell, for example, if young left-hander Andrew Heaney is ultimately a good return for popular and productive second baseman Howie Kendrick. So far, though, time is saying the Angels are significantly downgraded at second base.

In so many ways, the Angels front office performed terribly throughout the Josh Hamilton saga. When you commit $125 million to a known and admitted drug addict, a constructive approach to a relapse has to be part of the equation. But the Angels didn't see it that way, because they never thought they were committed to $125 million. They thought Hamilton's drug problem would get him suspended without pay, the way performing enhancing drugs (PEDs) are, and that they could weasel out of his contract if he relapsed. When they learned otherwise, they were petulant and indignant.

We don't suppose for one second that Moreno's chaotic leadership isn't behind all of this, but Dipoto got in front of the microphones and played the heavy, and that couldn't have gone over well with players who are sympathetic to Hamilton. The Angels management reacted to Hamilton's problems with outrage, as if a drug addict's relapse somehow defied the moral and physical laws of the universe.

The Angels already knew Hamilton would miss the start of the season with shoulder trouble, even before we all learned of his relapse. Yet, they did next to nothing – they signed Matt Joyce – to account for Hamilton's absence in left field and the middle of the batting order. The problem isn't that the Angels don't have Hamilton, who OPS-plussed 114 last season. They can replace that with someone about as good as Juan Rivera used to be. The problem is that they don't have anybody.

So, the Angels figured all along that they would be rid of Hamilton's contract with a relapse, they rooted openly for him to be suspended because of the relapse, when they didn't get their way they sent Hamilton back to the Rangers for almost nothing and, all this time, they didn't make a serious bid to replace him. And they have a big whole in their lineup now because of it.

One day a couple of weeks ago, the general manager entered the players quarters and told them he was going around the field manager to fix the club's mediocre performance. If you're a player on that team, maybe the general manager can go to hell. The Angels happen to have a player who can tell him that.

We're not saying Pujols told Dipoto where to go. All we know is that Dipoto went somewhere.

AL 2014 a tale told by Athletics, Royals

One couldn't find two more different clubs in the American League than the Oakland Athletics, who went through much of the year as the team to beat, and the Kansas City Royals, who were unbeatable during the American League playoffs. The Royals will begin the World Series tonight against the San Francisco Giants.

First baseman Eric Hosmer has helped to power the Kansas City Royals to the World Series (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON

Big Leagues in Los Angeles

We wondered if the Angels dodged a bullet on Sept. 30, when the Kansas City Royals took down the Oakland Athletics in the American League widcard playoff game.

Now, we're certain the Angels didn't dodge a bullet. Or, if they did, they just ran into the path of a more deadly bullet. The Royals took the Angels out of the American League Division Series (ALDS) in three games before sweeping the Baltimore Orioles in a four-game American League Championship Series (ALCS). 

Tonight, the Royals begin the World Series against the San Francisco Giants, capping a postseason that has exhilarated baseball fans and confounded numbers crunchers. 

The Giants took a 3-1 lead in games against the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship Series (NLCS) by scoring 12 of their last 22 runs on plays that didn't involve a base hit. The Giants have taken to calling themselves “cockroaches,” because you can't kill them. They polished off the Cardinals in Game 5 of the NLCS with a 6-3 win, scoring all their runs on homers. 

This might not be the World Series that fans of the Oakland Athletics would have wanted. Their rivals across the San Francisco Bay are in, and they're not. The American League club that plays most counter to Oakland's preference for long-run probabilistic reasoning is in, and they're not. 

It was hard, a couple of weeks ago, to imagine a more joyous scenario for the Athletics and a more ugly scenario for the Angels than this: Jon Lester pitches a gem for the Athletics, enabling them to win the wild card game in Kansas City. Then, the A's enter the ALDS with the Angels and prevail with pitching, specifically with Lester. With that, the Athletics would move on to the American League Championship Series, a puzzling midseason trade by Oakland general manager Billy Beane would have been redeemed, and the Angels would have lost the edge they've gain this year in their rivalry with the Athletics.

The next week of games might have been about an Oakland club banished from division contention, then redeemed for the reason of their banishment, a bulked-up pitching staff for which the A's gave away much of their ability to score. It might have been about Lester, made whole by winning the game he needed to win, now setting out to capsize the Angels, who beat them silly during a four-game sweep in Anaheim last month that decided the division early.

It could have been about those things. The narrative could have shifted back to the misunderstood genius of Oakland general manager Billy Beane and his wise men from elite universities, if only Lester could have redeemed a certain trade and held a 7-3 he took to the eighth inning in Kansas City. But all that's off the table. 

The Royals took it off the table quickly, rallying for a 9-8 win against the Athletics in an 12-inning wild card game. Then, they took the Angels off the table. It began on Game 1 of the ALDS, when the Royals won the game Thursday night that had to go into the win column for the Angels, the game with Jered Weaver pitching in the Big A against Jason Vargas. After that, the Royals were on their way.

When the World Series ends and we have contemplated why it went down the way it did, the enduring memory of this season will be the collapse of the Athletics, who endured such a nightmare for two months at the end. They were 72-44 on Aug. 9, and they needed every bit of that to endure their next seven weeks of losing and still have room to barely make the playoffs. Oakland didn't enter the playoffs looking like it would last long, and when the Royals, trailing, 7-3, kicked up a little dust in the eighth inning, one could feel the wind rushing in. The Royals were hitting, stealing, hitting the runner in, then stealing again. Lester left with a 7-4 lead with one out, and the tying run was at the plate. 

As if to mock the sabrmeticians and their darling Athletics, the Royals stole seven bases, including four in that wild eighth inning during which they cut that deficit to 7-6. In the ninth, the Royals tied it by bunting and stealing, which the stat fetishist disdains. In the 12th, the Royals hit the ball hard, and they won the game that way.

