I have a lot of photos I’ve taken over the last 8 years that I’ve never shared anywhere. This has partly been due to a lack of a good library system, and partly due to not wanting to publish my favorite photos to someone else’s website. Lightroom¹ has addressed the former, and as I’ve been writing more regularly here on my own website, I realized I had a solution to the latter.

My plan is to post the photos periodically, but in no particular order. I actually posted the first one a few weeks ago: Warning. Initially most of them will probably be shots that I’m happy with exactly as they came out of the camera with almost no post-processing. This is not because I have something against post-processing. It is because I don’t really know what I’m doing when it comes to post-processing, so if the photo didn’t look pretty good to me raw out of the camera, it probably didn’t get flagged to be shared. My hope is to learn more about post-processing and start to do some of that as well. I’ve already learned about correcting white-balance and I’m shooting in RAW to maximize the potential changes I can make.

Some of the photos might make for good desktop backgrounds so please feel free to send me a message on Facebook, Twitter, or via email if you’re interested in that. Also, I’m looking to improve, so if you have any feedback, please feel free to let me know that as well. Ultimately though I’m posting these for myself more than anyone else.

I want to spend more time creating and less time consuming.

Camera: Canon EOS REBEL T2i
Exposure: 1/60 sec at f/5.6
Focal Length: 135mm
ISO: 400
Flash: Did fire

On our vacation to Hawaii a few years ago we got to tour a World War II submarine while visiting Pearl Harbor. Before we left on the trip, I rented a Canon EOS Rebel T2i from LensRentals.com and had it scheduled to be delivered to us on Oahu. I took some of my favorite pictures during the tour and with that camera.

This has been my desktop background for awhile now and I think it works pretty well for that purpose. If you’d like a copy to use as a desktop background feel free to send me a message on twitter or app.net (I’m @stephenwashburn on both services).

I’m not sure this can be called “reviving a series” if I only ever posted one. But since its been over six months since I posted that, this is my attempt at revival.

Even the most ardent non-sports fan knows its the big flashy plays that capture our attention. The slam dunk in basketball, the long touchdown reception in football, or the puck flying past the goalie in hockey. ESPN has built an empire on sharing those plays with us in condensed form every night. They have even capitalized on the shortest form of communication available today - the hashtag - with #SCTop10. Its not their fault of course, they’re simply leveraging the short attention span that is so prevalent in today’s culture.

While I enjoy these plays as much as the next fan¹ what I really love about sports is when you are watching closely enough to see the subtle play that happened before the flashy one. The subtle but convincing shoulder and head fake that the wide receiver used to get the cornerback to turn his hips the wrong way, leaving him out of position and unable to make a play on the pass. The ball fake accompanied by a player lifting his pivot foot almost off the floor which puts the defender so far out of position that theres an easy step-through and dunk. Or the hockey player who holds onto the puck for a brief second longer than the defender expects, while simultaneously shifting his weight so that he rotates around the puck putting himself in a perfect position to send a pass through the newly vacated passing lane.

These are the plays that never make SportsCenter except as throw away lead-ins to the actual highlight, but these are the plays that make me want to watch 162 baseball games, 82 basketball and hockey games, and 16 football games. I can see the highlight reel plays on the highlight reel…

Background

If you’re not a diehard baseball or Oakland A’s fan you would be forgiven for not noticing the moves they’ve been making this offseason. But if you have noticed the moves, then you may have thought, like me, that they seemed to be making a lot more of them than normal, particularly compared to last offseason. Most of my sports opinions, while well thought out, aren’t necessarily backed by data. So in an effort to prove my theory about the A’s roster moves the last few years I went in search of data.

The Data

My searches of baseball statistics sites (including MLB.com) didn’t turn up the kind of data I was looking for. Fortunately the current rosters are documented on Wikipedia, and appear to be “fed” by the MLB team’s own websites. Since Wikipedia also keeps track of all changes to a document I was able to get snapshots of the roster at different times.

