Lewis Wolff and John Fisher are bad, bad men

Look around baseball and you will see entrepreneurs and smart business people who have purchased baseball teams. Oh, there are some who might have inherited their money but for the most part team owners have gotten into a position of owning a team because they were very good at business. Once they become baseball owners, the expectation is that they are supposed to forget all of that and bring a city a winner at all costs. Take the Josh Donaldson trade as an example.

The two owners of the Oakland Athletics, Lewis Wolff and John Fisher were roasted last night and this morning because Billy Beane traded away Josh Donaldson for a cheaper Brett Lawrie and three prospects. If you don't believe me, check out this article by Jason Leskiw for a major media outlet. How dare Wolff and Fisher save money and run a good business!

But is the assumption this is a money dump realistic? When I looked at the deal last night, I saw a 24-year-old player with upside in Brett Lawrie, two really good prospects and a so-so prospect traded for arguably the best third baseman in the American League if not in baseball. While both players, Donaldson and Lawrie, are heading to arbitration for the first time this season, Lawrie will turn 25 in January and Donaldson, 29 a month from now.

Lawrie has been hurt a lot. Donaldson has been healthy. At least that is the line some angry Twitter people have given me when I said I liked the trade for both teams. The implication is that Donaldson is a "gamer" and Lawrie a "poser." I don't know how you justify or quantify that, but okay. Donaldson does stand to make more in arbitration. But then you have two really good prospects in Kendall Graveman and Franklin Barreto and the throw in of Sean Nolin. Not a bad haul for Donaldson if one or two of those prospects can be helpful.

@FlagrantFan @AskROTObaseball Yeah, great trading one of the top hitters in the league for a centerpiece, Lawrie, who plays 100 games a year
— Dan Cas (@DantasyBaseball) November 29, 2014

Lawrie has shown much upside defensively and while he may not be in Donaldson's class, he isn't in the dunce category either. Donaldson has compiled 16.6 rWAR by the age of 28. Lawrie, 11.7 by the age of 24. Doesn't that make this trade look a little better?

People forget that Donaldson was acquired from the Cubs back in 2008 in a deal very similar to this one. Donaldson was a prospect too for the Cubs and I bet there was a lot of consternation when Billy Beane traded away Rich Harden to get Donaldson and three other prospects. Of the four, only Donaldson panned out (though Matt Murton has had a great Japanese career).  Harden was never the same and has been out of baseball for years.

First of all, you cannot judge trades until years after the fact. But with the instantaneous cyber world we live in, people are dying for page views and social media followers by making judgement pronouncements immediately. And one of those is to blast the owners for "forcing" Billy Beane to manage his assets efficiently.

It's okay for the players to be business people. It's okay that their agents are charged with maximizing the players earnings. But it's not okay for baseball owners to do the same thing. Why do the owners in Tampa get a pass and the ones in Oakland scorn? Both have lousy stadium issues and low attendance. They both do the best they can while trying to keep a profit margin. Anyone who thinks owners should not care about making money is misguided.

The sons of George Steinbrenner are facing similar scrutiny. Why aren't they countering the moves made recently by the Red Sox!? Why aren't they spending money like crazy to get back on top!? Old George would never allow the Yankees to go two years in a row without making the playoffs! Um...remember the 1980s?  And the team payroll for the Yankees is just as high or higher under the sons as it ever was with The Boss.

The big complaint in Oakland is that the A's haven't made the World Series. The theory is that if Wolff and Fisher would spend a little more, that World Series would have been in reach. It doesn't matter that the team has won 277 games in the last three seasons, by golly, the goal is to win it all.

Money does not make that happen. A lot has to fall in place for a team to get hot at the right time and win short series to get to the biggest of all short series and win it all. Peter McGowan, the owner of the Giants doesn't like to throw money around either and he has won three titles. All three had people scratching their heads. Getting to the playoffs is hard enough. Winning there is a crap shoot.

I understand that Josh Donaldson was a beloved player in Oakland. I understand that he has been an MVP candidate two years in a row. I also understand that his defensive skills play a large part of his value and I do not trust the current way those defensive skills are valued. I do agree that Donaldson is a great fielder. But give me a better way to quantify it.

Jason Leskiw says himself in his diatribe that Josh Donaldson played hurt most of 2014 and had to wrap his shoulder like a pitcher. Think about that for a second. Yeah, he played almost every game, but at what cost and how will that influence his game moving forward? Who knows.

I don't believe Wolff and Fisher had any part of this deal. Billy Beane made the deal. Billy Beane has made a lot of deals. A lot of them turn out pretty well. Why don't we let this one play out for a couple of years before we start painting a picture of Beane as browbeaten by greedy, Scrooge-like owners.

No arrows for Fernando Rodney

You have to hand it to the Oakland Athletics. They are a smart team that uses their information very wisely. The A's had tied a huge game with the Seattle Mariners up with a home run by Josh Donaldson off of perhaps the best pitcher in the American League. The homer ensured that King Felix could not seal the deal on perhaps the biggest start of his career in Seattle. In the tenth inning, they drew Fernando Rodney. And they nailed it.

The A's didn't hit the guy who has averaged 43 saves the past three seasons. They simply would not swing. Rodney has one big flaw. He walks people. Last year, his rate per nine innings was 4.86. This year, Rodney is walking people at a rate of 4.04 per nine. But he usually succeeds because he gets people to swing.