Many keystrokes have been expended trying to explain why the Athletics flop in the postseason, and all of them put together didn't say it as well as the Royals said it in the wild card game. The A's lost this game not because they eschew small ball, but because the Royals embrace it.

The stat fetishist struggles against the bleeding reality of baseball and often winds down his keystrokes by introducing a theoretical entity called "luck." At that point, we're not doing science, obviously, as luck neither explains nor predicts anything. But Beane believes in luck, too, as he said in his infamous Moneyball remark, "My shit doesn't work in the playoffs. My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is f*cking luck." 

Beane is wrong about this. The playoffs aren't about luck. They are about baseball, the game of skill and tactics. And, it appears, there are skills and tactics in baseball, which the numbers discourage, but they're also extremely useful tools for winning baseball games. How can the numbers show that certain tactics are disadvantageous for winning baseball games, yet the team most known for following the numbers never wins in the playoffs and was just now eliminated, in fact, because the team it just played would be nowhere without those tactics?

We've never understood, over here, why anyone would assume that a so-called "Moneyball" team would have to succeed in the playoffs, as if their success during the regular season should be some kind of necessary or sufficient condition for winning in the playoffs. We don't see the mystery. There's nothing that says a Moneyball team couldn't or shouldn't succeed in the playoffs, but the playoffs are such an entirely different competitive environment that we shouldn't expect the large database of the regular season to have any predictive force.

When you're putting together your Moneyball team, you're making a number of calculations. All of those calculations account for the long haul, and the 162-game regular season is nothing if not a long haul. That's a lot of discrete events converging on enough agreement to produce reliable conclusions about how to win x number of games. The book, not the old book but the new one, says you will score more runners from first base with no outs than from second base with one out. Over the long haul. So don't bunt. The book says that if you can't succeed on about 75 percent of your stolen base attempts, then you've probably lost more opportunities to score than you've gained. Over the long haul. So, be very careful with the running game.

So, you follow the principles, along with some others, such as, famously, going for hitters with high on-base averages. You finish off the roster figuring that the secondary numbers will add up to about 90 wins, then you send your team out there and it comes back with about 90 wins and a playoff spot. It works. It's a good system. Ingenious, really. It deserves the acclaim that it gets.

But now you're in the playoffs, and the evidence base on which you built your team to win the most possible games out of 162 can't give you the answers you need, because now your goal isn't to win about 90 games out of 162, but to win this one and only game right now. There is no long haul over which the numbers will even out through time. There is only this game, and there is only right now. 

So when the Royals trail, 7-6, in the bottom of the eighth with Jarrod Dyson on second base as the tying run, they're not thinking, "Over the long haul of 162 games, you will lose more scoring opportunities by running than by not running, so we better not try to steal third base." They're thinking that they need to win this game right now, and their best chance to do it is by stealing third base. When the Royals have a runner on first with nobody out, they're not thinking, "Over the long haul, the runner from first with no outs scores more often than the runner on second with one out, so bunting is the last thing on our mind." They're thinking that if they can get the runner to second with one out, they've got a chance to win this game right now. And they drop a bunt.

When you already know you've got another game tomorrow, you'll come out fine by following the long-haul percentages. When you don't have another game tomorrow unless you win this game right now, those long-haul percentages couldn't be less helpful. And a team that can't or doesn't execute those little ball tools to win this game right now is going to be at a disadvantage. 

During the postseason, the Royals have utilized those tactics to huge advantage, and opponents have been unable to defend against them. Over 162 games, perhaps, those tactics won't optimize your scoring. But you're going to need them in the playoffs. You're not playing the Cubs and Astros fattening up your numbers now. The teams you're playing against are likely to keep a lid on it defensively, so you need every tactic to score.

The Athletics, under Beane, have been one of the most frequent playoff entrants in the American League during this century. But we shouldn't be surprised when a team that's built to optimize in the long haul doesn't have the tools to optimize in the short haul. The playoffs aren't just a different season. The games are substantially different games because there are so few of them. 

The Royals are better right now than they really are, and this is not an unlikely occurrence, either. Kansas City's success with small ball is worth noting, but the Royals are winning with a great deal more. Finishing last in the American League this year with 95 home runs, the Royals have hit seven homers in eight postseason games. The home runs don't explain how the Royals have won each round of these playoffs, but the home runs have a lot to say about how they swept through the American League postseason.

Reliable power hitting by Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas isn't normally on the Kansas City menu. But it can be on the menu, it has been on the menu and, in their run against the Angels and Orioles, it happens that their kitchen brought in a shipment of home runs. When the Royals hit home runs, they are an outstanding team that can beat anyone. 

We saw it at the start of June, when the Royals went on a 15-4 tear over a three-week period, hitting 18 homers with a club OPS of .781 in 19 games. So, it's there, but we haven't seen it often. Indeed, we're seeing it again only now, with the Royals crushing four homers in three games against the Angels, then three in four games against the Orioles.

It's not a team we have seen frequently. But when that team shows up at the right time, the playoffs, that team has a chance to live forever.

Lester, trade loom large as A's straggle to playoffs

Tuesday's American League wildcard game is a beauty, with the Oakland Athletics sending Jon Lester against the Kansas City Royals and James Shields. Both arrived in controversial trades. The Shields deal already has worked out for the Royals, and Lester still has a chance to save his trade if he is the postseason pitcher that he always has been.

The Oakland Athletics acquired Jon Lester from the Boston Red Sox to get them through the postseason. Tuesday night in Kansas City, Lester has a chance to do it (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Generic 2.0 license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The backdrop couldn't be more different for the Oakland Athletics and Kansas City Royals approaching their wildcard playoff game Tuesday night in Kansas City.

