A's plan doesn't add up right now

Sporting News, The, August 4, 2003 by Ken Rosenthal

Michael Lewis should write another book. Team Moneyball is 10th in the American League in runs, 10th in on-base percentage and 11th in slugging. It's the third straight season of offensive decline for the A's, and not all of it can be blamed on the loss of Jason Giambi after 2001. Royals shortstop Angel Berroa, a player the A's traded, began the week with as many homers as Erubiel Durazo, the slugger A's general manager Billy Beane couldn't wait to acquire last winter.

Baseball humbles even its smartest executives, but you wouldn't have known it from reading Moneyball, in which Beane is portrayed as part Abner Doubleday, part Gordon Gekko. Beane and his numbers-crunching peers are indeed ahead of the curve, revolutionizing player analysis. But no sabermetric projection could have anticipated the drop-offs of Miguel Tejada, Eric Chavez and the injured Jermaine Dye this season. Players are human beings, not computer programs. And sometimes in baseball, things just don't work out.

Which isn't to say the A's are incapable of reviving. They're 154-70 after the All-Star break the past three seasons, the best record in the majors. Rookie phenom Rich Harden is transforming the rotation's Big Three into the Big Four. And it would be an upset if Beane didn't add an impact hitter for the stretch run.

Heck, the A's starting pitching is so good, maybe they will just spend the rest of the season winning 2-1 and 3-2. But their offense isn't built to grind out low-scoring victories; it's one-dimensional by design and out of financial necessity. Assistant G.M. Paul DePodesta says the team's aversion to "little ball" is overstated. But generally speaking, the A's don't score if they don't draw walks and hit home runs.

"They're too rigid in their thinking," one scout says, fully aware that Moneyball depicts the scouting fraternity as baseball's version of the flat-earth society. "They can't change up to win a game. They don't bunt, they don't run, they don't hit-and-run. They don't do anything except wait, wait, wait. And if a club doesn't make a mistake, they don't beat 'em."

Still, two teams that share the A's on-base philosophy, the Red Sox and Blue Jays, rank 1-2 in the A.L. in runs scored. The real problems for the A's are that Tejada and Chavez are performing below expectations, that Dye and Terrence Long are contributing little while making nearly $14 million and that Durazo is delivering high OBP but limited power.

With no Giambi on the immediate horizon, the team's outlook could turn worse after Tejada's near-certain departure as a free agent at season's end. If the A's don't have the right players--and one scout says Billy McMillon is their only regular who can hit a quality fastball--then they will need to adjust their philosophy or assemble a new low-budget mix.

Any adjustment the A's make is unlikely to be dramatic, but there are things they can do. First-year manager Ken Macha says, "We've bunted more this year than we have in a long time," but the A's are on pace to finish with 24 sacrifices, their average the past three seasons. The more meaningful development is that under new hitting coach Dave Hudgens, who replaced Thad Bosley on May 31, the A's are placing greater emphasis on swinging at first-pitch strikes.

Opponents, Macha says, attack the A's thinking, "We're going to get Strike 1 no matter what." Entering the week, the A's were swinging at 18.5 percent of first-pitch strikes, the lowest percentage in the A.L., according to STATS Inc. Their .343 batting average in those situations ranked tied for seventh, an indication they were swinging at the right times. But taking so many first pitches repeatedly put the A's in a hole--the major league batting average after 0-1 was .235.

"We preach patience. It can be misconstrued," says Scott Hatteberg, who almost always takes the first pitch. "For a while there, I think we were passive. There are situations if you get your pitch and it's the first one, jump on it."

Hatteberg did just that on July 12, hitting a two-run shot in the eighth inning to beat the Orioles. Chavez followed suit last Wednesday, hitting a go-ahead, first-pitch homer against the Mariners. The adjustment is consistent with the A's philosophy. "We don't tell guys to take walks," DePodesta says. "We tell them to look for a pitch they can drive."

From there, walks follow.

A sputtering offense, however, sometimes requires a different type of jolt. DePodesta says bunting can inhibit a big inning, and the A's detest making outs on the bases. The Blue Jays' analysis shows that a runner stands no better a chance scoring from second than he does from first. Still, it wouldn't kill the A's to play for an early run occasionally and enable their vaunted starters to pitch with a lead. Nor would it hurt them to find another Johnny Damon or Ray Durham and allow that speedster to disrupt opposing defenses.

Everyone knows the A's are smart; Moneyball hammers the point home. But in the words of one A's uniformed staff member--his identity is withheld to spare him the wrath of Beane--"There are all kinds of ways of looking at things."