What a crazy offseason? What became apparent after yesterday is that aside from Billy Beane stock piling young arms, also does the same for outfield options. With 8 outfielders on the roster (9 if you count Brandon Allen), what combination of this will be the most effective for the A's?

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News that the A's have signed Yoenis Cespedes to a 4 year, $36M deal has Oakland fans legitimately excited. It's also another move that smacks of confidence that the team will get the go ahead to build a new stadium soon, though Lew Wolff recently acknowledged that in regards to San Jose, "soon" probably meant for the 2016 season. So how does Cespedes, a 26-year old OFer under contract through 2015, fit in with the hopes of building a new stadium to move into for the 2016 campaign?

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I first saw it on Twitter as a "trending topic," so I have no idea who to credit for the news, but I've seen it several places from excellent sources. The A's have agreed to a four year, $36 million dollar deal with Cuban defector Yoenis Cespedes.

I'm no prospect maven and I know next to nothing about Cuban baseball, but Baseball Prospectus's Kevin Goldstein rated Cespedes as the 20th best "prospect" in baseball, if you can consider a 26-year old a prospect, which would give the A's 7 guys in his Top 101.

Here's Cespy's Wikipedia page for those who want more information, and more analysis will follow in the coming days. I don't know if he has a nickname already, but I started with Cespy, and I expect significant contributions in the comments.

As soon as the A's dealt Trevor Cahill, they set their sights on acquiring Tom Milone. Not because Milone will be a good pitcher, mind you, but rather because the A's always need to have at least one highly controversial figure on AN -- a polarizing player whose "true ability" no one can agree on -- and with Jack Cust already gone, and now Cahill gone, there was a void to fill. Enter Milone.

Here are some objective facts about Milone followed, after the jump, by some observations I will add to the analysis and overall conversation of "What should we expect? How good can this guy be? How good will this guy be?"

• Milone was a 10th round draft pick.
• Milone turns 25 on Thursday.
• Milone's fastball, in his 2011 big league stint with Washington, averaged 87.8 MPH.
• Milone's K/9IP rate at AAA last year was 9.4 and his K/BB ratio was 9.7.
• Milone's K/9IP rate in his minor league career is 8.1 and his K/BB ratio is 5.5.
• Milone's repertoire is a fastball, changeup, cutter and curve.

What does it all mean? I sure don't have all the answers, but I may have a few useful pieces to add to the puzzle.

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Community Prospect List:

#1: Jarrod Parker, RHP

#2: Michael Choice, CF

#3: AJ Cole, SP

There are about 11 or so weeks until Opening Day, so we will be doing one voting thread per week until the season starts. So get ready, set and VOTE!

The Poll Option won the vote last week, so we will be going with that from now on. Please no ballot stuffing, though ;)

Please add suggestions below for players to be added to next week's poll. If you agree with a suggestion, please comment and rec it to make it more visible.

Happy voting!

David Fung did a good story on 1/30 about the A's projected wins for 2012 using two different projection systems: MARCEL and Clay Davenport. MARCEL is a very basic projection system that weights past seasons in a 5/4/3 fashion, finds a players' league average, and uses a age adjustment to come up with a projection about player future performance. A basic level, this is really what all projection systems do: use some combination of past performance and age to attempt to find the next year's performance. Davenport, BP's PECOTA, RotoChamp, CAIRO, ZiPS, and Bill James are other projections you might have heard of.

I'm going to focus on ZiPS here because a) its data are readily available and complete and b) because I think it is by far the most pessimistic

And here they are:

2012 A's Projections by ZiPS

What I did with that was put it into Excel and scrapped the guys who aren't on the 40 man roster. I know Dan Zymborski (the curator of the ZiPS model) errs on the side of more data, but it's really not helpful for me to see Grant Green or Stephen Parker on this list. So, they're gone.

What I'm going to try and do is try to point out where ZiPS might be too pessimistic on the A's. Let's start with the hitters:

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This just looks all kinds of wrong:

via a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net

From BANG's Joe Stiglich:

If the team does indeed move to San Jose, they will be called the "San Jose A’s," which has been assumed. Wolff pointed out how the franchise has moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland, always keeping the "Athletics" label. There was a stuffed Stomper on hand at Wednesday’s event, with the A’s mascot wearing a "San Jose Athletics" uniform.

I know I've heard it, typed it, thought it... but until I saw the Stomper doll with "San Jose" where "Oakland" should be, it didn't really sink in.

It doesn't look right. Doesn't feel right. Doesn't seem right.

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