For the Royals, this playoff turn is their first in 30 years, since the real glory days, 1985 and its world championship. They are celebrating. The Royals have fought inch by inch to become a playoff team in the last couple of years, surviving to the last week last season and actually making a bid for the American League Central this year before settling in as the lead wildcard.

For the Athletics, an unimaginable nightmare continues. The Athletics lost 30 of their last 46 games, blowing a six-game lead in the AL West to the surging Angels, who won it going away. The Athletics, far from their days with the best record in the game, finished 10 games down to the Angels and fought to the final day to secure the final spot in the playoffs. So, the Athletics enter this game as a sinking ship. And their playoff history isn't glorious. The A's have been to the playoffs seven times in the 21st century, and won only one playoff series.

Many will tell you that the A's are where they are because of a certain trade they made on July 31. For the sake of Oakland general manager Billy Beane, we'll grant that saying so is a slight over-simplification, even though we never liked the trade for the Athletics. But it's not just a slight over-simplification. It's premature.

The Athletics are hanging this game on Jon Lester, who is in the cross hairs of a tortured narrative. Lester has done a fine job for the A's (2.35 ERA in 11 starts), and no one should blame him because the A's traded Yoenis Cespedes to get him in the deal that has taken a huge piece from the Athletics batting order. But it comes down to games like this for Lester, because games like this are why the A's got him. To some degree, Lester can ratify a very controversial trade for Billy Beane by coming through in this game.

And Lester is uniquely equipped to do it. He has pitched better against the Royals than against any other team in his career. The Royals are batting .196 with one homer against Lester in 353 plate appearances going back to 2006. Lester's record against the Royals is 9-3 with a 1.84 ERA in 13 starts (88 innings) with a WHIP of 1.068. The A's won only two of seven meetings with the Royals this year, and Lester pitched both of the wins, which went 8-3 and 11-3. They were the only games against the Royals in which the A's scored more than three runs. The Royals shut them out twice.

Lester has a 2.11 ERA in 11 starts and two relief appearances in the postseason. So, the A's have the right guy pitching in this game. One hopes. Because if Lester isn't the guy to pitch in this game, then this season will live in infamy for the Athletics. The Cespedes-for-Lester deal will go down as one of the biggest trading deadline blunders ever. Can the pitcher for whom Beane sacrificed so much offense do the job that he was brought in to do?

If Lester is the right guy, then he pitches the A's through Kansas City and then, all of a sudden, they're in a five-game series with the Angels, and you know the A's would relish that after how these last couple of months have gone. Lester can come back for Game 3 in that series, and there he would work in another critical moment. After what the Angels did to the A's last time they met, sweeping them four in Anaheim and blowing them right out of the division race ... these are games that the A's will want to play. And if the A's can get past the Angels, they will be lined up for two starts from Lester in the American League Championship Series.

The book is closed on Cespedes for this year. He has one more year on his contract with the Boston Red Sox, and he just drove in 100 runs for the first time. The Red Sox made out well, and they can take a crack at Lester on the free-agent market.

As far as the A's are concerned, the facts aren't all in. The trade certainly blew up on them down the back stretch as the A's continuously lost two out of every three games because they couldn't score. They're worse off for going in as a wildcard instead of the league's top seed. But all of that can be overcome with some pitching in the postseason. We still think the A's won't hit enough to go very far. But if Lester is everything that Beane traded for, then he will win some key games coming up and the A's could last for a while.

Some believe the Lester trade should somehow be compared with the deal that brought James Shields to the Royals, for whom he is the starting pitcher in this wildcard game. You can argue for their similarity, if you'd like, but the only similarity we see is that they are both trades. They are trades made by very different clubs for very different purposes.

Unlike the Athletics, who traded for Lester so they can make a big move in the playoffs, the Royals acquired Shields because they just needed someone to anchor their pitching rotation and help them contend for the playoffs. The Royals have never developed that guy and general manager Dayton Moore, entering the final year of his contract, paid big for Shields last spring.

Moore sent Wil Myers, Jake Odorizzi, Patrick Leonard and Mike Montgomery to the Tampa Bay Rays in December 2012 and brought back Shields, Wade Davis and Elliot Johnson. The Royals were pretty roundly panned for the trade. With only one winning season since 1993 as they made the trade, the Royals were finally getting it right with player development. It didn't seem sensible for the Royals to deal away promising players when they still appeared a couple of years from contending. Dealing a big piece of long-term future for a short-term future that wasn't promising, the trade smacked of desperation for a general manager in the last year of his contract.

But when we look at the Royals now, we can see how the pieces fit. The Royals have plenty of players, many of them quite talented, who can run out to the outfield, first base or designated hitter. They can't get Alex Gordon, Jerrod Dyson, Lorenzo Cain, Nori Aoki, Eric Hosmer, Billy Butler and Josh Willingham all into the same lineup. Two of those guys have to sit. We can't say the Royals are better off without Myers, who won the American League Rookie of the Year in 2013 with a 131 OPS-plus, but they aren't scrambling to fill his position, either.

The true gold in this trade is the pitcher Moore thought he was getting, because that's the pitcher who arrived. Shields has made that trade work for Moore by giving the Royals presence and credibility for their pitching staff. In two years with the Royals, Shields has taken 34 starts each time, throwing 228 2/3 and 227 innings for ERAs of 3.15 and 3.21.

If all the Royals got in the trade were Shields, it was worth making. The Royals could not have made this long climb to the playoffs without him. The club definitely improved around Shields, but if the Royals hadn't made that move for a No. 1 starter, they would be the Milwaukee Brewers, sitting at home.

Then the Royals made the trade even better for themselves by figuring out what to do with Davis. The Royals originally tried Davis as a starter, and it wasn't for him. The Rays had already reached that conclusion, which is why all 54 of his appearances for them in 2012 came from the bullpen, but the Royals had to see for themselves. They saw a guy who posted a 5.32 ERA and couldn't get past the third inning.

