Now that the A's offseason plans seem to be coming together I wanted to take a look at their chances of beating the team they finished second to in their division the last two years.

According to the Zips projections made available by Dan Szymborski at www.baseballthinkfactory.org we have the advantage at many offensive positions most notably at SS, and 3B. The Angels RF covered for now and haven't made any major offseason moves thus far but here are the projections for these three spots.

Name      Avg     OBP    SLG
Crosby    .270    .353   .448   
Cabrera   .264    .317   .379
AVG AL SS .276    .331   .412   

Chavez    .278    .361   .493
McPherson .249    .316   .493
AVG AL 3B .266    .329   .428

Bradley   .291    .378   .462   
Vlad      .327    .400   .571
AVG AL RF .270    .332   .451

As it stands right now the Angels will put Mathis or a younger Molina in at catcher who both project to have a disappointing year and by disappointing I mean terrible. They can't get Bengie back and both catchers have a projected OBP of .281 while Kendall's is .364.

The Angels also have Hector Corrasco slated to be their number 5 starter even though he has started 6 games in his career and didn't play in the MLB in 2004...

Looks like they gotta trade some of that "amazing" farm system or wait until after next year to see the playoffs.