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July 30, 2012

Pebble Hunting

The Oakland A's and Getting Past Windows

by Sam Miller

In a three-week period last December, the A’s traded the only two starting pitchers who had thrown 200 innings for them in the previous year, and the team’s closer. The moves left the A's with a starting rotation of Brandon McCarthy, one empty spot, and three pitchers who had a) combined for 17 starts in their careers and b) had never appeared on a Baseball America top 100.

The state of the team’s rotation, though, didn’t seem to matter. The A’s were not playing for this year, and with three trades in three weeks they made that very clear. Rather than criticize the A’s for failing to put a competitive team on the field, it was safe to applaud Billy Beane for putting Oakland in a position to someday put a competitive team on the field, someday in the future, someday after 2012. They punted. A prudent move.

Our Transaction Analysis for the trade of Trevor Cahill for Jarrod Parker (and others) made this point.

For the A's, this deal is all about windows. The A's window, of course, is only a mythical one for now, as they aim to be in San Jose in three years. That's all they have right now—hope that the team can be out from under its untenable location and stadium handicaps when MLB finally gets over its avoidance behavior and resolves the situation.

The point is that Cahill gets expensive when that theoretical window opens. The health “if” is certainly there (for Parker), but he should match Cahill's production by the time the mystery window arrives.

Meanwhile, in the corresponding piece for the Bailey trade, we noted that “trading for Bailey and Sweeney makes sense given Boston’s win-now mindset.”

Because who among us thought the A’s window was now?

The idea that a win is calculably more valuable to a tea