Now Davis is the eighth-inning hold guy, throwing an ERA of 1.00. With Kelvin Herrera throwing 100 miles per hour in the seventh, Davis tossing a 1.00 in the eighth and Greg Holland throwing 46 saves in the ninth, the Royals are well set on the days when Shields doesn't pitch eight or nine innings.

Whatever happens in the wildcard game, the Shields trade already is a success for the Royals. They finally made it to the postseason. For the A's, an old postseason hand who barely made it to the playoffs this time, their trade to bring in Lester hasn't been everything they would want. And it might not ever be. But it still can become good enough rather quickly.

Another lesson learned, again: you never know

Perhaps Angels general manager Jerry Dipoto isn't a genius, but he clearly has something on the game's annointed genius, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane. All Dipoto did this year was rebuild his bullpen on the fly, which is one reason why the Angels go to the last two weeks of the regular season with a 10-game lead in the American League West.

A common scene for the Angels: Huston Street finishing off a save. He's done it 14 times since the Angels picked him up on July 19 (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON

Big Leagues in Los Angeles

We often learn lessons about baseball, and the lesson often is the same lesson: Things aren't always as they seem.

We're thinking about a division, the American League West, in which the first-place club at the non-waiver trading deadline made a spectacular deal for a pitcher to help down the stretch. Subsequently, the second-place club at the trading deadline lost its best pitcher for the remainder of the season due to injury.

Which of these clubs now holds a 10-game lead in the American League West, having all but clinched it with two weeks left in the season? And which club has plummeted through the standings to the point at which its all-but-certain playoff position now is anything but certain?

When this all gets written up, the Angels will be in the books with their first division title since 2009, making an inspired comeback from a miserable start in 2012 and a miserable season in 2013. The story to be told will not include anything about Angels general manager Jerry Dipoto tearing a big piece out of his everyday lineup to add a pitcher he didn't need. But it will say quite a lot about the bullpen that Dipoto has been rebuilding since sometime late last season, and particularly on the fly during the summer of 2014.

How dark was that night in Boston on Aug. 20, when Garrett Richards crumbled to the ground trying to cover first base in the second inning? They drove him off the field and to the hospital. Everyone could tell that Richards was down for good, which meant the Angels were supposed to win this division without a pitcher who was 13-4 with a 2.61 ERA.

It turned out to not be a very dark night at all. The Angels fell behind the Boston Red Sox, 2-0, on the very play that put Richards out for the season, then went down, 3-0, in the third on a homer by David Ortiz against Richards' replacement, Cory Rasmus. But that was as bad as it ever got. The Angels rallied for an 8-3 win that night. They tacked up a five-run inning, which has become common, to forge an easy win. The Oakland Athletics lost, 8-5, to the New York Mets, improving the Angels' lead in the AL West to 1 1/2 games.

The Angels picked up another half-game the next day with another win in Boston, then went to Oakland for a three-game series with a two-game lead. That lead was gone after the A's won the first two, but the Angels picked up the final game for a one-game lead, only to lose it the next night. That next night was to be the first start for which the Angels would need a work-around to replace Richards. The man they put on the job, Wade LeBlanc, wasn't very good, the Angels lost, 7-1, to the Miami Marlins, and an Athletics victory tied the division again.

So, that takes us through the games of Aug. 25, which was the very last moment when the Angels didn't hold first place all by themselves. From that night going to the games of Sept. 13, the Angels were unstoppable – 15-2. Even if the Angels didn't score an average of 6.9 runs during that stretch, they would still have won a lot of those games because the pitchers were tossing a 2.82 ERA. That's the whole staff, which includes some of C.J. Wilson's worst run of pitching in his three years with the Angels.

Think about this. The Angels are out Richards, Wilson can't last more than five innings unless the Angels already have scored 10 runs, Jered Weaver only now and then can put 89 miles per hour on his fastball, the other two starters are people named Matt Shoemaker and Hector Santiago ... and the Angels are getting everybody out.

During that very same run of dates, the Athletics were 4-13. Their offense scored three runs per game – 51 in those 17 games – from Aug. 26 through Sept. 12. In one of those games, they scored 11 runs, so we can just as well think of it as 40 runs in 16 games. The A's were scoring five runs per game as of July 31, the day they dealt left fielder Yoenis Cespedes to the Red Sox for left-hander Jon Lester. Their pitching staff, fortified by the in-season acquisitions of Lester, Jeff Samardjiza and Jason Hammels, tossed a strong 3.21 ERA in those last 17 games, but that's still not as well as the Angels are pitching without their best pitcher.

We do not attempt to explain things like this. We just look on in awe. Angels manager Mike Scioscia is doing something very right with his pitching staff, not the least of which involves massaging the rotation schedule to make the Richards turn come up as seldom as possible. That turn came up three times in those 17 Angels games, and the Angels won all three. They won all three without actually having a starting pitcher to take the starts. Instead, Scioscia has fashioned it as bullpen night, the kind of exhibition usually to be found only in the college game and the low minor leagues, and made it a major league happening.

Bullpen night made its glorious debut on Aug. 30 at Angel Stadium against the Athletics, when Rasmus, Michael Roth, Yoslan Herrera, Fernando Salas, Jason Grilli, Kevin Jepsen, Joe Smith and Huston Street joined forces for a three-hit shutout with 11 strikeouts in a 2-0 win against Samardzija and the Athletics. In 28 innings of pitching on these bullpen nights, the Angels are 3-0, tossing a 2.57 ERA by allowing eight runs (all earned) on 21 hits with 10 walks and 23 strikeouts.

