On the Grill Oakland A’s

Minnesota Twins (27-25) v. Oakland Athletics (26-26)

Welcome to Baseball Prospectus' Friday July 29, 2005 2:00 PM ET chat session with Billy Beane.

Nathan (Chicago, IL): Have you and Joe Morgan ever set down to discuss your book?
Billy Beane: Haven't had the opportunity, and surprisingly, he only lives about a mile away from me.

Almost no in-depth discussion of the Oakland A’s can be had without at least mentioning Billy Beane, the most notorious, admired, reviled and respected of all current baseball GM’s. It was fitting as I sat down to research and write this week’s feature, intending to stay away from any Beane, that the lead paragraph on one of the main stories written by Jim Molony on the MLB web site would be anchored with a Beaneism.

“Oakland Athletics vice president and general manager Billy Beane has a theory. Beane believes it takes two months of the season to evaluate your club and another two months to fix any problems, and that leaves two months to make a run for the playoffs.”

Is it something I ate?
At 26-26 the A’s find themselves at the two-month point in the season where they need to fix what ails them in order to make their patented late-season surge. The big problem with the A’s so far has been injuries, so fixing might be more a matter of getting everyone healthy. The A’s have had 11 players on the DL, more than any of the 29 other teams, and have still managed to play .500 baseball. The A’s pitching has been outstanding, anchored by new staff ace Dan Haren, and that has largely kept them afloat, but what about all these injuries? Who is to blame – the players? The medical staff? Or is something more diabolical going on? Phillp Michaels of Baseball Toaster’s Catfish Stew Blog has an equally compelling theory.

“If luck, as Branch Rickey once suggested, is the residue of design, then it follows that bad luck is the residue of blueprints so ill-conceived they'd get you thrown out of architect school for crimes against humanity. Sure, the A's are experiencing a run of colossally bad luck when it comes to rounding up enough healthy bodies to field a team these days. But that's because the front office made a number of decisions when assembling a roster that made such a bleak End Times scenario increasingly probable.

Or to put it more plainly, Billy Beane seemed to go out of his way to load up on guys who have a knack for debilitating themselves one way or another.”

Michaels goes on to provide this chart, which borrows some of the coding from Will Carroll’s Positional Health Reports for color coding. (green for normal risk of injury, yellow for elevated, and red for high.)

His footnotes are also helpful in assessing what might be going on:

**Near as I can tell, Dan Johnson wasn't disabled, but he spent most of 2006 battling eye problems. I don't think that makes him injury prone, and the cause of his injury this year -- a collision during a spring training game -- is just one of those things that happens and not necessarily the sign of a player who can't stay healthy.

**Kotsay didn't go on the DL, but he only played in 31 of the A's final 51 games, owing to his achy-breaky back.

**Snelling was, of course, a Mariner in 2006. Here's the relevant portion of his BP Player comment: "It was another knee injury this time, the seventh surgery of the Aussie's career, and the fifth on his left knee."

**Like Kotsay, Street spent some non-DL downtime on the active roster in 2006; he missed 12 games between April 19 and May 1 with a strained right pectoral-minor muscle.

***So... looking at the above chart, the only 2007 DL occupants who should take anyone by surprise are Dan Johnson and Mike Piazza. (That is, if a 38-year-old ex-catcher getting injured can be considered surprising. But, since like Johnson, Piazza was knocked out by a freak happenstance of the game, it's really not accurate to say that the warning signs were there.) All the other players in that chart were either listed as high risks for injury by a man who makes his living tracking these sorts of things or had a history of spending time on the DL or both.

Hungry Like the Wolff
It should also be noted there's been a mangerial change on Oakland and a recent ownership change, which helped the A's secure a new stadium deal which will include some prretty high tech amenities. Bob Geren is the new manager, and like Beane himself Geren has been accessible to the non-traditional media as evidenced by this lenghty interview just a couple of days ago over at Atheltics Nation. Geren replaced Ken Macha.

Dating back to Art Howe's reign, it's long been rumored that Beane is heavily involved in the on-field management of the A's. After Macha was fired last season, some detail emerged about how involved beane is. Here's some of Macha's side of the story from the SF Chronicle:

Macha cited two postseason incidents involving what he perceived as a dispute with Beane.

"Billy wanted Kielty in the postseason, and I play Kotsay, and then Kotsay comes out and says bad things about me while I basically got fired because I played him," Macha said. "It's kind of sad."

You can read the other side of the story here. It's not suprising that Beane passed over fan and player favorite Ron Washington for Geren, since Geren was actually the best-man at Beane's marriage to his second wife. (As a sidenote, I wonder what type of statistical analysis Beane uses to pick a spouse?)

Stark Raving Mad
When a player gets a big contract it's usually open season when fans think the player is not performing to that contract. In 2004 Eric Chavez agreed to the richest contract in Oakland Athletic history. Today the debate rages on as to whether the A's kept the right talent in Chavez or if he is just not appreciated by the fans. With a body which seems to be betraying him, and offensive numbers which are below what the analysts predicted, Chavez is off to a slow start -- AVG .228 | HR 6 | RBI 24 | OBP .288 | SLG .396 and has been recently told by the club not to talk to the media about his injuries. Local columnist Dave Del Grande even think he deserves a spot on Jayson Stark's most Overrated list. For that reason. this week, we'll officially put Eric Chavez "On the Grill."

