It's been a strange offseason for the Oakland A's, and the growing restlessness among the faithful at AN is obvious.  What is Billy thinking?  How can we compete in 2007 when we lost Thomas, Zito, and Payton and replaced them with Piazza, (insert favorite in-house candidate for 5th starter), and an injured and inexperienced Ryan Goleski?  Has Billy lost his touch?  Does Billy care more about his role as corporate darling than fielding a winning baseball team?  At some point this winter, most of us have probably raised these questions to ourselves.  After getting tired of arguing with the voices in my head as to what I believe, I have decided to present my current theory and let the wise folks at AN attack it.  

    My theory of 2007 is this: the question marks surrounding the team in 2007 are simultaneously the major cause of concern for the folks at AN and the justification for Billy's offseason.  I have a feeling that Billy views 2007 as an evaluation year: a year to find out what we have in an effort to deal with the large shadow that the Angels will cast upon the AL West over the next 4-5 years.

    Prior to the 2005 season, Billy was fond of saying that the A's were a young team that was going to get better and better as the years went by.  Of course, GMs and owners always say shit like that; Allard Baird, Cam Bonifay, etc. have made careers out of promising future growth in the midst of dwindling talent.  In Billy's case, though, his 2005 optimism was based on reasonable assumptions.  Rich Harden was a rising superstar who had not begun his Mark Prior impersonation.  Chavez was a super talented player who was entering his prime and appeared ready to join the superstar class.  Dan Meyer was one of the best left-handed pitching prospects in baseball, and Dan Haren was a good young pitcher who had just pitched really well in the postseason at a young age.  Our up the middle defense/offense was very strong, led by a healthy Kotsay, a budding star in Crosby, and newly healed Ellis to go along with a catcher coming off a .395 OBP in 2004.  At that time, our minor league system was still considered solid, and the sky appeared to be the limit for the future.

    Fast forward to this offseason, and many of these reasonably based optimisms have not turned out to be true.  Harden is a huge question mark because of his health, Crosby is a question mark in a medical sense and a baseball intelligence sense, Ellis has been brilliant defensively but erratic on offense, Chavez has been hurt and has now declined offensively for three straight years, Meyer has become a sad reminder of why stat guys say TINSTAAPP, Kotsay appears to be in an irreversible decline because of chronic back problems, and Kendall had a horrific 2005 followed by a mediocre 2006.  To add insult to injury, our minor league system is now considered weak by every major prospect expert.

    Of course, despite these crushing blows, good things have happened.  We were competitive in 2005 despite Ratto's "expert" predictions.  Haren, Street, Swisher, and Duke have surprised.  In 2006, we leveraged a year of Thomas, solid pitching, and a bit of luck into an ALCS appearance.

    Faced with the question marks created by the failure of reasonably optimistic assumptions about players to materialize, what does Billy do in 2007?  Does he give up a 2007 season and rebuild for 2008?  Billy has never been willing to tank a season, and it was not reasonable to expect that he would do so in this offseason.  However, Billy is willing to risk a season to find out what he has, 2005 showed that Billy is willing to "reload with risk."  I think this is what Billy is doing in 2007.  Billy is willing to risk the A's 2007 season in an effort to see what he is going to get in the future from Crosby, Chavez, Gaudin, Kennedy, Ellis, Johnson, and Harden.

    Is this a smart strategy by Beane?  For 2007, it is a risky option.  We are basing a lot of our season on players that are large question marks for 2007.   However, it seems to me that the A's may benefit in the future from this strategy.  The one nice thing about this offseason is that we have not taken any steps that limit our future options.  We have signed no players to long-term contracts, and we have not traded anyone who was a part of our future.  If the disappointing players continue to disappoint in 2007, I believe we will see a housecleaning prior to 2008.  For this year, I think it's a reasonable decision on Beane's part to buy time while assessing what we have.  The weakness of the AL West still gives the A's a fighting chance to compete in 2007.  It's not what I wanted going into the offseason, but I can accept this strategy if no major moves are made prior to Spring Training.