Moneyball Indeed!

With the recent trade of Joe Blanton to the Phillies - the last of the players who were both drafted by the A's in 2002 and who subsequently were featured in Michael Lewis' book Moneyball are now all out of the Oakland system. Major League Jerk recently did an excellent Moneyball recap of "Where are They Now".

I'm not concerned so much with "where are they now" but two facets do interest me. What did the A's really get out of the 2002 draft? And how money really plays into moneyball. Let's take a look at the players who made the bigs to answer these questions.

Of the nine players drafted and featured in the book - three are still making contributions at the major league level. Those three are:

- Nick Swisher (16th pick overall) had three solid seasons for the A's averaging 26 HR and better than 82 RBI per season for those three years. Prior to this season Billy Beane traded Swisher to the White Sox in exchange for left-handed pitcher Gio Gonzalez, right-handed pitcher Fautino De Los Santos and outfielder Ryan Sweeney. It should be noted that Sweeney actually leads Swisher in several offensive categories this season including 3B, SB, BA, SLG, and OPS. That's not to suggest that Sweeney is as good a player as Swisher but the drop-off isn't really that, that much. Besides - the White Sox will pay Swisher $3.5 million this season compared to the A's paying Sweeney just $395,000 - plus the A's got two top pitching prospects in the deal.

- Joe Blanton (24th pick overall) was just traded to the Phillies for prospects second baseman Adrian Cardenas, left-hander Josh Outman and outfielder Matt Spencer. In his career for the A's Blanton was 47-46 with a 4.25 ERA. Blanton signed for $3.7 million this year and next year's contract is sure to be north of $5 million. That's for a guy who had exactly a league average ERA and who was one game over .500 for a team that was well over .500 in his time in Oakland.

- Mark Teahen (39th pick overall) never played a day in the bigs for the A's and now plays for the Royals. He will make a little more than $2 million this year. Teahen was part of 5 player trade in 2004 that in part sent Teahan to the Royals and Octavio Dotel to the A's. Dotel saved 29 games in a season and a half for Oakland but is widely regarded as an awful, awful closer. It should be noted that 15 of the 38 players taken ahead of Teahen never made it to the big leagues.

So what conclusions can we draw from this information? The A's had 6 first round picks in 2002 and 3 of those picks have turned into productive major league players. A 50% success rate for first round picks isn't bad (consider that the Pirates had the 1st overall pick and they chose Brian Bullington over such names as BJ Upton or Prince Fielder). The A's got 6 combined productive seasons out of Swisher and Blanton and then turned around and got 6 top prospects for them before the big money started kicking in. When they sold a prospect (Teahen) for a "proven" player (Dotel) it backfired. The main lesson of Moneyball was that the A's success was due to buying low on undervalued assets and selling high on over-valued assets. The prospects for veteran players (Swisher and Blanton) is just a continuation of that lesson and should lead to continued success for the small market A's.

Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations.

It's not so much that Detroit is 0-6 to start the season. It's that they are already 4 games back in the standings... Many Red Sox fans are frustrated with Coco Crisp and would like to see him traded already. But Terry Francona has shown an ability to get bench players their at bats and Coco at the least makes the best late inning defensive replacement in the game (moving Ellsbury to left for Manny Ramirez). However, the frustration Red Sox fans have with Crisp's situation must be nothing compared to how the Dodgers fans must be feeling about Juan Pierre. Both Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier deserve to start and both of those players make the Dodgers a better team than what Pierre brings to the table. Yet there's Pierre continually trotted out to take up valuable AB from Ethier and Kemp. Here's the catch - both Crisp and Pierre are light hitting defensive specialists but Pierre has $36.5 million left on his contract that runs through the 2011 season and the contract includes a limited no-trade clause. Meanwhile Crisp is a better defensive player and his contract calls for only $4.75 million in '08, $5.75 million in '09, with a $8 million club option in 2010. My guess is that it will be very tough for Ned Colletti to trade Pierre for any sort of value while Coco Crisp is also available on the market... It very could be that Derek Lowe will be the best free agent pitcher available after this season. Lowe has had two real solid starts to begin the season. It could also very well be that Lowe ends up trade bait for the Dodger since the Dodgers are pretty deep at starter if Estaban Loaiza remains steady and Jason Schmidt comes back healthy. Lowe could be traded mid-season for the simple fact that Scott Boras is his agent and Lowe will probably be going to the highest bidder at the end of the year... The season is less than 10 games in and already Oakland's Joe Blanton has two 2-1 losses on his record. I feel bad for the guy... My early season fascination with David Murphy continues as the ex-Red Sox farmhand had another 2 hits last night and is now hitting .409 on the season... The Colorado Rockies have only scored 10 runs so far this season and are only hitting .209 as a team. Yet it is the Cubs fans you hear complaining... Who knew? Gabe Kapler (2) now has more HR than either Manny Ramirez (1) or David Ortiz (1). I guess that year off really helped. Just the same - I wouldn't rush out to pick up Kapler for your fantasy baseball team nor would I drop either Manny or Big Papi from your line-up... John Smoltz just needs 19 more strikeouts for 3,000 in his career. Smoltz should be a first year selection for the Hall of Fame when he's done....