The Rubik™ Lineup

It does not need to be said Chavez is struggling right now; the problem is that if you expect him to come out of his shell, why must he be in a crucial spot in the lineup? Last year, Beane didn't keep Rhodes as closer when he was failing even though he had the background to be a reliable reliever.

Towards the end of April, Macha stated that moving Chavez out of the third spot would not happen because he would turn around...

Chavez, batting .188 overall and an MLB-worst 0-for-17 with runners in scoring position going into the day, went to Macha and said he'd be fine if Macha wanted to move down him down in the batting order. Macha declined.

As of yesterday, Chavez's numbers with runners in scoring position has him ranked with the third-worst batting average, second-worst OBP, and third-worst slugging percentage(.182/.217/.273, 16 RBI's) of all major leaguers with at least 50 plate appearances.

Of course, this is nothing more then a slump that is to be remedied by continuous failure according to Macha. The fact is that Chavez is not producing the runs that signing the largest contract in A's history calls for. Even Chavez himself feels that contract is mainly based on RBI production; last year on an ESPN Sunday Night Telecast, Chavez told Joe Morgan that he would like to hit for a higher average but that the club signed him in-order to drive in the runs and anything else was just extra. As of right now, that contract is somewhat far from being honored.

So what is a team to do in this situation? Before yesterday's first inning thumping by the Devil Rays, the A's had a player-meeting and afterwards, they submitted a lineup to Macha; according to Ken Korach, Kendall was leading off, Kotsay was batting third and Chavez was forth. After reading the lineup, Macha said that he would not be using this lineup. His rejection of the lineup is pure irony to the phrase he loves to use: "The players write the lineups." This was one time where the players' pens seemingly have run out of ink...

The main issue here is that the A's continue to string out guys in positions where they are causing damage to the flow of the lineup. Having Hatteberg bat in the forth spot is not a great idea. He has a slugging percentage of .379 which is not bad compared to the current A's lineup but it is 41 points lower then last year which was pretty much a career year as he played in a career-high games as well as the most at-bats. And of course, Macha continues to gloss over the fact that Kielty has been a pretty good run producer compared to the rest of the lineup:

	G	AB	RBI	BB	OBP	SLG	OPS	PA:RBI
Bobby Kielty	31	102	17	16	0.403	0.422	0.825	6.941
Mark Kotsay	45	184	22	15	0.343	0.380	0.724	9.045
Eric Chavez	46	182	20	14	0.271	0.313	0.585	9.800
S. Hatteberg	44	165	18	14	0.339	0.370	0.708	9.944
E. Durazo	41	152	16	14	0.305	0.368	0.674	10.375
Eric Byrnes	36	120	11	9	0.333	0.408	0.742	11.727
Marco Scutaro	44	135	13	18	0.340	0.378	0.718	11.769
Jason Kendall	43	165	15	15	0.321	0.291	0.612	12.000
Mark Ellis	34	109	7	11	0.350	0.358	0.708	17.143

Macha's insistence for Chavez and others to continually bat in situations where they shouldn't be in boggles the mind. Looking at the top 6 players in the lineup, each player have 40 PA's where they have posted better numbers then the normal lineup used.

	OPS	PA
Mark Kotsay	0.724	201
Jason Kendall	0.582	129
Eric Chavez	0.570	150
Erubiel Durazo	0.666	84
Bobby Kielty	0.829	87
Scott Hatteberg	0.762	58
	OPS	PA	dL-OPS	dP-OPS
Mark Kotsay	0.724	201	0.000	0.000
Eric Byrnes	0.961	48	0.379	NA
Jason Kendall	0.659	51	0.089	0.077
Eric Chavez	0.641	47	-0.025	0.071
Bobby Kielty	0.829	89	0.000	0.000
Scott Hatteberg	0.762	56	0.000	0.000

How can Beane allow his so-called "puppet" to approach the lineup situation in a nonchalant manner? Hopefully Beane realizes that the old cliche' of having a lineup full of "6th and 7th place hitters" is far too applicable to this team.