Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: Oakland Athletics
Introduction & Glossary Post Here
The league’s second-worst team in 2022 was the Oakland Athletics. It’s October while I’m writing this, and teams like this tend to look completely different year-to-year. I imagine I will have to come back and clean this up later in one way or another, but we will do our best for now - and there’s really not much chance that this will be a compelling team for fantasy purposes in 2023.
The Athletics slugged a league-worst .346 and had the seventh-worst team ERA in the league at 4.52. A bottom three offense and a bottom ten pitching staff. That’s what you get for $61 million in payroll.
Pitchers
Ken Waldichuk
I think Waldichuk will be the only pitcher worth considering even in deep leagues next year. He is (was?) the Athletics’ top pitching prospect, he will be 25 on Opening Day, and he made his debut last season. Here’s what he did in the Majors
7 GS, 4.93 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 22.6 K%, 6.8% BB%
He joined Frankie Montas as the only Athletics pitcher to make at least five starts and post a strikeout rate above 20%. In the minors, split between the Yankees and Athletics, he did this
95 IP, 2.84 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, 34.5% K%, 9.1% BB%
That is a lot of innings to hold up a 34.5% K% for - so that’s pretty exciting.
That said, there’s still not a ton to GLEAN from minor league numbers and just seven Major League starts, so we’ll get a bit more granular, here is the arsenal breakdown.
A pretty slow fastball, but a solid 11.8% SwStr% on it (the league average for a four-seamer is 10.6%). That’s even more impressive once you see the 56.5% usage, which is much too high and will need to come down. The slider was also slightly above average at 17.9% (the league average is 16.5%), and the changeup was right at the league average.
He will probably need to lower that blue line next year and throw more of these sliders and changeups, but all three pitches seem to have merit right now so there’s seemingly a lot of upside here.
Here’s the CSW% and SwStr% by start graph:
You can see things were better at the end of the year rather than the beginning, which is largely meaningless but maybe a little bit more meaningful for a rookie just getting his bearings in the big leagues. Over his last five starts (which just takes away the first two, mind you), he went for a 24.3% K%, a 5.8% BB%, a good 13.2% SwStr%, but unfortunately still a bad 27.9% CSW%. It’s pretty weird to see a good walk rate and a good SwStr% without a good CSW%, but to me, that would just mean that he got very few called strikes. Maybe that makes sense since he was so fastball-heavy? Hitters were just sitting on the fastball and swinging at it when it was in the strike zone? They did crush the pitch when they hit it (16.1% Brl%, .371 xwOBA).
We’re just in “guesswork” land now, but I think a lot of the struggles he had just had to do with being too predictable and maybe throwing too many fastballs down the pipe - a lack of COMMAND, we could say. I know there’s a perceived difference between command and control, one meaning like “doesn’t walk people” and one meaning “throws quality strikes” but I don’t know which is which. We’ll say Waldichuk struggled with COMMAND.
So what do we do with Waldy? Where’s Waldo? I only have Josiah Gray ranked right now, so there are only two options of where to rank him. I am going to rank him ABOVE Gray, but yeah it stinks that he’s on a team where he’ll get almost no run support - but that ballpark though!
Verdict: I like Waldichuk for 2023. He’s going on my “long list”.
Cole Irvin
Alright fine, I’ll talk about him! The guy had a 4.03 ERA and a 1.16 WHIP - both numbers around the league average, which I guess makes him useful in those deep leagues. The reason I don’t want to talk about it is that he’ll be 29 on Opening Day and we have seen him just be mediocre for years now. To me, that takes away any upside right off the bat.
But then we see the 17.3% K% and the 10.7% SwStr% and the 26.8% CSW% and you’re just like okay unless this guy completely re-invents himself he’s just going to be the same boring guy that doesn’t help a fantasy team next year with no upside to boot. I don’t imagine he will bother with reinvention since he’s got plenty of job security in the Athletics rotation.
The one good thing to say about him is the walk rate is great and has been for two years. He’s a streamer against bad teams, and that’s who he will continue to be!
Oh wait there’s one more thing, he did that have that one insane start against the Marlins on August 24th when he randomly struck out 11 hitters and put up a 27.2% SwStr% on 92 pitches. After that, he never crossed six strikeouts or a 13% SwStr% again - baseball is great.
JP Sears
One more! I got excited about JP Sears early in the year when he made nine starts with the Yankees AAA team and put up a 1.67 ERA, a 0.72 WHIP, a 33.7% K%, and a 4.3% BB%. He even made a spot start in the Majors and looked good, I was all gung-ho about him for DFS.
He finished the year with these stats lines.
Minor Leagues
10 GS, 1.70 ERA, 0.73 WHIP, 33.3% K%, 3.9% BB%
Major Leagues
11 GS, 3.86 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, 17.7% K%, 8.0% BB%
Those lines are massively different. I’m really surprised to see the 18% K% after a 33% effort in the minors, usually, you don’t see the differences being nearly that huge.
For context, if we look at all AAA pitchers with at least 40 IP, Sears had the best K-BB% of anybody at that 29.4% mark. Better than Grayson Rodriguez.
