Here’s the latest from Oakland…
- With Billy Butler receiving so little playing time, the Athletics may need “to make a larger decision” about his future with the club, ESPN’s Buster Olney opines within his latest subscription-only column. Butler is hitting .192/.222/.269 in 27 plate appearances this season, showing no signs of turning around his declining production of 2014-15. Because he’s almost a full-time DH, Butler has no other value than his bat, hence his sub-replacement level fWAR in each of the last two seasons. Butler is owed roughly $18.2MM through 2017, however, so cutting him would be a costly decision for the A’s.
- Eric Surkamp had a rough outing today against the Blue Jays, and there is already speculation that his time in the A’s rotation could be up. Jesse Hahn or top prospect Sean Manaea are options down at Triple-A, though as Jeremy F. Koo of the Athletics Nation blog writes, there are quite a few weather factors that could impact any decision Oakland makes about their staff. Triple-A Nashville has had its pitching order thrown off by a pair of recent rainouts and the A’s face a possible weather cancellation tomorrow in Detroit, so a double-header could be in play for Tuesday or Wednesday. Koo outlines the various weather-related scenarios, as well as looking at what bullpen additions the A’s could make with an extra roster spot (via either a demotion or the 26th spot assigned to teams for double-headers).
Butler might be the most useless player in baseball. Can’t run, can’t field, can’t hit, grounds into double plays like they’re the point of the game. A’s could make a statement in how its not 2002 anymore and they’ve actually eaten money pretty often in the recent past by just paying him not to play for them anymore. His contract’s an eyesore and his playing is worse.
On a different angle I honestly don’t know if Butler is a big league player anymore. He sure does nothing to warrant you going “oh THATS the thing he does” at any time like pretty much every other player. He’s so slow he’s going to get thrown out at first on a grounder into RF, just watch. The A’s are basically playing a man down so far all season. Canha and him together on the bench have caused Melvin to give up the DH more times this season than anyone has in a long time, which is totally unacceptable managing from an AL manager. You do not do that.
I was at a game Bautista threw him out at first base from right field when he was on the Royals
It was a baffling signing at the time and even more so now. I don’t know if he’s the most useless player in the game – the Padres are currently employing Brett Wallacce and there’s a bunch of backup catchers who don’t do anything, but it’s still a bad contract, and Beane/Forst, more than anyone, know the value of a sunk cost.
The fact that Beane gave Butler 10MM AAV and 3 years is baffling. Even at his best, he was barely a 2 WAR player with a high BABIP and no defensive or base-running value. I’m not saying that Beane is always a savant with his signings, but you’d think that he would have thought that one through better. I think that Butler’s flaws were sort of hidden by the fact that the Royals had built up a pretty hard-nosed/defensively skilled roster.
Its not baffling when you look at all the players Beane attempted to sign who said “no way am I ever playing my home games in that pitchers park” – Adrian Beltre, Rafael Furcal, Lance Berkman to name a few. Butler is literally the only FA hitter who said he’d play there.
Since Alonso is not hitting much, perhaps trying Butler a few games at 1B might get his bat going. It worked once before in KC. Might be worth a try before deciding to cut him and eat the money.
The catch-22 is, the A’s have an infield that needs a plus plus defender at first just not to have 4 errors a game.
Yeah, Alonso’s defense is so good, he’s got value there – Butler has no value at all. Both cant hit but Alonso is a gold glove level there – he just needs to hit more to win a gold glove, because that award is based on nonsense.
O’s trade Pedro Alvarez for Billy Butler.
Some money changes hands, but maybe something could be worked out here.
No way. I’d rather have Alvarez, who at least draws walks from time to time, than Butler at this point in their careers. Plus, Alvarez isn’t making the money that Butler is.
I always thought Butler had that Matt Stairs career trajectory ahead of him… except Matt Stairs could at least do a halfway believable impersonation of an outfielder and his power didn’t completely vanish.
Am I the only person on here that thinks WAR is the dumbest concept going on in baseball. Everything we have ever used in the game had to do with mathmatical statistics while this WAR is based off theoretical concepts it goes against everything baseball statistics are about.
Bully Butler stinks and doesn’t belong anywhere near a baseball field at this point in his career.
