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.

Last year the Tigers were 3-0 in games after being shut out in the game before. With yesterday's 4-1 loss to the Royals - the Tigers are now 0-1 in games after being shut out in 2008... Last season Mark Teahen was moved from 3rd base by the Royals to make room for super prospect Alex Gordon. I wouldn't be surprised if Teahen actually outperforms Gordon though. Teahen has the potential to be the best player to ever come out of St. Mary's College (of course that just means beating out the likes of Tom Candiotti and Von Hayes)... Well that didn't take long. If you had 1 inning in the over under in how long Mike Hampton would last before going on the DL - YOU LOSE. Without an inning pitched Hampton is now on the DL. The boy in the bubble had more resilience than Hampton... Justin Morneau is 0-12 to start the season.... If you take away Kosuke Fukudome's numbers then the Cubs are hitting only .180 as a team. With Fukudome's numbers the Cubs are hitting just .206 which still stinks.... Tris Speaker would have been 120 today. Speaker is largely a forgotten player but he was one of the best centerfielders of all-time. He is also 5th in all-time hits and 6th in all-time batting average (just ahead of Ted Williams). His defense was superb as this poem will ascribe:

Lineup for Yesterday

S is for Speaker,
Swift center-field tender,
When the ball saw him coming,
It yelled, "I surrender."
— Ogden Nash