Except for Roth and Jepsen, all of the relief pitchers named just now have been acquired by the Angels within roughly the last year. The pitcher who has been with the organization for the longest, Rasmus, arrived just before the non-waiver trading deadline last year (on July 29, 2013) in a deal with the Atlanta Braves for Scott Downs. Grilli and Street have arrived just this summer, and that's leaving out Joe Thatcher, a key left-handed specialist acquisition who has been felled by injury.

If the Angels had traded for a starting pitcher who tossed a 2.57 ERA in 28 innings over three starts, Dipoto would be heralded as a genius. Maybe, he should be, anyway. He's about to win the American League West without killing his offensive club for a starting pitcher.

Editor's note: All advanced statistics in this piece are from Baseball-Reference.com, unless otherwise indicated.

Is the extra pitcher worth it?

Like the Oakland Athletics, the Detroit Tigers added a premium pitcher to a deep rotation at the non-waiver trading deadline and took a player out of their daily lineup to do it. Again, the questions about the Athletics' deal apply to the Tigers, even if Austin Jackson isn't as big of a loss as Yoenis Cespedes.

The Detroit Tigers made a deep starting rotation deeper by acquiring David Price from the Tampa Bay Rays. Is it worthwhile to deepen a deep starting rotation for the postseason (Keith Allison [original], UCinternational [crop]/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)?


By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The non-waiver trading deadline passed last week with quite a lot of smoke. Where there's smoke, there ought to be fire, but it remains to be seen if any of these deals will wind up so hot.

We've already discussed the deadline deal between the Oakland Athletics and the Boston Red Sox, in which left-handed pitcher Jon Lester and left fielder Yoenis Cespedes switched coasts. We don't believe it will add up as a plus for the Athletics, who added the pitcher at the expense of the mid-lineup hitter.

Another deal in much the same spirit occurred between three clubs – the Detroit Tigers, the Tampa Bay Rays and the Seattle Mariners. At the All-Star break, the Rays were nine games down in a division without a great club, which led us to believe the Rays would ride it out and take a crack at winning. But Thursday's three-wheeled deal perhaps was more than the Rays could refuse. They gave up left-hander David Price, their top pitcher, who wound up with the Detroit Tigers. The Rays brought in middle infielder Nick Franklin from the Mariners, while lefty Drew Smyly and 18-year-old Class A shortstop Willy Adames came in from Detroit. The Mariners bagged center fielder Austin Jackson from the Tigers to complete the trade.

Again, we scratch our heads. This time, it's about the Tigers, though not so much as we scratched them over Oakland's acquisition of Lester. The Tigers wound up giving quite a lot for Price – a good starting pitcher, their center fielder and a good prospect. But the Tigers already had depth in their starting rotation, more than any other club in the American League, including Oakland, and it is puzzling that they would pay the price they paid to add depth to a deep rotation when the postseason specifically doesn't reward depth in the starting rotation. The Tigers already had Justin Verlander (9-9, 4.79, 0.4 WAR), Max Scherzer (13-3, 3.27, 4.2), Rick Porcello (12-5, 3.24, 3.7) and Anibal Sanchez (7-5, 3.57, 2.4), along with Smyly (6-9, 3.93, 1.8). They have replaced Smyly with Price (11-8, 3.11, 2.7) at the immediate cost of Jackson (.730 OPS, 1.8 WAR).

A fourth consecutive American League Central title for the Tigers is all but a fait accompli. They entered Monday's games with a five-game lead on the Kansas City Royals and no one seriously believes the second-place club here can mount a challenge unless the Tigers were to entirely collapse. In any case, the Tigers are too far along to be selling out for division championships. They're trying to make that step they haven't made since 1984. They're trying to win the World Series.

So, this trade, for the Tigers, is about the playoffs. And the same kind of analysis that we applied to the Athletics applies to the Tigers. We can figure now that the front three pitchers for the Tigers during the postseason will be Price, Verlander and Scherzer. The fourth man will be Porcello. In that case, Sanchez becomes a non-entity during the postseason.

Again, we raise the question: Is it worth it for the Tigers to add Price to their postseason rotation if it means 1) Fewer starts for a fine pitcher in Porcello; 2) No starts for a fine pitcher in Sanchez, and; 3) Jackson has to be replaced in the every day lineup by someone who isn't as good?

Price is a terrific pitcher. No one can or should dispute that. The question isn't whether Price is worth having, but whether he's worth having for a club that already had enough good starters already, and whether it's worth Price to take starts away from, for example, Porcello or Sanchez. And the Tigers also have deprived themselves of a decent center fielder whose offense and defense will not be easily replaced.

We've been rather hammering on this lately. We argued on July 31 that the Dodgers should not make this sort of trade, we argued on Aug. 1 that the Athletics should not have made that sort of trade, and we argue here, today, that the Tigers should not have made this sort of trade.

We have here two instances of the wrong kind of club making the wrong kind of trade. To credit Oakland general manager Billy Beane and Detroit general manager David Dombrowski, at least they traded for top quality pitchers, unlike so many general managers we've seen at trade deadline. The criticism here is that both clubs already had enough quality and depth in their rotations to prosper in the postseason, so they ended up paying heavily for entities they do not need, and to the detriment of their offensive and defensive platoons.

The good news for the Tigers is that Price is under contract for 2015, so, unlike Oakland's deal for Lester, this one isn't a rental. The Tigers have Price in 2015, and they can build their 2015 club with that in mind.

As always, baseball is unpredictable. Among the game's pleasures is that it invites us to make predictions about the future, then, in time, tells us if our predictions are on target.

In the weeks leading to the trade deadline, for example, it required absolutely no ingenuity to find commentaries bemoaning that expanded playoffs and recent changes to draft compensation rules were killing this non-waiver trading period. In July, it turned out, five players were traded right as or after they were named All-Stars in their leagues – Cespedes, Price, Lester, Jeff Samardzija (from the Chicago Cubs to Oakland) and Huston Street (from the San Diego Padres to the Angels).

