A Free Agent Preview: My dreams

Before you read this (or more likely read a paragraph and then scroll to the comments, of which they'll probably be none) and ask me why I'd waste so much time, I'd like to say that I like, no I love, writing and reading about the A's. I'm sure many people on this site would agree wholeheartedly or why else would they/you be here?  That's why I spent so much time on this writing.  I did it to fill up this off-season, and get over our elimination; I did it for myself.

So what is it I decided to do? I looked at the immediate future of what our team could do in this six-month waiting period, six months of sheer boredom (I'll call this period school) until I get to see my A's again.  I hope that the team I see next year will be able to go farther into October than the A's we just saw and that's hard to do.  So, in what ways can we improve this team? How can we get those players who'll improve us?

The easiest answers to those two questions are through in-house promotions and through free agency (I'm not paying the players, so I can say this).

What spots do we have open for next year?  We have four FA's this year.  Z, Payton, Kennedy, and Thomas are the players we have to replace.  That's a plus starter, a five hitter, a solid setup guy, and a forty homer hitter we had in '06. IMO, we can replace those four roles and more if we make the right moves.  So, who's out there?

Let's start out with call-ups. What players in our system might have potential to be solid major-leaguers in the next year or two?  I think our list to choose from is this: Dan Meyer, Shakespeare tragedy, Connor Robertson, Jerome Williams, Windsor, Komine, Kohn, Casilla, Flores, Mabeus, Barton, TBuck, Melillo, Baker, Braden and John Brown.  Obviously we won't have 15 rookies on the team.  Which few are the crème de la crème?  

There are lots of pitchers, many of them bound to be journeymen on that list.  In our pen, we obviously have a solid foundation for any callups to join in the Holy Trinity, aka Kiko Streetscherer.  When it comes to bullpens, there are three things I believe.  I'm of the opinion that the best way to build a bullpen is to get a bunch of minimum salary guys and have them Duke it out for their spots.  Since we have a fantastic trio in our pen already, most of the other bullpen guys will not get major innings but rather the "Yabu" innings anyways.  Why not experiment with young pitchers: every once in a while, a Gaudin emerges.  Another belief of mine is that failed starters, or good starters who can't fit in one's rotation, can become great bullpen guys.  My third belief is that competition brings out the best in everybody.  

What's my solution?  Have Flores, Robertson, and Shakespeare tragedy as favorites for any open bullpen spot (from Kennedy or from a trade), but allow all of the aforementioned minor league pitchers to compete for a job.  As for the rotation, I state my views further down, but it's much the same: lots of competition with favorites as the overdogs (is that a word?  If not, it should be) but not with guaranteed spots.

A for the hitters, I think Barton, TBuck, and Melillo are in our future plans, and so we should let them develop until they're fully ready in AAA, and not start the arby clock too early.  Brown and Baker should try their hardest to get bench spots.  As for Melhuse, I think we should trade him for some minor league depth; not only because his stats are spiraling downward, but also because if some other team will give him more PT, we owe him enough to give him that opportunity.  

Now on to out-of-house solutions.  To say this off-season's free agent pool is stacked would be the understatement of the, um, off-season.  When I write this, the list of FA's I wouldn't be mad if we signed filled up a page in Word with a player per line.  That's quite a few players to sort through, and that's why this is quite a long diary.  

Note: I'm leaving out guys who I think have a snowball's chance in hell of not re-signing with the team they're on (Clemens, Biggio, Smoltz, Mo, Bernie) or of their option not being picked up (Dye, Mo, Posada, Schilling).  I'm also not including international players such as Matsuzaka, as I am not well enough informed.

So to start us out, who is out there?  And what do we know about the market? And how much money do we have to spend?  Well, we know, or can find out by scrolling down, that there is an abundance of players available.   The key is will this amazing amount of depth spur the market into being ridiculously overpriced or the exact opposite?

So, before we examine this year's crop, how much can we spend (not only money-wise but draft pick wise)?  This year, we will have four free agents:  Kennedy, Payton, Thomas, and Z. Z is obviously an A FA and the only question is whether we can re-sign or whether we resign him. I would strongly bet on the latter, and in that case, we will get our two compensatory picks. As for others, it's not so obvious.  Kennedy may have pulled a '05 Eyre; I would imagine he would still be a B or C, but it's possible he's an A.  Payton, like RicarJoe, I'm not sure about. He certainly did better than I expected on offense this year.  Plenty of bad OFers make the list as A FA's so maybe Jay will qualify.   As for Thomas, I'm pretty sure he will be an A FA.  I also think Frank is the most likely to re-sign with us.  I don't know how much loyalty he has to us; he has only been here one year. Will he again sign a small (5 mil + incentives a year for 2 years?) contract loaded with incentives to come back to the A's?  (I know I'm asking a lot of questions, partly because there are always plenty of unknowns in the off-season). Hurt was not just a big part of our offense this year; he was our offense.  Our priority signing should be him.  

