The Athletics have released first/baseman designated hitter Billy Butler, according to Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle (Twitter link). Slusser reported Friday that Butler would not return to the A’s in 2017, so their decision to cut ties with him now isn’t a complete surprise.
[RELATED: Updated A’s Depth Chart]
In a move that looked questionable at best from the get-go, low-payroll Oakland signed Butler to a three-year, $30MM contract in free agency after the 2014 season. The longtime Royal was coming off his worst season since 2008, having hit .271/.323/.379 with nine home runs in 603 plate appearances, and he wasn’t any better during his nearly two-year stint with the A’s. Butler, 30, combined to bat an underwhelming .258/.325/.394 with 19 homers in 843 trips to the plate with Oakland. Thanks to the package of below-average offense, defense and base running he provided to the A’s, Butler accounted for minus-1.2 fWAR with the club, tying him for the majors’ 18th-worst mark among position players since last season.
In addition to his on-field difficulties with the A’s, Butler was involved in a clubhouse altercation with teammate Danny Valencia last month. The two engaged in a verbal dispute after Butler made comments that may have interfered with an endorsement deal for Valencia. It escalated to the point of physical contact before Valencia struck Butler with one or more punches. Butler reported being fine afterward, but he then began exhibiting nausea and vomiting. While the A’s fined the pair undisclosed amounts, general manager David Forst said Sunday that the confrontation didn’t factor into Butler’s release (Twitter link via Slusser).
All told, Butler’s tenure in Oakland was an unmitigated disaster for a player who enjoyed a five-year stretch of solidly above-average offense with Kansas City from 2009-13. During that period, the 2004 first-round pick slashed a terrific .302/.372/.469 with 99 homers in 3,370 PAs. That half-decade showing ultimately led to his deal with the A’s, who will now eat the $10MM-plus remaining on his contract.
TB Rays?
I would say them Seattle Angels Or Texas
Why would any of those teams want him? He has no defensive skills, can’t hit and can’t run.
If anyone takes a chance on him it’ll be a team not in contention that just needs a body.
Seattle doesn’t need him at all, they already have 3 dh’s in Cruz, Lee and Vogolbach. And 5 first baseman in Lee, Lind, Vogolbach, Peterson and Romero. There is no room for Butler now or in the future.
Probably Boston, so Big Sloppy can hook him with his special Doctor.
Ooh, good one. Ortiz gets drug-tested 6-8 times each season, including spring training, so I’m lost about where you’re getting your information from.
By Martin Kleinbard
Let me get this out of the way upfront: I don’t have a moral vendetta against steroids in baseball. I think they should be illegal, but only because of the serious negative health effects. As far as performance enhancement goes, I’m not convinced that they confer a greater benefit than laser eye or Tommy John surgery – perfectly legal procedures that are far less “natural” than juicing up. If I had a Hall of Fame vote, I’d happily cast a ballot for Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, and the rest of the top “Steroid Era” sluggers.
That being said, I believe in consistency when it comes to sports arguments. If you are one of the Steroid Truthers who believe that anyone with a smoking-gun-level of circumstantial connection to PED’s should be blacklisted forever, you’ve probably already marked players like Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell with a scarlet “S”. If so, I’m here to tell you that you need to add one more name to your list: David Ortiz.
Even Ortiz’s most ardent supporters must admit that his career arc has been nothing short of improbable. He broke into the majors with Minnesota in 1997 and played sporadically and unspectacularly for parts of the subsequent six seasons. Through 2002, he had accumulated 58 career home runs at a solid but hardly noteworthy rate of one per 25.5 at bats. That winter – shortly after turning 27 – he signed a free agent contract with the Boston Red Sox. Ever since, he’s been one of the best power hitters in baseball history.
Ortiz’s sudden and seismic shift from platoon player to first ballot Hall of Fame slugger isn’t just unusual. It’s completely unprecedented. Here’s how Ortiz fares against his 25 fellow members of the 500 home run club in terms of the percent of career home runs hit through their age-26 seasons:
ortiz 1
[CLICK TO ENLARGE]
Not only is Ortiz the most back-of-career-heavy 500-home run hitter of all-time, he’s in some pretty dubious company. The next three names on the list—Palmeiro, Bonds, and Sosa—speak for themselves. Before members of Red Sox Nation get excited by the presence of Ruth—whose only performance-enhancing drugs were beer and hot dogs—they of all fans should know that he didn’t become a full-time position player until age 24.
