Behind the Green Door: The A’s Offense

One criticism levied against the A’s this year is that they are somehow too
dependent on home runs. There are two reasons to scorn this pointless
argument. One is that it’s essentially a last-gasp defense of batting
average: The A’s have a poor team batting average, and we all know that’s
bad, like pollution and spoiled milk and Limp Bizkit, so therefore they must
be too dependent on the things they are doing. But a better reason to
drop this argument like a bad habit is that it’s false.

The A’s do, indeed, score plenty of runs on the long ball–but that’s only
part of the story. The A’s offense is structured more around the base on
balls than anything else, because of an organizational belief that having
men on base is the most effective way to score runs. It’s not revolutionary
or even unusual; the Mariners and Padres also followed the Tao of Ted and
racked up the runs by drawing walks–even, in the Padres’ case, without much
power to speak of.

So when the A’s don’t homer, they still fare well by putting men on base.
And when the A’s do homer, they fare well because they tend to have men on
base already. Don’t believe me? Look at the numbers:

HR   Majors    A's

0      3.08   3.15
1      4.56   4.85
2      6.09   7.15
3      7.40   9.14
4      9.57  10.38
5     10.83    n/a
6      9.00    n/a
7     13.00    n/a

To read: When hitting zero homers in a game, the average major-league team
in 2001 scored an average of 3.08 runs, while Oakland scored an average of
3.15 runs.