Anyone following the Athletics knows that the A's tend to move in cycles. While Pitching will always be there, the key is what they do on the position side of things.

Early in Beane's tenure, the A's went the route of OPS. They grabbed every player they could to go with their homergown talent that could get on base and hit for power. And they had success. Despite the generally lousy defense, the A's won a lot of games, scored a lot of runs, and had excellent pitching, at least in the #1, #2 and #3 slots.

And then the league caught up. The players that the A's had grabbed before became scarce, and they could no longer find them. So they changed their tune. They started to go Defense. Defense while grabbing the occasional OBP guy, but this time, with out power. And they turned into the best defensive team in the league, but at the same time, the least powerful. The offense, with out that power, died. The lack of power made the OBP unsustainable-after all, if you don't have any power, why not throw in the strike zone if the best you can get is a single? But the A's still held onto the offensive philosophy of batting average not mattering so long as the OBP was high. But with the power gone, and the OBP no longer able to support itself , the batting averages plummeted and dragged the OBP down.

The A's became a team of relatively slow or average runners, with low batting averages, decent on base skills, and no power, resulting in an astounding amount of ground-into-double-plays, and now, unable to make any contact, Strikeouts. The team has lived on its pitching and its defense to help prop up that pitching.

But that philosophy is changing, and it is evident in the type of players the A's have been acquiring, perhaps starting with the 2005 draft that saw the A's draft Cliff Pennington and Travis Buck, and with Mark Mulder trade acquiring Daric Barton. Or, perhaps, the A's were still deluding themselves, at least with Buck and Barton, that 'Power will come naturally, just like Jason Giambi', and not realizing that the unnatural power for Giambi would no longer arrive from now on.

The A's started to gather, for lack of a better term, lead off hitters. High Average, High On Base players with excellent speed, and the hope of future power. They acquired Daric Barton (.301/.414/.458 career minor league line), Travis Buck (.318/.395/.486) and Cliff Pennington (.368/.453/.561 with 29 SB in College).

Fast Forward to the A's recent acquisitions, and I think we can continue to see the pattern the A's are going for.

Ryan Sweeney is batting .307 with 8/9 Stolen Bases.
Carlos Gonzalez came to the A's with a minor league career .287 batting average and pretty good speed.
Aaron Cunningham came with another .300+ average and a good amount of stolen bases.

And just in the last few trades and the draft, the A's have gone after Eric Patterson (.329 average in AAA, 15/15 SB), Jamile Weeks, another high average, high obp base stealer out of the draft, and Ardian Cardenas, .301/.364/.429, 12/12 in SB, and Rashun Dixon, who rharden40 has told us, has blazing speed, so fast that he finds it hard to hit Doubles, and instead settles for 7 triples to 1 double.

That is what I think the A's are targeting right now. Versatile players who can play multiple positions with on base skills and speed to compensate for the lack of power. With Chris Carter and Sean Doolittle coming up at 1B and DH, unless the Carter return to 3B experiment succeeds (which I hope does) providing the power, I think we can expect the future A's to be somewhat similar to the team we have now, but with a lot higher average. A team full of Ryan Sweeney's, if you will. Which makes you wonder if the A's did indeed insist on Sweeney more than we thought at the time, instead of just being the throw in for the deal.

So why is this important to know right now? Well, with the Trading Deadline a week away, and the A's five remaining trading chips all generating some degree of interest (Duchscherer, Street, Crosby, Ellis, Embree), I think keeping in mind the type of player the A's seem to be going after is important.

Top Pitching prospects, as always, and a new kind of hitter.

It still remains to be seen if a lineup full of this type of hitter will succeed for a Major League lineup. Because personally, the lack of power still disturbs me.