Fernando Rodney does not like the strike zone. Only 47.7% of his pitches are thrown in the strike zone. He likes to stay off the corners and throw his change below the knees. It usually works. It did not work against the A's. All the A's had to do was stand there.

Four walks later, the A's scored the winning run. It was a huge victory in the chase for the wild card. It was a huge win because they have Jon Lester pitching today. It was a huge win because ever since they traded for Jon Lester, they stopped hitting.

But in the tenth inning, they didn't have to hit. They just had to stand there and let Rodney do all the work for them. Four walks. Rodney threw 28 pitches. Only ten of them were strikes. Only six of them were in the strike zone but the A's swung at eight of Rodney's offerings. They needn't have.

Here, courtesy of Brooks Baseball is Rodney's evening in all its glory. The A's aren't hitting. But they know what to do when they don't have to hit. The only arrow shot in this one went into the hearts of Mariner fans.

Not all .300 batting averages are created equal

On a recent post, one of my most faithful readers with the great guest name of, "RichieAllen1964," did not understand what I meant by a batting average being somewhat meaningless. It is a fair question. Baseball fans like us who have been watching decades of games have been trained to think that if a batter hits .300 in a season or career, he is pretty special. While I cannot get past the old feelings that such a season or a career is pretty cool, not all .300 seasons or careers are the same.

My favorite example is the Tim Raines and Tony Gwynn career comparison. Gwynn was known as a magician with the bat and was an expert of hitting the ball "where they ain't." His career batting average after twenty seasons from 1982 to 2001 was .338. Along the way, he compiled 3,141 hits. Raines was never considered the hitter that Gwynn was. Raines finished his 21 year career from 1981 to 2001 (I am not counting two "cup of coffee" seasons) with a career batting average of .294. And Raines compiled 2,605 hits.

Most fans would look at those two careers and feel that Gwynn was a much better player than Raines. After all, Gwynn compiled 536 more career hits and had a batting average that was 44 points higher. But when you dig much deeper, the two players were worth about the same during their parallel careers.

Now you might jump to conclusions that I am including base running and fielding into this mix. And, yeah, if you want to look at the total valuation, Raines finished with an fWAR of 66.4 and Gwynn finished with an fWAR of 65. The two were so close (overall) that it is a wash. But I am not even talking about those overall evaluations. I am talking about just the offensive worth that does not include base running or fielding.

Raines compares with Gwynn offensively as well. Gwynn finished with a career wOBA of .370. Raines finished slightly behind him at .361. But that is not the full story. If we look at batting runs for their respective careers, Gwynn finished with 401.5 batting runs according to Fangraphs. That same site assigns Raines with 408.1.

Here is the statistic I really love. It is called Runs Created and was developed by Bill James and others and it "estimates a player’s total contributions to a team’s runs total." According to the career leaders in this statistic, both are exactly tied for 57th Place all time with 1,636 runs created!

In wOBA, Gwynn is slightly higher. In batting runs, Raines is slightly higher. In runs created, they are tied exactly. Gwynn's higher batting average means nothing to the equation. In this comparison, the batting average is moot. The two players are virtually tied when it comes to offensive worth.

Let's look at 2013 for a more recent example. Let's compare Torii Hunter and Josh Donaldson. Hunter had 652 plate appearances and Donaldson had 668. Hunter batted .304 and Donaldson, .301. The two batting averages are virtually identical. But the offensive worth of their seasons were anything but.

Donaldson's wOBA was .384. His batting runs according to Fangraphs.com were 37.3. His adjusted batting runs according to B-R were 40.64. Hunter's wOBA was .346. His batting runs were 12.5 and his adjusted batting runs were 10.67. Donaldson's season was a little better than three times greater offensively than Hunter which makes their batting averages the least important statistic when rating their offensive seasons.

And just for fun, I leave you with the "emptiest" .300 hitters since 1990:

Rk	Player	RC	BA	OPS+	PA	BtRuns ▴	Year
1	Juan Pierre	101	0.327	89	683	-11.41	2001
2	Placido Polanco	70	0.307	88	610	-11.09	2001
3	Doug Glanville	60	0.300	88	510	-9.63	1997
4	Mike Caruso	68	0.306	90	555	-9.31	1998
5	Garret Anderson	80	0.303	92	662	-8.52	1997
6	Mark Grudzielanek	91	0.306	93	696	-8.16	1996
7	Tony Womack	80	0.307	91	606	-6.77	2004
8	A.J. Pierzynski	65	0.300	93	535	-6.56	2009
9	Gregg Jefferies	72	0.301	93	592	-6.51	1998
10	Joe Randa	89	0.304	94	665	-6.1	2000
11	Jordan Pacheco	66	0.309	94	505	-6.06	2012
12	Hal Morris	61	0.309	90	516	-5.95	1998
13	Darryl Hamilton	83	0.315	93	568	-5.46	1999
14	Ryan Theriot	81	0.307	93	661	-4.78	2008
15	Juan Pierre	97	0.305	94	747	-4.77	2003
16	Luis Castillo	77	0.301	94	615	-3.98	2007
17	Orlando Cabrera	91	0.301	95	701	-3.71	2007
18	Jamey Carroll	70	0.300	94	534	-3.41	2006