Lots of interesting changes here. We're predicting that the Angels will emerge from the clearing smoke better than anyone involved in an All-Star trade, that the Tigers didn't help themselves and that the Athletics hurt themselves. Perhaps the next few months will prove us wrong. Or not.

By default, Angels win AL West trade deadline

The Oakland Athletics over-reached at the trade deadline by dealing Yoenis Cespedes to the Boston Red Sox for Jon Lester. To marginally improve their pitching rotation, the A's tore a huge piece out of their offensive and defensive teams. The Angels, who made less spectacular moves to address a real need, stand to benefit.

Yoenis Cespedes on Jackie Robinson Day in 2012. With Thursday's deadline trade, Cespedes now is subtracted from the Oakland Athletics batting order (hj_west [original], UCinternational [crop]/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON

Big Leagues in Los Angeles

It's certainly an odd state of discourse when the team with the best record in baseball trades its best player and the move is widely praised as a sign that said team is "all in" for a bid to win the World Series.

This journal holds a contrary opinion of Thursday's biggest deadline trade, in which the Oakland Athletics sent left fielder Yoenis Cespedes and a 2015 Competitive Balance Draft pick to the Boston Red Sox for left-hander Jon Lester and left fielder Jonny Gomes. We believe the happiest people in baseball right now, perhaps even the winners of the mid-summer trading season, are the squires of Anaheim, who not only hauled nicely by themselves, but watched their upstate rivals actually make themselves less potent.

The Los Angeles Angels now are two games behind the Athletics in the American League West, but these are the two clubs with the best records in the Major Leagues, and their race to determine which will open the playoffs in a best-of-five series and which will enter a one-game wildcard game stands to be the hottest of the next two months.

To this day, Oakland general manager Billy Beane hasn't won the World Championship any more times than anyone else in the world, and we suspect it will remain that way when all the shouting ends in October. There's no question that Lester, now 10-7 with a 2.52 ERA, makes the front of the Oakland pitching rotation stronger. The Athletics also augmented their rotation, though not really all that much, with their trade earlier in July to bring in pitchers Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel for Dan Straily and minor leaguers Billy McKinney and Addison Russell.

Looking at the Oakland rotation now, we might set it up with Lester (3.0 WAR in 2014) in front, followed by Sonny Gray (3.0), Scott Kazmir (3.3), Samardzija (2.2 with the Cubs and 0.5 with the A's) and Jesse Chavez (1.1), which leaves out Hammel (3.3 with the Cubs and -0.9 with the A's). That's if they maximally use all the pitchers who they have picked up in their July trades. Just looking at WAR values, they're better off going through the regular season than when they began 2014 with a rotation of Gray, Kazmir, Jesse Chavez (1.1), Straily (-0.2) and Tommy Milone (0.8). Basically, two wins better over two-thirds of a regular season, and another win better if that holds in the final third.

During the postseason, though, when rotation depth isn't such an advantage, it's a different story. For a club trying to win in the postseason, power pitching is indispensable. Rotation depth is not. Indeed, rotation depth is little if any advantage. That's why we did not advocate that the Dodgers trade prospects just so they could have a stronger No. 4 or No. 5 starter. It just doesn't help. Your club really needs three strong starters. Your No. 4 probably gets one start in a seven-game series. Your No. 5 doesn't appear at all. And, should the management decide to use Nos. 4 and 5 more than that in the postseason, then it is taking starts away from the front three, which is utterly self-defeating.

So, the A's stand to front their postseason rotation with Lester, Gray and Kazmir, their best three guys. Where does Samardzija fit in? Two starts, maybe three, even if the A's last deep into the World Series? And now Chavez, who has been quite good, falls out of the postseason mix. To what end?

It appears that by adding Lester and subtracting Cespedes (3.0 WAR in 2014), the Athletics have made themselves better on one of every five days during the regular season (and one of every three or four days during the postseason), but subtracting that impact hitter and impact defender in left field has made them worse on the other days. It simply isn't obvious that removing Cespedes from the lineup so Lester can pitch instead of Chavez makes the Athletics better equipped to survive in the postseason.

The Athletics already had the second-best ERA (3.19) and the second-best ERA-plus (119) in the American League. The Athletics are good at everything. They lead the AL by scoring 5.0 runs per game and their OPS-plus of 107 is fourth in the AL. It appears though, that the A's have made their pitching marginally better while really taking a huge piece from their offensive and defensive teams.

The Athletics, without Cespedes, really don't have that many bats. Their other hitters who have been to the plate 150 or more times and are with or ahead of the league (100 OPS-plus or better) are Brandon Moss (135), Josh Donaldson (123), Coco Crisp (123), Derek Norris (148), John Jaso (132) and Stephen Vogt (155). But those last three are all catchers, which means that, on their best days, the A's will have four guys in the lineup who hit and five who don't. Taking Cespedes out of that batting order is going to hurt.

And that's to say nothing of the depletion of player value through the organization. Cespedes is under contract for 2015, but Lester is not, Samardjzia is eligible for arbitration in 2015, and Hammel probably isn't much worth worrying about either way. The A's also traded away McKinney and Russell, 19- and 20-year-old kids prospering at high-A and AA ball, where they are well under-aged, along with a nice draft pick. 

It just looks dicey from here. Of course, pitching is the most important aspect of any baseball team. The defense has the ball in baseball, and if the pitcher can put it where he wants it, the other club won't score. But trading that draft pick and a middle-of-the-order producer like Cespedes, a game-changing player, for two months of the difference between pitching Lester or Chavez -- it's a stretch.