What about overall offensive production? Here’s Ortiz again up against the rest of the 500 homer club, but this time comparing the percent of career Offensive Runs Above Average [1] through each player’s age-26 season:
ortiz 2
[CLICK TO ENLARGE]
Here, Big Papi looks like even more of an outlier. He and Sosa—probably steroids’ most famous “before and after” cautionary tale—each produced just 3% of their career offensive output through age 26. The gap (on a percentage basis) between them and Bonds is greater than that between Bonds and Jimmie Foxx, the most front-loaded player on this list.
When we take a deep dive look at Ortiz’s sustained success into his late 30s (and now 40s), the comparisons continue to raise eyebrows. One stat that does a nice job of measuring a player’s slugging output is isolated power, which is merely slugging percentage minus batting average. Since 1900, there have only been nine instances of a player recording an isolated power of .250 or above at age 38 or later. Darrell Evans, Frank Thomas, and Babe Ruth all did it once. Barry Bonds and Ted Williams did it twice. David Ortiz has already done it twice, and is well on his way to doing it a third time in this his age-40 season. Bonds is the only other player to do it past age 38.
Don’t like isolated power? How about at bats per home run: a widely used metric for comparing players’ frequencies for going yard. Here are all the players to put up an AB/HR mark of 15:1 or better since 1900 in their age-38 season or later: Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, Rafael Palmeiro, Frank Thomas, Darrell Evans (twice), Barry Bonds (twice), and David Ortiz (twice, going on three times this year).
I’m not saying that David Ortiz definitely did steroids for most or all of his time with the Red Sox. What I am saying – or rather, what the data says – is that almost every other player with a remotely comparable career has been convicted of PED use either by hard evidence or by the court of public opinion.
Of course, correlation does not guarantee causation. It’s certainly plausible that Ortiz has been the exception that proves the rule of late-rising sluggers’ paths to glory. To believe that, however, we’d have to discount both the data and the circumstantial evidence surrounding Ortiz’s career (otherwise known as our Bayesian priors): the drastic change in his body shape from his rookie season, the uptick in power that came directly after a change of teams, his reported positive PED test in 2003 as part of baseball’s preliminary (and supposedly anonymous) survey.
As I mentioned earlier, I’d have no problem voting for players like Bonds or Alex Rodriguez for the Hall of Fame, and the same goes for Ortiz. If, however, you’re the kind of fan who takes a hard line against PED’s and ascribes to the “If it walks like a duck” theory of judging potential culprits, I’d ask you to take a long hard look at Big Papi. The hard and soft evidence are far more damning for him than they were for players like Piazza or Bagwell.
Oh, and Ortiz supporters: please don’t fall back on “he never failed a public drug test” as your lone defense. Neither did Bonds or A-Rod.
***
Martin Kleinbard is a fan of the Yankees, Nets, Islanders, and Raiders. He looks forward to telling his grandkids about the last time the Raiders had a winning record. Martin is also co-founder of The Bandwagn, a newsletter/website that allows non-sports diehards the chance to join the sports conversation. He can be reached at martin.kleinbard@gmail.com.
References:
[1] A stat created by FanGraphs to estimate a player’s overall offensive contribution (batting and baserunning) to their team, where 0 is the league average. For more details, please visit FanGraphs.
Gosh, one might be foolish to suppose that a lefty power-hitter playing the great majority of his games in the hitter-friendly dimensions of Fenway and Yankee Stadium had anything to do with his overall career production. No, clearly the only explanation is steroids. Great work, Nancy Drew. You solved another mystery.
Wow. You need….help? Bonds admitted to using steroids in court. Ortiz supposedly tested positive for a steroid precursor in 2003. I doubt it’s still in his system now. If you believe he’s doing some kind of PEDs I’d love to see some evidence.
