“After three years as a pro, a player must be protected on a team’s 40-man roster, or he is eligible for the Rule 5 draft (more on that later). Once he’s served those three years, and assuming he is added to the 40-man roster, his club then has what are called “options” on him.

When a player is on the 40-man roster but not on the 25-man Major League roster, he is on “optional assignment.” One common misconception about the rules is that a player may only be “optioned out” three times. Actually, each player has three option years, and he can be sent up and down as many times as the club chooses within those three seasons.

When you hear that a player is “out of options,” that means he’s been on the 40-man roster during three different seasons, beginning with his fourth as a pro, and to be sent down again he’ll have to clear waivers (more on those below).”

Jack Cust is still in the experimental stages, he hasn’t shown a sificiant body of work to convince that he’s for real. You want to bench him for a year and then count on him in 2009? I think it’s more important to figure out who’s actually going to contribute down the road and any plan to bring in Thomas AND Bonds stops that from happening. Thomas wasn’t willing to be a part time player in Toronto, he’s suddenly going to change his mind in Oakland? Bonds has always been a starter, think he’s going to dig a part time role?

Beane signed Mike Sweeney and Emil Brown to be stop gaps and if he gets real lucky maybe they’ll end up being useful trade chips. Dumping them for two different stop gaps who won’t have trade value (because there’s no way Thomas or Bonds comes to Oakland without some kind of crippling no-trade protection) is short sighted. It’s all about winning more games in 2008.

Which isn’t a bad thing in the abstract but you gotta admit Beane kinda fucked that plan up when he traded Haren and Swisher in the first place!

Signing one of them helps with winning and doesn’t have anything to do with building for the future. Why not improve the team. If someone makes a great offer for Ellis, then sure! (I’d like to see him resigned, though.) Signing one of them does not cut into anyone’s playing time that we are counting on in the future. I don’t think they have such a great chance even if they got Bonds, but it’s worth a shot.
Basically, your argument is: winning is bad because it might be tempting. I trust them to make good decisions…

My understanding is that it says if they use him for ~350 plate appearances then that triggers the option for 2009. But as far as I know there’s nothing requiring them to give him those PAs. So how are they not upholding their end of the contract?

When you sign a contract with a clause that gives the team a disincentive to play you, you have to accept responsibility for providing enough incentive to counter it. If Frank were hitting .300 and slugging .550 - heck, even if he were hitting .270 and slugging .450 - they’d still be giving him plate appearances.

He knew what he was signing. (Or if he didn’t, his agent should have explained it.) Unless he got the contract to include some requirement that the team give him PAs, then there’s no breach here.

(P.S. Boo on the gratuitous political reference. To prevent little unnecessary jabs like that is exactly why we have the community guidelines.)

and I can’t really find it, but it basically says that Thomas was essentially broke because he made a series of bad real estate moves and invested in some shady business dealings, which is why the guy essentially needed to get as much as humanly possible.

I don’t have time to look for it right now, but I’ll try and find it later (I’m at an Apple store trying to get my Mac fixed – Macs are sooooo overrated).