The Angels were quite active during the trading season, as well. But they gave up nothing that they will miss to address a true weakness on their club, their bullpen. They have added Joe Thatcher, Jason Grilli and Huston Street -- basically rebuilt their entire bullpen -- for players who they don't stand to miss now or in the future. Thatcher gives them a hard-throwing lefty they needed, Street gives them an accomplished closer they needed, and Grilli, who also is an accomplished closer, gives them a nice option to go with Joe Smith in the eighth inning. The Angels never seemed to be sold on Ernesto Frieri as their closer, so they dealt him to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Grilli. They gave up nothing about which to be jittery for Thatcher. To get Street, they had to part with minor-league second baseman Taylor Lindsey, but they have a good minor-league second baseman behind him in Alex Yarbrough.

In total, during the trading season, the Athletics picked up more major league talent, but they also gave up a lot more major league talent. The Angels made themselves better in a way that they really needed without giving up anything. The A's made themselves marginally better in ways that weren't really necessary, and they tore the heart out of their everyday lineup while putting a fair dent in their prospect pipeline.

It says here that the Angels won the trading deadline in this division simply because the Athletics over-reached, as contenders often do at the trading deadline. The next two month will test some of that claim. But the real test will come a month later.

AL West: WAR says A's, spring injuries disagree

Looking at the 2013 WAR values for players on the 2014 Opening Day rosters for the clubs of the American League West, the Oakland Athletics would have to be favored. But early injuries are among the reasons the Los Angeles Angels might have a chance.

Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane and his staff have accumulated more high WAR value players than any other club in the game (Brett Farmiloe/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).


By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

Following is a team-by-team look at each team in the American League West entering the 2014 season, listing each team's players who finished in the top 240 among position players and the top 240 pitchers by 2013 WAR.

It is a new season and the slate is wiped clean. In fact, the injuries of spring training already have forced equivocations and commentaries to demonstrate where these lists might steer us wrong. But they are a starting point.

We list each team in the division, giving each club's "top half" position players by 2013 WAR, its "second-level" position players, its top-level pitchers and second-level pitchers. For the top-half position players, we give the player's position and where he ranked at the position across big league baseball in 2013 WAR, then the actual WAR value for the player. For every other category, we give the player's overall 2013 WAR ranking, understanding that pitchers and position players are ranked separately.

More about all of this, including some important clarifications, can be found here. Bear in mind, though, that the 2013 WAR totals for each club only include these top players, and every club will have players with little, no or negative WAR value that actually would drag down its totals.

By the following readings, alone, the Oakland Athletics would be the favorites to win the AL West. However, the world is changing all the time.

Oakland Athletics (49.4 in 2013 WAR)

Top-half position players — 1B: Brandon Moss, 15, 2.2. 2B: Eric Sogard, 15, 2.1. SS: Jed Lowrie, 15, 2.3. 3B: Josh Donaldson, 1, 8.0. RF: Josh Reddick, 11, 2.6. CF: Coco Crisp, 8, 4.3. LF: Craig Gentry, 6, 3.6. Total: seven players, 25.3 WAR.

Second-level players — Nick Punto, IF, 126, 2.2. Derek Norris, C,149. 1.8. Yoenis Cespedes, OF, 155, 1.7. John Jaso, C, 197, 1.1. Stephen Vogt, C, 0.7. Total: Five players, 7.5 WAR.

Top-level pitchers — A.J. Griffin, 73, 2.3. Jarrod Parker, 99, 1.9. Total: two pitchers, 4.2 WAR.

Second-level pitchers — Jim Johnson, 123, 1.5. Ryan Cook, 135, 1.4. Sonny Gray, 146, 1.4. Dan Otero, 148, 1.3. Sean Doolittle, 156, 1.2. Dan Straily, 165, 1.2. Scott Kazmir, 173, 1.1. Luke Gregerson, 214, 0.7. Tommy Milone, 231, 0.6. Total: Nine pitchers, 10.4 WAR.

Take a look at those top-level pitchers. Neither is with the club as it opens the season. Parker is gone for the year with Tommy John surgery, and Griffin is down right now with elbow problems of his own. It's also not sufficiently appreciated that the A's are without Bartolo Colon, who tossed a pretty 5.0 WAR for them in 2013 before signing as a free agent with the New York Mets. Thus, the A's are without their top three starting pitchers from 2013, and two of them aren't coming back this year.

However, the A's have a whopping nine pitchers on that second-level list, and some of them, like Gray, Straily and, maybe, Kazmir, figure to be much more productive in 2014. But pitching depth, which the A's have, is not the same as pitching dominance, which they lack.

On the position side, this club is solid, though not spectacular. The A's have a top-half player at every position except catcher. Of course, catching is a little different, because some clubs (like the A's) will split that position and, therefore, not place a catcher in the top 15. However, Norris, Jaso and Vogt totaled 3.6 WAR in 2013, which is rock solid.

The A's should be the division favorites going into 2014, but their pitching is wobbly at the top levels, and that's where they appear to be the most vulnerable. Their biggest strength is a deep bullpen, which they will need.

Texas Rangers (42.6 in 2013 WAR)

Top-half position players — SS: Elvis Andrus, 4, 4.3. 3B: Adrian Beltre, 6, 5.5. CF: Leonys Martin, 12, 3.4. LF: Shin-Soo Choo, 3, 4.2. Total: Four players, 17.4 WAR.

Second-level players — Alex Rios, OF, 135, 2.1. Prince Fielder, 1B, 158, 1.7. Geovany Soto, C, 172, 1.4. Total: three players, 5.2 WAR.

Top-level pitchers — Yu Darvish, 10, 5.8. Derek Holland, 36, 3.3. Neal Cotts, 59, 2.6. Tanner Scheppers, 74, 2.3. Alexi Ogando, 77, 2.2. Martin Perez, 114, 1.6. Total: six pitchers, 17.8 WAR.

