Jeff Fletcher | July 27, 2010

I’m taking a page from my blogging (and jogging) hero Andy Baggarly, and writing a post about a variety of topics…

Let’s start with Buster Posey, who I wrote about today for FanHouse. Some of my Twitter followers have been relentlessly harassing me about  something I tweeted the day Bengie Molina was traded.

Reality check: Buster Posey is in a 7-for-48 (.146) slump, and that was without thinking about catching every day. Just sayin. #sfgiants

It seems people have translated that into “Buster Posey stinks and he’s not going to hit.” Really, my only point in that tweet was that people should be careful in just assuming that Posey would immediately be better than Bengie. Posey was in a slump. That’s a fact. And he was just about to take on a huge defensive responsibility that very well might have affected his offense. I think there’s nothing at all illogical about my suggestion. I keep going back to Matt Wieters, who dominated offensively in the minors, but since he’s been in the majors, he’s been a nondescript hitter. Baseball people still believe Wieters is going to be a very good player, but they accept that it takes time to develop as a major league hitter, especially while catching every day.

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Jeff Fletcher | July 26, 2010

Working on a Buster Posey story for FanHouse (it will be up later), but in the meantime I’ve been amusing myself with Buster’s twin, Prince William.

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Jeff Fletcher | July 23, 2010

One of the standard features of my interviews with Billy Beane is him making fun of me because he thinks I’m always doing payroll calculations. Most of the time he just makes fun of me for no reason, but the other day when I was writing a post about how the A’s can take the next step, I actually did try to figure out how money the A’s could spend on free agents this winter.

I came up with $20 million, and — get this — Beane conceded today that I was actually pretty close.

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Jeff Fletcher | July 23, 2010

I’ve got all the details on Kurt Suzuki’s new deal in my short story at FanHouse. I wrote it before talking to Suzuki, Bob Geren and Billy Beane, so none of their comments are in there.

I’ll give you the highlights here. Suzuki is very happy. The A’s are happy.

There.

Seriously, the most interesting thing out of all this to me was that Beane said he thinks Suzuki has a chance to be a guy who hits 20-plus homers a year. I know it’s not a big stretch, since he’s on pace for about 17 or 18 this year, but still. Beane also said that he thinks Suzuki is the second- or third-best catcher in the AL. Joe Mauer is obviously No. 1, and Beane said that Jorge Posada still deserves some consideration, too.

Whenever a deal like this is signed, people go a little crazy talking about how it makes for stability and shows that the team wants to keep a player around for the long-term. I always find that amusing, because the player was going to be under control anyway. All this does is set his salary so they don’t have to go to arbitration. It could be a good deal for the team if the player becomes a star (Adrian Gonzalez), or it could be a deal for the player if he gets hurt or doesn’t meet expectations (Bobby Crosby). It doesn’t really change the likelihood of the player staying around, though.

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Jeff Fletcher | July 21, 2010

I was discussing last night’s mound-visit stuff with Marty Lurie, one of the hosts on the Giants radio network, and he made a point that the umpires may have bungled that stuff, too. At first I didn’t agree with him, but now I do. (As does a major league official who spoke to Fox’s Ken Rosenthal.) Here are the relevant portions of Rule 8.06:

(b) A second trip to the same pitcher in the same inning will cause this pitcher’s automatic removal;

(c) The manager or coach is prohibited from making a second visit to the mound while the same batter is at bat,

snip
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Jeff Fletcher | July 21, 2010

Today I’ve had a couple debates with my fellow media members about what the A’s need to do to get over the hump. It’s a pretty tough spot they’re in, because they really seem to be pretty far away from having the starting lineup of a contender. However, they’ve got a really good young pitching staff.

So I’ve been mulling over a few different paths the A’s could take to fix their lineup. I think there are pretty much three ways to do it, although it’s possible they’d do a combination of the three.
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Jeff Fletcher | July 20, 2010

I checked around today, and it seems that I was right about Ben Sheets. Because he missed the 2009 season, there will be no compensation for him if he signs elsewhere next year. That means the A’s won’t get any draft picks if they keep Sheets and let him walk at the end of the season.

That means there is less incentive for the A’s to keep him — although they may keep him anyway — and it also means that teams will be willing to give up less to get him. He has less value because he is not attached to two draft picks, as a potential Type A free agent (like Ted Lilly) would be.

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