One Last Note
In trying to dig up some juicy dirt on Billy Beane, I did find this vintage 2004 interview with the Pioneer Press in which Beane discusses the music scene in San Diego of his youth and also which lists his top five albumbs of all-time:

BILLY BEANE'S FAVORITE ALBUMS
The Ramones, "Anthology"
Oasis, "What's the Story Morning Glory?"
The Who, "Tommy"
The Clash, "London Calling"
The English Beat, "Special Beat Service"
The Sex Pistols, "Never Mind the Bollocks"

The Slow Burn or Sizzling Slowey?
My good friend and business partner, a former Bay Area resident, told me if anything, great California cuisine is defined by its immigrants. So for this week's installment of "On the Grill" we take our inspiration from Oakland's International Blvd - home to some of the best mexican food on the planet. While I cannot divulge the secrets of the local taco trucks, I can share a classic Fajita recipe, which is perfect for your backyard grill or as was discussed earlier in the week, in a pinch, using cast iron cookware indoors. This recipe came from Cook's Illustrated, which, if you don't know, is the gold-standard of cooking magazines.

For the read meat lovers in the crowd, this recipe calls for Flank Steak which is a long, thin and fibrous, cut of boneless beef comes from the animal's lower hindquarters. It's usually tenderized by marinating, then broiled or grilled whole. This recipe calls for the steak to be doused with the lime juice and salt an pepper and cooked. I've also saturated the steak with lime juice and salt and pepper and let it marinate for as little as 30 minutes and as long as a couple hours. The nice thing about fajitas is, that much of the prep can be done ahead of time (like the salsa and guacamole) and everything else comes together really fast and are really quite beautiful.

Crowd Pleasing Fajitas
The ingredients go on the grill in order as the fire dies down: steak over a hot fire, vegetables over a medium fire, and tortillas around the edge of the medium to low fire just to warm them.
INGREDIENTS

Chunky Guacamole
3 medium avocados
2 tablespoons minced onion
1 medium clove garlic , minced
1 small jalapeño chile , minced (1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons)
1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro leaves
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin (optional)
2 tablespoons lime juice

Classic Red Table Salsa
3 large vine-ripened tomatoes (about 2 pounds), diced small
1/2 cup tomato juice
1 small chipotle chile , minced (about 2 tablespoons)
1 medium red onion , diced small
1 medium clove garlic , minced
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1/2 cup lime juice from 4 medium limes
Table salt

Fajitas
1 flank steak (about 2 1/2 pounds)
1/4 cup lime juice from 2 medium limes
Table salt and ground black pepper
1 very large onion , peeled and cut into half-inch slices
2 very large red bell peppers or green bell peppers, cored, seeded, and cut into large wedges
16 plain flour tortillas (10-inch)

Chunky Guacamole
1. Halve one avocado, remove pit, and scoop flesh into medium bowl. Mash flesh lightly with onion, garlic, jalapeño, cilantro, salt, and cumin (if using) with tines of a fork until just combined.
2. Halve and pit remaining two avocados, and prepare. Gently scoop out avocado into bowl with mashed avocado mixture.
3. Sprinkle lime juice over diced avocado and mix entire contents of bowl lightly with fork until combined but still chunky. Adjust seasoning with salt, if necessary, and serve. (Can be covered with plastic wrap, pressed directly onto surface of mixture, and refrigerated up to one day. Return guacamole to room temperature, removing plastic wrap at the last moment, before serving).

Classic Red Table Salsa
4. Mix all ingredients, including salt to taste, in medium bowl. Cover and refrigerate to blend flavors, at least 1 hour or up to 5 days.

Fajitas
5. For Charcoal Grill:Ignite about 7 quarts charcoal and burn until coals are completely covered with thin coating of light-gray ash, 20 to 30 minutes. Pile coals on one-half of grill bottom, position grill rack and heat until very hot (you can hold your hand 5 inches above grill surface for 2 seconds).
6. Generously sprinkle both sides of steak with lime juice, salt and pepper; place directly over coals or on gas grill grate and grill until well-seared and dark brown on first side, 5 to 7 minutes (4 to 6 minutes, covered, on gas grill). Flip steak using tongs; continue grilling on second side until interior of meat is slightly less done than you want it to be when you eat it, 2 to 5 minutes (3 to 5 minutes on gas grill) more for medium-rare (depending on heat of fire and thickness of steak). Transfer meat to cutting board; cover loosely with foil, and let rest 5 to 10 minutes. Slice very thin, on bias against the grain; adjust seasoning with additional salt and pepper.

7. When charcoal fire has died down to medium (you can hold your hand 5 inches above grill surface for 4 seconds), grill onions and peppers, turning occasionally, until onions are lightly charred, about 6 minutes, and peppers are streaked with dark grill marks, about 10 minutes. Remove onions and peppers from grill and cut peppers into long, thin strips; set aside. Arrange tortillas around edge of grill; heat until just warmed, about 20 seconds per side. (Do not dry out tortillas or they get brittle; wrap tortillas in towel to keep warm.) Remove to platter; set aside.

Serving Fajitas
8. Arrange sliced meat and vegetables on large platter; serve immediately, with tortillas, salsa, and guacamole passed separately

My beer of choice would be Pacifico - there might be better Mexican beer, but these seem to go down quite nicely. Enjoy the weekend.