Second-level pitchers — Robbie Ross, 156, 1.2. Jason Frasor, 168, 1.2. Total: two pitchers, 2.4 WAR.

The Rangers are starting the season without their front two starting pitchers from 2013. Darvish is down for a while with neck stiffness, and Holland is out until at least the All-Star break with a microfracture in one knee. And the Rangers can't offset these losses with the kind of pitching depth that Oakland has.

Additionally, the Rangers have disabled Soto and a couple good guys not on this list, lefty Matt Harrison and infielder Jurickson Profar. The Rangers also traded second baseman Ian Kinsler and his 2013 WAR of 5.0 for Fielder and his 1.7 WAR in 2013. If Fielder can bounce back to All-Star level productivity, he will make up the difference for the Rangers losing Kinsler, but that wouldn't be enough to make up for losing Holland.

We'll see how the Rangers patch it together. The suspicion here is that this club has seen better days. However, they do get a little reprieve in that the main division competition, the Oakland Athletics, are dealing with severe depletions among their top-level pitchers.

Los Angeles Angels (36.3 in 2013 WAR)

Top-half position players — 2B: Howie Kendrick, 9, 3.4. CF: Mike Trout, 1, 9.2. Total: two players, 12.6 WAR.

Second-level players — Chris Iannetta, C, 145, 1.9. Erick Aybar, SS, 155, 1.7. Josh Hamilton, OF, 165, 1.5. Albert Pujols, 1B, 169, 1.5. Hank Conger, C, 199, 1.1. J.B. Shuck, OF, 217, 0.9. Total: six players, 8.6 WAR.

Top-level pitchers — Jered Weaver, 29, 3.7. C.J. Wilson, 35, 3.4. Hector Santiago, 55, 2.8. Joe Smith, 103, 1.8. Total: four pitchers, 11.7 WAR.

Second-level pitchers — Dane De La Rosa, 150, 1.3. Garrett Richards, 201, 0.9. Michael Kohn, 231, 0.6. Ernesto Frieri, 239, 0.6. Total: four pitchers, 3.4 WAR.

No club in this division has more legitimate room for improvement than the Angels. First, this club has famously under-performing stars from 2013, like Hamilton and Pujols, both of whom look good this spring. For that matter, Aybar should be much better than 1.7 WAR.

On the pitching side, Weaver is a fascinating case who just keeps going as his velocity declines, and Wilson is about as good of a No. 2 starter as you can find. And take a look at Santiago, ranked 55th among all pitchers in 2013 WAR. If we go through the starting pitchers and say, "OK, the top 30 starters by WAR are No. 1 starters (one for each club), and the next 30 are No. 2 starters ... ," then Santiago shapes up as a legitimate No. 2. He still needs to establish that kind of durability, but the potential is there.

Unlike the three clubs listed above, the Angels broke camp without serious injuries to their pitching staff. This club has started badly for the last two seasons. But, in view of problems facing Oakland, Texas and Seattle concerning the disabled list, the conditions are in place for the Angels to go off on a good start. If the Angels can work up an early lather, they can be the club many thought they would be for the last two years.

Seattle Mariners (35.1 in 2013 WAR)

Top-half position players — 2B: Robinson Cano, 1, 7.6; Nick Franklin, 13, 2.3. 3B: Kyle Seager, 8, 3.9. Total: three players, 13.8 WAR.

Second-level players — Brad Miller, SS, 141, 2.0. Michael Saunders, OF, 180, 1.3. Dustin Ackley, OF, 201, 1.1. Justin Smoak, 1B, 203, 1.1. Total: four players, 5.5 WAR.

Top-level pitchers — Hisashi Iwakuma, 3, 7.0. Felix Hernandez, 13, 5.2. Yoervis Medina, 98, 1.9.  Total: four pitchers, 15.9 WAR.

Second-level pitchers — James Paxton, 173, 1.1. Stephen Pryor, 237, 0.6. Total: two pitchers, 1.7 WAR.

It remains mysterious why the Mariners sprung $240 million over 10 years for Cano when they already might have their second baseman of the next 10 years in Franklin. The Mariners ended up putting Frankin in a shortstop competition with Nick Miller, who ran a nice 2.0 WAR in 76 games last season. Franklin lost, so his 2.3 WAR begins the season at Tacoma.

Iwakuma is down for the first month of the season after a spring training injury, another big blow. The Mariners have some interesting young pitchers, including Paxton.

In total, this is looking like a badly built team with only one decent right-handed hitter, Corey Hart, who didn't play at all last season. The Mariners are a fourth-place team paying Cano $24 million per year, and they would be a fourth-place team without that contract.

Houston Astros (22.2 in 2013 WAR)

Top-half position players — C: Jason Castro, 3, 4.5. Totals: one player, 4.5 WAR.

Second-level players — Matt Dominguez, 3B, 124, 2.2. Dexter Fowler, CF, 133, 2.1. Jose Altuve, 2B, 206, 1.1. Totals: three players, 5.4 WAR.

Top-level pitchers — Jarred Cosart, 62, 2.6. Jesse Crain, 69, 2.4. Brett Oberholzer, 81, 2.1. Scott Feldman, 118, 1.6. Chad Qualls, 107, 1.8. Totals: Five pitchers, 10.5 WAR.

Second-level pitchers — Kevin Chapman, 204, 0.8. Totals: one pitcher, 0.8 WAR.

Three straight years of not even winning 60 games make the Astros the least competent operation of the last 50 years and, unlike the New York Mets of the early 1960s, they're well past being an expansion team.

The Astros have added some meat to their pitching staff with Crain, Feldman and Qualls. But they're still not close to fielding a competitive Major League club.