Watch Ortiz’ swing from his Minnesota days. Then look at it now. He held his hands quite high back then, which created a hitch. With Boston, he lowered his hands a lot – in fact, watch him this season. He starts his swing incredibly low. This eliminates the hitch and allows him to still get around on good fastballs despite the diminished bat speed of his older age.
The rest of this article you’ve cited is the most circumspect garbage I think I’ve ever read in my life. I like how the “author” uses the word “Bayesian” though – it almost makes one think he knows what he’s talking about.
Ooh, David Ortiz got bigger as he aged. You know who else gets bigger as they age? Every single person on Earth. This is aging. There’s zero proof of any of this nonsense and this supposed writer is a fraud and his conclusions are absurd.
The data also shows players like Chris Davis, Jose Bautista, and several others are highly suspect as well. But the league really doesn’t want to catch these guys, they just don’t want it public that they have players that are juicers. A-Rod and 12 others were only caught because of the Federal indictments of the founder of Biogenesis giving evidence against players to save himself.
TLDR: Someone needs their own website
They are highly suspect because they are successful? That’s odd. You have noticed that there have been more PED suspensions this season than ever before…some evidence that the testing program is working.. Tin-foil hat theories don’t impress or interest me. Show me some proof.
Such a stupid comment angelsfan4life.
Angels are
Crap
I remember my first copy and paste
I hope the Mariners can sign him to a low risk-high reward deal.
Why?
*Low risk, low reward
Freeing up cap space.
What “cap space”?
Maximum takeoff weight of the A’s chartered jet.
Clearing up 40 man roster. The A’s will have some tough decisions on who to keep and let go with so many good prospects coming up. This is the first of a few that will happen in the next couple of months.
That’s a good one, hehehe.
Ha!
what is the cap
Wut?
This isn’t football, baseball all contracts are 100%(ish) guaranteed so you can’t free “cap space” you can only really clear a 25/40 man roster spot.
Cap space??? This is not the NFL. There is no salary cap in major league baseball
He didn’t have any incentives and his contract was fully guaranteed. They are the furthest away from the luxury tax. So what cap space
It’s about time. Snitches get stitches, I suppose.
It would of been interesting to see the numbers he could of put up if the A’s actually played him.
You clearly didn’t watch him in 2015 or you’d know the answer to that.
In all honesty, I watched 2 games. I was simply comparing his numbers with the rest of the sluggers on the A’s. I believe he would have batted .270 and hit 15 to 20 hrs. Which would have made him one of the best hitters out of that fearsome 9 and potentially would of allowed the A’s to move him for a marginal prospect (who we would never hear of again) and save millions.
His wRC in 600 ABs was 99. Put that with zero value on the bases and in the field for $10M a year gets you a worthless player
Yes! He’s terrible but playing him on an awful offensive team could of potentially saved the cash strapped A’s millions. No disagreement on him being awful and not getting anyone noteworthy in return for a trade. It was just a thought of what they could of done to save millions of the 10m they just lost
I think he would challenge the all-time record for grounding into double plays, is this what you mean?
Butler seems like the classic player to return to his previous organization (KC) on a tiny salary.
I was thinking the same thing.
Why would the Royals want him? They have no position for him to even play and nobody likes him in the clubhouse.
He will 100% not come to KC unless he’s going to sell more BBQ sauce.
After Hosmer’s comments I doubt Butler will be welcomed back to their clubhouse. Butler may have snitched his way into an early retirement, as no clubhouse is going to want him around since he can’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut and mind his own business.
There is not a more worthless player in MLB than Billy Butler. No defense, a terrifyingly slow runner on the bases and he’s a AAAA hitter at this point in his career. No one better give him a job. As a fan of the game, I don’t want to see him in a big league uniform ever again, even if rooting for the opposing team I don’t want to see him again. Hope he just takes his money and goes home.
Soooo…does that guarantee him a minimum contract with Tampa Bay Rays?
Arte Moreno would take him, but Arte is in love with the “pretty boy” types. CJ Wilson, Josh Hamilton types.
I was surprised to see the comments about Butler not being well liked in the clubhouses. I had no clue some of his Royals teammates found him to be a poor teammate.
Just me personally, but I would be happy to see the Royals bring him back. People grow and change, and it seems Billy was never seen as malicious, just immature. He might have learned a few things this year and be a better person for it.