So, if all four of our FA's leave, and I think we will, and should, offer at least arby to all 4, that could mean as many as 9 first round draft picks if they sign with other teams!  From what little I know of college and HS players, the 2007 draft is a much better year than this past one, which most experts considered weak.  They also called our draft one of the worst for the draft, partially because we had no 1st rounder (though I hope Cahill will make them eat their words on that).  I don't know the rules exactly on compensation picks if we lose an A FA at the same time as signing one, but I'm assuming we would just lose compensation picks that we gained.  If that is the case, we could sign a couple of FA's and still keep plenty of first rounders.  

No matter what class distinction these 4 FA's get at the end of the year, an interesting occurrence looks to be happening.  Z, this year, made $8.5 mil; Thomas, $3.1 mil; Kennedy, $2.6 mil; and Payton, $4 mil.  That's a total of $18.2 million free this off-season from those 4.  Plus, in 2007, the Pirates will pay $5 mil of Kendall's $13 and therefore, there will be a decrease in how much we're paying him this year to next year by about $3 mil.  Some, of course, of this money will go to in-house raises such as to Haren, Ellis, Bunnies and Harden as well as arby for Calero, Duke, and Bradley. If we don't re-sign Z, or Frank (and maybe if we re-sign him), we should still have some free money even with Wolff or Fisher upping the salary (which they could do).  Which brings us back to who is available in our price range.    

Let's start with relief pitchers.  They are the group with the least depth available and the group we're in least need of.  Therefore, I'm not going to spend much time on them aside from mentioning how I think the market will fare.  The relief pitchers also give us an idea how other groups will spark the market as the RP year of FA depth was last off-season.

In the '05-'06 off-season, the abundance of relief pitchers seemed to incite many teams into overspending for them (mainly the Cubs and we saw how that worked out for them; I'm not saying Eyre and Howry spurred Chicago's funk just that they didn't propel them anywhere except the cellar).  The relief pitcher market continued to be overvalued into the season itself.  The Reds traded Lopez and Kearns for relievers (a trade which I still think was a great one, one of the best trades since AJ, for the Nats). So who is available this offseason? The big name FA RPs this offseason include: Chadford,
B Koch (former A's closer 1), K. Foulke* (former A's closer 2), A Rhodes (former A's closer 3), O Dot (former A's closer 4), Gagne*, Everyday Eddie, Baez, King, Kline, Percival, Timlin, and Wickman.   The lone A reliever possibly leaving is Kennedy.  

Who on that list would we want to sign and who will be within our price range?  Certainly Eddie would be affordable coming off a bad year and he is a Bay Area product; he's also having surgery and will most likely not be offered arby.  Also because of the surgery, he's a 2007 Dotel-type gamble. But, he is also the best FA fit to replace Kennedy (as I think we will let him go; a 1.5 WHIP, and an ERA < 1.5 do not mesh).  Foulke or Percival might be reasonable gambles; both were dominant once and both have struggled with injuries and performance and so might come for cheap without suffering loss of draft picks.  In any case, Foulke, Percival, nor Eddie, are worth more than two year reasonably cheap deals.  

I think Gagne (if the Dodgers let him go), Baez, and Wickman (who I don't like anyway) are out of the range we should be willing to pay to make modest improvements on an already very good pen.  As for Chadford, King, and Kline, I don't see space for them in our pen.  For obvious reasons, Rhodes (nor Koch) couldn't come here.  And I would be shocked if Timlin left Boston.  

So what about the people who take us to the bullpen?  The A's have been known throughout this six-year era of success as a team that relies on pitching, and as we found out this year, and the White Sox learned the previous, good pitching can take you far.  And as everyone in baseball knows, a certain eccentric, surfing pitcher of ours, who has helped define this recent epoch, is a FA this year.  And he chose to rehire the Devil himself.  I would be very surprised if we could sign him to a contract that wouldn't become an albatross (What flavor is it?).

Luckily, there are plenty of other SPs available.  A few include Schmidt, Pettite, Mulder (do we gamble?), Maddux, Glavine*, Buerhle*, Miller, Mussina, Wood*, and Lilly. Now instead of getting sucked into the massive bidding wars that are sure to follow Z, Schmidt, and Buerhle if the Sox don't pick up his option (possible if not likely), I suggest we try to sign some of the second-tier talent (which this off-season is still some damn fine players) before the market explodes.  I say we should aggressively pursue Wood and Lilly and try to sign both for what the annual price it would take to sign Z (around 15 mil).  

My idea is that one of the things that the market undervalues is depth.  It is evidenced in some of the platoons across the league (take Broussard/Perez or the Red's catching: the latter which may break up this off-season). These platoons can put up some stats that rival superstars and because neither platoon-mate puts up the monster stats themselves that they put up together, it is possible to sign both for under the monetary value of their production.  This is why we should get as much depth as possible to try to recoup the loss of Z.  We can't afford the player who will put up those stats by himself, but we might be able to afford a multitude who could replace Z's value.  We've already got a lot of lower level depth. We have four young guns who could fight for a rotation spot (Gaudin, Windsor, Komine, possibly Williams) and hopefully two southpaws to join them soon (Braden, Meyer).  We have two reasonably cheap former starters who can fill in for injuries (Halsey, Saars).  And we have three young pitchers and one vet already in the rotation (Harden, Haren, Loaiza, Cupcakes).  What we don't have is any lefties or any #1 starters who are constantly healthy.  Lilly and Wood could help fill those holes, of course, but there are also two starters who I've been harping on about. They are both coming off mediocre seasons and we might be able to trade for them with bullpen pieces as both teams have mediocre pens.  They are Oliver Perez (watch Kendall work wonders on him again) and K machine Doug Davis.  