WAR is based on counting stats, there is nothing “theoretical” at all about it.
Google is your friend, learn what it is before incorrectly badmouthing it.
WAR is not based theorically off what a replacement player would do in the place of said player ? It is by definition a theory because it is based on every replacement player having the same stats. There are to many variables to say how a player would perform in hypothetical situations. Baseball is a game of failures were in any other sport would somebody who fails 7 out of 10 times at what the do be considered an all star ? All I am saying is WAR doesn’t take into account to many variables for it to be accurate.
You’re digging yourself deeper and deeper into a hole here. WAR is based on runs created or taken away. Replacement value is decidedly not “every replacement player having the same stats.” It varies widely by position. Ballpark effects and other context is built into it, as is defense, baserunning, offense and run prevention. The formulas are easily obtainable. The last line of your post is completely inaccurate – WAR is the metric that attempts to take into account ALL variables, not just batting average or some other single-purpose statistic.
You are way wrong about it when you say “Am I the only person on here that thinks WAR is the dumbest concept going on in baseball.” – there’s nothing “dumb” about wanting to find a single number than encompasses every single thing a player does so we can evaluate them, because we had been using actual-dumb stats like RBI before. Simply put: there are no bad players having 5+ WAR seasons, and it highlights under the radar types who have good defense. It’s not perfect but its better than using say, RBI, which rely entirely on other players getting on base, which have absolutely nothing to do with the player at the plate.
FWIW I actually think total bases (or TB/G) is the best counting stat we all should be using for offense more than anything else, but then again that doesn’t take in defense, which is important as we have all seen. The nincompoop below is talking about the Cubs getting “duped” into paying money for Heyward, but the Cubs are the best team in baseball because they have Heyward on their team.
Don’t ruffle the feathers of the mathletes on this site. You know, the ones who believe it’s better to have a .230 hitter with a .340 obp than a .300 hitter with a .330 obp. Or the guys that actually believe Kiermaier saved 42 runs with his defense last year based on mathematical equations. Lol. The Cubs were duped into buying Heyward for $184 million because his ” metrics” said he was worth it. HAHAHAHAHA. WAR. Gtfooh.
Let me guess: you are voting Trump and love Dusty Baker’s moves too.
This topic is about the A’s where do you get off bringing Heyward & Keirmaier up in here?
Also, gotta love your dumb example of one being .110 points difference and one thats .30 difference.
Youre the one who needs to get booted off this site!
Yeah, the Cubs are doing terrible this year.
Haha…when As nation starts feeling bad about the predicament the RedSox are in with Pablo “looks like a whale” then I guess we feel sympathy about Billy ” three car garage”Butler. All kidding aside both clubs made poor decisions on signing these guys and there really was prior history indicating or showing a pattern of the future…yes a few GM’s not paying attention….but Mr Bean really continues to look very bad with the Josh Donaldson move…learn to live with that one and probable gives him reminders and nightmares constantly Bean was just the cherry on top…
The Butler move looks bad for sure but I think there were extenuating circumstances with Donaldson – he was about to get expensive and was supposedly confrontational with the front office about certain issues. Plus, Donaldson is already 30 and I don’t think Beane wanted to pay for his decline years. The return wasn’t great – Lawrie is really overrated and already gone, Graveman is a 4th or 5th starter, Barretto may be a star but he’s years away.
Beane and his group of nerds thought trading Donaldson and signing Butler were solid moves. Blahahahaha. Oops, I think someone made an arithmetic error somewhere.
Billy Beane did not ask for Moneyball to be written about them and did not tell them to cast Brad Pitt as him. He did not write it, Beane & the A’s had ZERO to do with it. A random guy saw what was happening and wrote it. Because of this, you hate Beane forever and get off on him not having titles or making a mistake or two.
That about right, or do you have any additions to make on one of the most overdone, boring, irrelevant hate-narratives in MLB?
Moneyball was a curse more anything else, you should be feeling bad for him, not acting like he’s some egomaniac.
I’m pretty sure you could take any team and nitpick some bad moves. And if you’re really dumping on advanced stats, why do you think every single MLB team uses them. Instead of saying how bad they are, maybe you should get with the times instead