If you were the GM on another team, talking to the A’s about acquiring a young 1B, who’s the sexiest bitch of the bunch? It’s Carter.

Although I don’t think low-budget necessarily means struggles in the Win/Loss column. The A’s are in a unique situation where roughly 80% of the 25 man roster will be making less then $450K a year for the next two years and Eric Chavez is the only big ticket contract to deal with. Chavez will (probably) go off the books in 2011, just when (and this is a quick & dirty roll call) Suzuki, Eveland, Smith, Barton, Buck and Devine are all eligible for their 1st round of arbitration. This group will almost certainly cost more then the $12 million the A’s pay Chavez in 2010 but that money will go a long way towards covering their increased cost.

So if the A’s were determined to go strictly with homegrown talent (not counting a possible elder statesman add-on) then their budget would stay around $50 million but their winning percentage would be tied directly to how well they scouted their current crop of guys above low-A ball.

I think the logic of your arguement falls apart when you consider that saving $20 million a year and investing that cash into the new stadium for the next 3 years wouldn’t amount to more than 20% of the estimated $300 million cost of said priject. Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that $60 million isn’t real money but it seems more practical to invest that money into the on-field product. It’s not like Wolff and Co. went into the new stadium deal $60 million short of the mark! Why not have a winning team ready to open the new park?

I’ve got nothing against the homegrown approach but the reality is if you look at the organizational depth chart there are some serious deficiencies at 3B, SS and maybe 2B. (I’m still not sure about CarGon as the long-term answer in CF but that’s another discussion.) These are positions that need an upgrade before the A’s can be expected to contend. You can’t necessarily wait until 2011 or 2012 to try and address these areas because there might not be anyone available at the time that’ll get the job done. I’m pushing for Zimmerman today because if he breaks out in 2009 like I think he’s eventually going to then he’ll be completely unavailable to the A’s in the future. It would be like trying to go after David Wright now and that’s simply too costly a deal to make. I think Zimmerman can be had at a somewhat reasonable price now, I’m not sure that’ll be the case a year from now.

Thanks for the reply.

I don’t see how anyone can do any serious (keyword, I used it last time as well) number crunching on the 2011 roster because there are simply too many questions around who will actually be on the roster. If we assume that Buck, Barton, Suzuki, Eveland, Smith, Devine and Sweeney are all still on the roster and none of them have received long-term deals from the A’s then they’d all be in the 1st year of arbitration. We’re lacking two crucial years of performance data that would be absolutely critical in determining what kind of financial reward they’d be looking at. Is Devine the closer? Are Buck and Barton starters?

There are other questions as well. Cust would be entering his final year of arbitration… but when was the last time Beane let that happen? Cust will either get a contract buying out some of his arby years or he’ll get traded. Then again, maybe Duke sets a precident by playing 1 more year and then walking out the door. It’s possible the A’s offer him arbitration and let the chips fall where they may because injury has kept Duke’s arby settlements low. What about giving him an extension this winter that covers 2009 through 2011? That’s a plausible scenario. There are a lot of questions here that no one has the answers to at this time.

Your mistake is thinking that all these questions have to be answered before the A’s could make a play for Zimmerman or any other “big ticket” player for that matter.

Why can’t the A’s make a trade for Zimmerman and then build the 2011 and beyond rosters around him, as if he was the cornerstone of what the A’s were trying to build. Like the idea or not, trading for Zimmerman makes him a franchise cornerstone and that is something the A’s don’t have right now. Boots… you gotta start somewhere and the sooner you set the foundation the quicker you can build.

As for the rest of your poorly conceived post, do you really need me to provide you with evidence that 23 year old baseball players who stay healthy tend to get better as they get older? Would a list of names suffice? This is one of those things that if you pay any attention to baseball you tend to be a witness to the phenomenon. For some reason I’ve got the Mets on the brain but Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, David Wright, Carlos Delgado, Billy Wagner, John Maine, Johan Santana, Moises Alou and Pedro Martinez are all examples of baseball players who got better as they got older.

Would you like me to look at another team for more examples?