HUDSON SIGNS!!

Now I'm willing to say it: I've lost confidence in Beane. Either he has been sipping his own version of the kool-aid, i.e., he's off in the ozone, buying the Schott-Hoffman financial scam, or he's too bought in to MLB as a concept to question it or try and change it. Either way, I've lost faith in Beane.

The A's are, by virtually every account, profitable. The value of the team has increased incrementally since Schott and Hoffman bought the team. The failure to sign Tejada, and now Hudson and Mulder, isn't about not having access to Yankee-level money. It's about Schott and Hoffman making a business decision to take the money and run and not reinvestit in the team. The Yankee thing is a cheap excuse for failure and selfishness.

Then there were the outrageous contracts handed out to Russ Ortiz, Jared Wright and other mediocre-to-moderately successful pitchers. When Beane saw the money that being handed over to these guys, he knew there was no way to keep Hudson.

Beane had a choice to keep Hudson for 2005 and get the Yankees' or Red Sox' first round draft pick next year or trade him. The pitching prospect offered by the Braves is exactly what one would hope a high draft pick would turn into -- plus he's nearly major league-ready right away. Add a relief pitcher with some star potential and a useful outfielder and Beane's course became clear.

Signing Hudson to the kind of deal it looks like he got in Atlanta and not signing Kendall wouldn't have forced the A's to make any cuts at all, and in fact, given a more reasonable fiscal approach to the team by ownership, it's possible they could have had Kendall and Hudson and Durazo. The Mulder deal by itself would have accomplished what the A's were trying to do, kept the team within it's budget, and made the team an ongoing favorite in the AL West.

Beane blew it.

It drives me nuts that the notion that the A's have a $50-$60M budget is accepted as gospel here. The A's could  have spent $70M a year, or more, during the entire Schott/Hoffman ownership, won a couple of World Series titles, and Schott and Hoffman still would have walked away with a profit selling the team. A's management made a choice not to emphasize winning and instead to emphasize massive profit-taking.  

I'm basing the notion that the A's have had more money to spend on a number of different reports. The heart of it is the sale price Schott and Hoffman getting from Wolff. If Schott and Hoffman had lost more than $10M/year operating the team, they still would have come out about even based on what they're getting from Wolff for the team. And that's before you figure the tax breaks of losing money. And that's assuming that attendance didn't spike because of going deeper into the playoffs or that winning a world championship with Foulke, Tejada and a deeper bench wouldn't bring in substantially more money than the A's actually did.

Of course, Schott and Hoffman have bragged repeatedly that they didn't actually lose money any single year they owned the A's. Ratto reported that they made $17M last year; I personally think that might be a little high, but it doesn't sound like it's particulary off, either. Let's be cautious and guess that they've made $5M/year on the team on average. That means that before taxes, Schott and Hoffman will end up taking out something like $150M from the A's, money not spent on ballplayers, or a new ballpark, or anything else that benefits anyone except Schott and Hoffman.

Yeah, the A's have won a ton of games over the last few years. Kudos to the farm system and the organization for drafting and developing far more talent than any other team in baseball in recent memory.

However, since I don't work for the "Sports Illustrated" swimsuit edition as an editor, I'm not grading them on their ability to find the hottest 24-year-olds. I'm looking at their ability to maximize the assets they have, and when I look at the talent the A's have produced, what I see is a deep organizational failure: a team that's produced the talent the A's have should have won world championships and should have averaged 100 wins a year. While making money.

Schott and Hoffman and Beane were presented with one of the truly great opportunities in baseball history, and they blew it. Flat out blew out. My guess is that never in our lifetime will we say such a confluence of young talent again here in Oakland -- or maybe anywhere else, either.  

Blez seems to think, after reading ACES, that signing Hudson would have been nearly impossible. I have no reason to doubt him. I spent most of last season thinking that Hudson would stay. I spent most of the season prior to that thinking that the A's would keep Mulder, due to his "golden boy" status.

Stupid me. I don't know how many times I told my brother that Zito would be the first one to go.

Everyone should read the interview with JP at battersbox. I think that some people here don't realize that there's more going on behind the scenes than what's written in the local paper.

Look, I'd like for the A's owners to put up their money to build a new ballpark and increase the payroll but there's no point in blaming payroll for their losses. The owners and Billy Beane put together teams that could have won but they simply failed to execute when the team need it most.  

When I was imagining the A's spending $70M, I was presuming that Giambi, Damon and one of the Big Three -- Mulder or Zito -- would be gone. $70M probably wouldn't be enough for all three of the Big Three (if they're pitching like the Big Three), and Giambi was asking for way too much money at the most easily replaceable position. (Our struggles with Hatteberg notwithstanding.) Damon just isn't good enough to make big-time money.

But $70M is enough to keep Chavy, Tejada, Hudson and Zito, plus Kotsay or Foulke, and fill around them with a combination of players we're bringing up (Crosby at 2B, Swisher in the OF, Johnson at 1B) and veterans. For example, if those guys I mentioned earlier are making $48M between them, that leaves $22M for the remaining 20 players. Nine or ten of those guys are going to be at or near the major league minimum, so that leaves about $18M for 10 guys. That's do-able.

If Hudson gets hurt, yeah, we're screwed. But so what? If Schilling gets hurt, the Red Sox are screwed. If Santana gets hurt, the Twins are screwed. If Halladay gets hurt, well, look what happened to the Jays. So what? I'd rather roll the dice on winning it all.

Finally, it's true that Schott and Hoffman are legally entitled to squeeze every single last fucking dime from the the A's. They bought it, they paid for it, it's theirs. But it's hard for me to see why I'd maintain a rooting interest in something that's strictly and wholly a business.