malvasia bianca

I haven’t been all that excited about the upcoming baseball season so far, but here it is. Kicking off with an Indians / White Sox game; I can support that.

I picked up the new Baseball Prospectus yesterday. Some nice tweaks to PECOTA (their player forecasting system), and the articles on the Indians and A’s were both interesting and cause for hope.

And then, for Jordan’s sake, I read the article on the O’s. A couple of quotes:

The 1978 Oakland A’s. One of the most disorganized teams of all time, worse even than the 2005 Orioles. Winners of three straight World Series just four years earlier, owner Charley Finley was unable and unwilling to adjust to the free agent revolution. He dumped everybody in an effort to save money, including his entire front office, eventually running the team himself with the help of a teenage kid who would latter become MC Hammer.

In case you’re curious, this is in the context of teams who were 14 games over .500 at some point in the season and later fell to 14 games under .500. (As the O’s did last year, while last year’s A’s and Astros managed the reverse.) Another “interesting” bit:

The best aggregate DH performance by a Baltimore team this millennium is the weak .250/.329/.398 posted by the 2001 squad. Since then, they’ve actually declined every year.

Ouch. Last year, in case you’re curious, their DH’s produced a BA/OBP/SLG line of .210/.277/.362.