Comments on: An Interview with Farhan Zaidi of the Oakland A’s http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/index.php/2005/05/an-interview-with-farhan-zaidi/ Economic Thinking about Baseball Sun, 09 Jan 2011 17:16:18 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Dave Kemp http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/index.php/2005/05/an-interview-with-farhan-zaidi/comment-page-1/#comment-222 Dave Kemp Wed, 01 Jun 2005 08:18:45 +0000 http://bradbury.sewanee.edu/wordpress/index.php/2005/05/an-interview-with-farhan-zaidi/#comment-222 Thanks for the interview. Fascinating. I now wonder if the A's employ any sort of "roving" analyst/sabermetricians in addition to the front line, Zaidi types. I suppose this would be more like the role Bill James has with the Red Sox. Thanks for the interview. Fascinating.

I now wonder if the A’s employ any sort of “roving” analyst/sabermetricians in addition to the front line, Zaidi types. I suppose this would be more like the role Bill James has with the Red Sox.

]]> By: Chuck Oliveros http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/index.php/2005/05/an-interview-with-farhan-zaidi/comment-page-1/#comment-200 Chuck Oliveros Wed, 25 May 2005 17:38:28 +0000 http://bradbury.sewanee.edu/wordpress/index.php/2005/05/an-interview-with-farhan-zaidi/#comment-200 I find his remarks about Charles Thomas to be interesting. Zaidi is a numbers guy. Last year Charles Thomas had an anomalous season at age 26. All studies of development and hitting would suggest that Thomas isn't going to be able to hit at the major-league level in the future. I'm a Braves fan and saw a good bit of Thomas last year. My observations would confirm that opinion. He started to struggle at the end of the season because pitchers found the holes in his swing. It appeared to me that he couldn't really hit a breaking pitch. This brings up an interesting point. When a rookie comes up to the majors, most teams seem to feed him a steady diet of fastballs, presumably to see if he can handle a major-league fastball. That seems unintelligent to me. Anybody who can make it to the upper levels of the minors can probably hit the fastball. If I were a manager, I'd first see if a rookie could hit a good breaking pitch or change-up. Over the years, Bobby Cox has been good at exploiting this tendency on the parts of other clubs. He'll bring up a guy to fill in, like Thomas or Nick Greene and exploit the fact that it's going to take a 100 AB's or so before the league figures out how to pitch them. I find his remarks about Charles Thomas to be interesting. Zaidi is a numbers guy. Last year Charles Thomas had an anomalous season at age 26. All studies of development and hitting would suggest that Thomas isn’t going to be able to hit at the major-league level in the future. I’m a Braves fan and saw a good bit of Thomas last year. My observations would confirm that opinion. He started to struggle at the end of the season because pitchers found the holes in his swing. It appeared to me that he couldn’t really hit a breaking pitch.

This brings up an interesting point. When a rookie comes up to the majors, most teams seem to feed him a steady diet of fastballs, presumably to see if he can handle a major-league fastball. That seems unintelligent to me. Anybody who can make it to the upper levels of the minors can probably hit the fastball. If I were a manager, I’d first see if a rookie could hit a good breaking pitch or change-up. Over the years, Bobby Cox has been good at exploiting this tendency on the parts of other clubs. He’ll bring up a guy to fill in, like Thomas or Nick Greene and exploit the fact that it’s going to take a 100 AB’s or so before the league figures out how to pitch them.

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