this deal is do for under 1 million bucks i will applaud it anything more is too expensive for a bench player way past his prime.

a utility guy. and given his abilities in the OF, not a bad one to have.

I doubt he'll play much first. If DJ is out, it'd still make more sense to put Swish at first and Erstad in the OF, since OF defense is more important than first base defense.

you don't worry about players like erstad getting hurt, and the reason that he moved to first was because the angels had jose guillen, garret anderson and vlad guerrero.

when erstad moved, anderson played center.  figgins played 92 games at 3B and 54 in CF, most of those probably when anderson was injured or dhing. in 2005, finley mostly played center, although who knows why.

it pains me that i took time to look this up, but will caroll gave a "green" health report for Erstad, prior to 2004 (and he was correct, Erstad played 130 games), so I don't know if people were too worried about him getting injured. But for whatever reason he was moved, the A's recognize that Erstad doesn't have value if he's not in the outfield, even if the Angels didn't. And Garret Anderson did play CF that year.

http://www.baseball-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=2700
probably will only work if youre a bp subscriber.

Every game that Erstad plays decreases the probability of the A's making the playoffs.  This is a simply bizarre signing by the A's.  Of course, I thought that about the John Mabry trade and the guy came in and had the best 4 months of his career.  Billy got lucky then, will lightning continue to strike?    

the green might be a little optimistic, but erstad had been healthy prior to '03. i don't know the nature of his injury, but it may have not been the type that's easily aggravated. either way, it didn't make sense to move the light-hitting erstad to 1B, considering he was a top CF. no matter the injury risk, it made and makes more sense for him to save runs in the outfield at the risk of getting hurt than block a better hitter from playing first.

this is from bp, 2004:

n its place, the Angels have an all-world defensive center fielder who needs every bit of that D to offset his offensive and injury-related struggles of the last three seasons. With Guillen and Guerrero now on board, there's talk of moving Erstad to first base.

That move would be a colossal mistake--maybe the only position change in all of baseball that would make less sense than Jeter at short/A-Rod to third. According to Clay Davenport's defensive metrics, Erstad saved 39 runs in 2001 and 2002, his two most recent full seasons in center in which he stayed healthy. That's the equivalent of winning four games over those two seasons with his glove alone, ranking him ahead of any other CF in baseball, including Torii Hunter, Jim Edmonds, Andruw Jones, Mike Cameron and Carlos Beltran. At first base, Erstad loses that huge defensive edge, and becomes an overmatched singles hitter at a position full of Delgados.

The end of the world is upon us.

Why do we want an oft-injured player who sucks even when healthy? Erstad hasn't had a good season in 7 years. Seven!!!