My dream is this: have all of them compete for rotation spots and non-holy trinity bullpen spots and watch a plus starting rotation emerge.  Plus, Wood and Harden can injure themselves and we can replace them easily.   We also would have chips to trade should we need them later in the off-season or midseason.  

While both the SP and the RP FA crops are deep, the hitters put them to shame.  And guess what our biggest weakness was this year? A coincidence?  The biggest names are Soriano, Lee, Lugo, Floyd, and Huff.  But there are also a few slightly worse but still good hitters available: our own Thomas, Nomah, Zaun, Nixon, Torii, Hillenbrand, Millar, Stairs, Dmitri, Loretta, Wilson, Edmonds*, L. Gonzalez, J. Guillen, JayPay, R. White, G. Sheffield*, Bonds, Burnitz*, Cameron*, Lofton, and Preston Wilson.  Our priority should, of course, be our best hitter this season, but there is one name I think we should seriously consider.  

I will get grilled for this, which is why I waited until all of you are asleep before mentioning this idea.  I think we should try to sign Bonds if he will cost less than $12 mil.  Now before you boo me offstage, think about it.  We are a team in a two-team market in which the other team has more fans, more money, and a better stadium.  What is a better way to convert bandwagon fans and get more people to the stadium than getting the second all time home run hitter who has controversy surrounding him and uniting two certain hall-of-famers both as close to records as a season?  Bonds would more than pay for his salary in jerseys and attendance.  Plus, he needs to come to the AL.  He shares the DH spot with Thomas but plays in left most of the time.  He plays bad defense but we have other defenders to make up for it.  He is a clubhouse cancer but if there's any clubhouse Bonds could fit into it's the A's.  Bonds is also in the only market that still applauds him and by coming to us, he comes to fans, especially the bandwagoners, who already accept him.  And most importantly, he brings his walks with him. And because of all his faults, he could come for less money than his performance merits.  

To recap, I've suggested we sign 5 FA's: Thomas, Bonds, Wood, Lilly, and Eddie.  Together, they might cost as much as $30 mil, but we free up around $15 mil this next year.  We could also try to trade away some of our bigger contracts to teams that could afford it.  How about Loaiza and bullpen pieces to the Mets for Oliver + others?  Wolff may also want to show to A's fans that he's willing to spend a bit and this hypothetical spending spree would certainly convert more bandwagon fans to join our cause.  If these moves could lead to a ring, and we were damn close this year, I think it would pay off, for me (which is of course the whole reason we should do this), and for Fish and Wolf.          

Author's note: I do not expect all, or even any, of my ideas in this diary to be realistic.  They are merely my dreams. I tried to keep them on the verge of being possible (as close to reality as my dreams can go) and I also tried to give a preview of who's available this off-season who I thought could possibly help us.  You can post your own thoughts on who you think we should sign.  And if you read this diary through, you have a much better attention span than me!

Here's my dream team:
Lineup :
Kendall
MB
Bonds
Thomas
Chavvy
Swish
Kots
Croz
Ellis

Rotation :
Harden
Wood
Haren
Davis (I don't know how he got here; let's say the Brewers DFA'd him or we traded Halsey and a PTBNL.  It is after all, a dream team)
Lilly

Bullpen :
Street
Calero
Duke
Blanton
Oliver Perez (traded Loaiza, Saarloos, Komine for Oliver and minor leaguers)
Eddie
Gaudin (at first injury, he joins rotation)

Bench :
Melillo
Brown
Kielty

In AAA ready to come up :
Halsey
Windsor
Braden
Meyer
TBuck
Barton
McBeth
Robertson

For the complete list of this year FAs (and the site I used for contract info):
http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/2000/04/possible-free-agents.html

Other Notes:
Teams with money freeing up and hence our competitors:
TOR
SF
OAK
The usual big spenders

Star/Once star players with off years and hence guys who we might be able to acquire for below market price:
Oliver Perez
Madson
Peralta
Gomes
Ensberg
Drew
Cantu
Kent (I hate him but he didn't have that bad a season just not that many HR's)
M. Giles
R. Sexson
A. Rod (trouble in the Bronx, could we capitalize?)
Chavvy (Oh, wait a sec)

Players to look for next year who might be flukes or the real thing:
Reed Johnson (.900+ OPS)
J. Crede
B. Hall
Thames
Adam LaRoche
F. Sanchez
DeRosa
B. Hawpe
M. Teahen

*Player or team option

P.P.S. I haven't read the recent diaries so some of these issues may be addressed.  I just felt this was slightly too long for a comment.