Here’s his arsenal:
Pretty limited. Throws a ton of fastballs and did not have a good SwStr% or CSW% on the pitch. his slider was also underwhelming at just 12.3% SwStr%, and the changeup looked awful.
When you look at those numbers, the 33% K% in the minors becomes surprising. If I had to pick between two options
He was lucky in the minors
He was unlucky in the Majors
I would lean towards the first option, although there’s no reason that one of those options has to be true - I’m not sure why I even presented it like that.
Anyways, Sears’ minor league numbers were so crazy good that I figured I’d give him a 30-second look. I'm going to rank him above Cole Irvin, but it’s not something I would like to actually gamble on - I would rather take the unknown over the known mediocrity that deep in a draft.
Hitters
Sean Murphy
I really thought Murphy would get traded last July, but here we are. He is 28 now and just had another solid season at the plate (for a catcher). He led the team in plate appearances and hit .248/.328/.426 with 18 homers on a 10.6% Brl% with a 20.5% K%.
The 33.7 PA/HR feels low for a guy with that barrel rate and strikeout rate combination, but you’ll have that playing in The Coliseum. He DH’d 30 times, which I would have guessed would have been higher - he caught a bunch of games, which is a vote of confidence for his defensive ability.
Murphy will be a pretty appealing later-round catcher to me, I think. My general strategy is just to get a catcher who can do something right, whether it be batting average or some homers - and Murphy can certainly hit some homers without a terrible batting average. It was encouraging that he dropped the K% down four points from 2021 → 2022, and the age is right there in the sweet spot.
The yahtzee situation would be that Murphy gets traded to a contender with a good home ballpark in July and continues to DH when he’s not catching with that team. That is within the range of outcomes, I’m thinking Murphy might be one of my favorite catchers relative to ADP next year - but of course, we have to wait to see what the ADP is.
Seth Brown
He hit 25 homers and swiped 11 bags, joining the pretty short list of 20-10 guys, although he barely made it. He’s 30 years old, so I think we just know who Brown is at this point.
The 12.8% Brl% was great, and the strikeout rate of 26.5% came in several points below where I would have guessed. He hit the ball in the air a bunch (36% GB%) and posted a pretty decent xwOBA. The contact rate was low (70.4%), which makes the 26.% K% less believable.
I think I would just project Brown to do the same thing next year as he did this year, maybe with a few more strikeouts. His xBA (.247) beat his actual average (.230), but again I think he’s more of a 28% K% guy which would offset that if it happens.
We’re not going to spend time debating what Seth Brown’s batting average will be. This is a guy who can hit 30 homers and steal 10-15 bags (maybe more with the changes), which makes him relevant for fantasy purposes. I think he’s less likely to get traded than Murphy, but if he’s having a big year it’s not out of the question for a contender to want to get him on the cheap - and that of course will be what we’re hoping for.
His ADP will be really cheap, and I think he’ll probably be a fine buy. He’s going on the long list but not the shortlist.
Ramon Laureano
A bad year for Laureano who only saw 383 plate appearances due to the suspension and some injuries. Here’s what he did when on the field
.211/.287/.376, 27.2% K%, 6.5% BB%, 11.6% Brl%, 11 SB, .293 xwOBA
This is a big-time “boom or bust” profile here. Typically the green bars (Brl% and xwOBA) will follow each other, but not with Laureano. He was just swinging for the damn fences every time, it seems. bad contact rate, tons of fly balls, and nothing good really followed from it.
If we look at the season progression chart:
We can see things got way worse as the season rolled on. You also see a lot of missed time there in August - so maybe the bad results were due to injury.
Prior to August 1st, he was hitting .224/.306/.407 with a 25.2% K% and a 13.2% Brl% with a .320 xwOBA - so those numbers were significantly better than what he ended the season with.
His max sprint speed was right around league average
Ramon Laureano Sprint Speed: 27.6 ft/sec
Lg Average Sprint Speed: 27.2 ft/sec
So that’s interesting, I thought he was a bit faster than that. Here’s what he’s done in steals over the years
2019: 485 PA, 13 SB, 14 attempts
2020: 222 PA, 2 SB, 3 attempts
2021: 378 PA, 12 SB, 17 attempts
2022: 383 PA, 11 SB, 17 attempts
That’s a steal attempt every 22.4 PAs for the past two seasons. That would translate to something like 27 attempts over a full season, and we would have to raise that with the new stuff going on next year - so we’re talking about a legitimate chance at 25-30 steals if things break the right way.
It’s also a CONTRACT YEAR for Laureano. He will be 29 at the trade deadline, making it pretty unlikely that the Athletics would be looking to give him another contract after next season, which makes a trade pretty likely here if he’s healthy and productive.
He’s a frustrating player, and he’s had trouble staying on the field, but I think the ADP is likely to be much too low for a guy with this much power and speed. I’m liking these Athletics way too much!
I think that’s the list for Oakland, but again - please let me know if I seem to have missed anybody.
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