Plus, the Royals may have a hole at DH next year. I expect Morales to leave. If Butler gets his game back together he might see a lot of at bats on the 2017 Royals.
If they pick him up they will have a few weeks this season to see where he is now, plus all of spring training next year. Given what I know from the outside, bringing him back seems like a cheap gamble definitely worth taking.
Cuthbert at DH since Moustakas will return, or maybe have Moustakas and Cuthbert alternate between 3B and DH. The only problem I could see with Cuthbert at DH is that he doesn’t have near the amount of power Kendrys has, at least not yet.
Don’t think Royals will bring Butler back. I thought he’d be welcomed back after time in Oakland but have learned since his departure that this is most unlikely. It’s not publicly discussed by the club but the Royals put a premium on clubhouse cohesion. Apparently, Butler and Yost clashed and it’s become apparent that Yost wasn’t the only one who doesn’t warm to Butler.
Why is it that every picture of a player on this site looks like it’s taken at Rogers Center
Same lol
Why does that matter? lol
To get a photo of an Oakland player, but with fans in the seats in the background.
low blow dude. low blow.
but true
AAA depth signing coming in the near future.
Butler’s bat was never remarkable, but the fact that he played 3rd, though be it not very well, added to his perceived value. This being said, I’m surprised that Billy Beane, of all people, didn’t realize that when relegated to a DH/part time 1B role, his WAR would be equivalent to a AAAA slugger.
I’m not sure what player you’re thinking of but Butler never played a game at third in his career.
Are you thinking of Danny Valencia maybe?
They should release Alonso, Lowrie, Wendle, Axford, Sogard, Fuld, Muncy & Eibner and replace them with better players. Those guys are just not good at baseball. Other than the power tool, 1-tool players are not what contending teams employ, and Khris Davis should be the only 1-tool guy on this team. Bring up Chapman, Barreto, Olson, Brugman, Wahl & Gossett, go full rebuild right now.
Hope they let Puk pitch an inning too, if they subject the fans to pathetic Zito last year “for fun” they should reward the fans with a preview of the future franchise player this year.
Thanks for cursing A’s fans/watchers of their games to your absolutely infuriating approach at the plate, Butler. No one is going to miss this guy when he’s gone. He was a jerk in KC too. Hope I don’t ever have to watch him hit again.
Another great deal by the “genius” GM who’s never won anything and trades his best players for nothing.
That Donaldson trade was a doozie!!!!
Oakland is 6th in the majors in wins over the last 15 years. With basically the lowest payroll in baseball and the worst ballpark by far in the sport.
The methods he created were stolen by everyone else and pretty much every team has employed methods to more properly figure out market inefficiencies since that book came out. Theo Epstein himself said he was just copying Beane but he had unlimited funds to play with on top of that. The A’s have the 5th most wins since 2000, playoffs be damned.
Beane has made tons of dumb moves over the years, but that line of thinking is just asinine and born out of a hatred of “stats guys” or misinterpreting that Beane had that book commissioned or he told the film producers to cast Brad Pitt to play him, none of that is true, and I’m pretty sure no one would ask for any of this to happen until after they won a title.
Do you think Beane likes hearing this? His teams don’t even fake get into the playoffs due to the unbalanced schedule (like the Angels do), they win playoff games and have had an absolutely incredible, impossible 1-14 record in playoff series clinch games. Its all luck, that’s not on Beane, he cant influence singular in-game plays like Jeter’s shovel throw.
Good move. That guy was bad.
Maybe Billy Butler will go the Tim Tebow Route and Sign as an offensive Guard for the Jets
Tigers
The Angels need that bat in their lineup! Sign him!
Angels… Here we come…
So Cron is at 1st, Pujols is DH, and Butler is where exactly, left right out?
A’s upper management needs to sale a winning mentality group like the Warrior’s ownership, business minded group eager to win. Billy Bean will surely be offered his job back and the A’s will be in the winning Column again… With current manager the A’s are just about the buck and not the fans or as Gordon Gekko said “Greed is good”…
Royals ought to re-sign him just to face Verlander. He owns that guy.