My first thought was to compare opening day rosters between seasons to identify changes. As I collected this information however I realized that there was an issue with this data: some players were on the A’s opening day roster one season, were NOT the next season, and then WERE the third season. While it was possible that a player had been traded, and then traded back¹, what I realized had ACTUALLY been happening was that the A’s had sent the player down to the minor leagues and back up to the major leagues in such a way that they didn’t show up on the opening day roster.

At this point I came back to some data that I had initially dismissed. Wikipedia has articles documenting each season for each team. For example: the 2012 Oakland Athletics Season documents a lot of information about the season, and for me the key one was the roster which listed every player that was on the roster at any point in the season. I don’t know if they have this for EVERY team (I think they probably do) or how many seasons back it goes (at least five) but it was enough for me to see some trends.²

The Results

My initial data, while incomplete/partial did show me pretty clearly that my assumption was wrong. Not only had the A’s not turned the roster over more this most recent offseason, they had actually turned it over less. The more detailed data backed me up as well. In terms of percentages of the team to return, here is what it looks like:

so clearly despite the team making some very visible and un-Oakland like moves this offseason:

• Scott Kazmir - $22 Million dollars?! Who are these big spenders!
• Jim Johnson - A trade for a player pending arbitration⁴?!?! Certainly not in Oakland!
• Craig Gentry - An in division trade? Doesn’t seem like those happen very often…

So the A’s are actually returning almost two-thirds of their roster. On top of that, of the 25 players currently slated to be returning from last season, 16 of them are going to be in at least their third season. That’s 40% of the roster thats been a part of two consecutive division titles. This got me thinking about how much of a difference a high percentage of returning players might make to a team’s record:

Obviously there’s a lot more that goes into a successful baseball team then keeping the same players. If the players you have aren’t talented enough, or the mix isn’t right, or the manager doesn’t use them correctly, keeping the same roster would just result in being consistently bad or even worse, consistently inconsistent. For example: while the team’s perfomance decreased from 2010 to 2011 as they returned fewer player, the team then improved from 2011 to 2012 while returning fewer players. 2012 however was also the first full season for Bob Melvin as the manager, and the changes between those two seasons were predominantly starting pitching which tends to have a pretty significant impact on the success or failure of your team. Even if I could account for those factors five years of data for one team clearly isn’t enough. Still, when a team is winning, I have to believe its better to bring the players back if you can.

The Takeaway

When I came into this I thought I knew the narrative:

In 2012 the Oakland A’s were entering their first full season under new manager Bob Melvin. That team surprised the baseball world by overcoming one of the largest and latest deficits⁵ to win the division and spend exactly one regular season day in sole posession of first place. That team mostly stayed together for 2013 and managed to not only hold their own against the big spending division rival Angels and Rangers but win the division again, and by a much more comfortable margin this time, narrowly missing out on the best record in the American League. Going into 2014 it looked like the A’s ownership group was opening up the checkbook and making some extra moves to try and help the team get over the hump and see some playoff success.

The reality however seems to be that while the A’s have certainly made some unorthodox (for them) moves this offseason, the team is for the most part sticking together. And despite what some analysts may think about their chances in what has clearly become the big-spending division (Robinson Cano to Seattle, Prince Fielder to Texas, Albert Pujols to Anaheim in 2012 and Josh Hamilton in 2013) the two time defending American League West champions seem to me like the team to beat. And there is definitely some national media which is taking note of the great moves the A’s made this offseason.

To be continued?

If I can find the time I would love to compile this same data for every team in the league and see what correlation there is between roster turnover and success. As I noted before there’s a lot more to winning in baseball, but I think its interesting and to see what kind of relevance it really has you need a larger sample size than this. If you happen to know of someone or somewhere that has already compiled this data or done this analysis please feel free to let me know.

I’d also love to hear any feedback you may have on my assessment. Did I miss something obvious? or maybe something not so obvious? Please, feel free to let me know!

References

• 2009 Oakland Athletics Roster
• 2010 Oakland Athletics Roster
• 2011 Oakland Athletcis Roster
• 2012 Oakland Athletics Roster
• 2013 Oakland Athletics Roster
• 2014 Oakland Athletics Roster