How Adrian Gonzalez can become an Oakland A.

is the part where the supposed “small market” team signs a player to a monster contract because MLB basically is forcing them to.

and I will bow to you. If you can decide who their Taylor, Carter and Cardenas are, you will find theres no way in hell they wont get rid of them. There was that rumor they offered Buccholz for Gonzalez straight up, that’s the kind of deal Im thinking the A’s could best by a mile.

He is including some good names in that list that you aren’t mentioning. Primarily Cahill and Gio and even Weeks and Braden Im sure are still interesting. Dont forget the contract Joe Blanton just got…

Have you heard of Johan Santana? He was traded for nothing and was more valuable than A. Gonzalez at the time then Gonzalez is right now. I think you guys are kind of right though, keep in mind SD would move Blanks to 1B so Carter is of no use to them, so Taylor might get added in there, but I dont think its too necessary and a deal can be worked out from that group.

Sweeney, Weeks, Cahill and Gio would all go right into the team and could really turn SD around in an instant. Boston cant offer such quick rewards. All they have to offer is Buccholz and Bard and not much in the way of OFers or position players really.

Grant Green is probably at least a year and a half away form the bigs…

On the other hand, I’m all for putting together a trade for a guy like A. Gonzalez.

he wants a long term contract and Im sure I read somewhere that if SD trades him he’s going to want to sign immediately. You can do what you say and wait around, but the problem there is that it leaves Seattle and Boston free to make offers that are worse than what we can feasibly give up.

my point.

your head.

Jeeesus!

for merchandise sales? I believe you that the A’s don’t sell much merchandise, but I was also surprised by how many A’s hats I would see on the south side of Chicago. I don’t think any of those people were A’s fans in particular, but we do have a pretty fetching color scheme.

Maybe I’m biased, but it seems obvious to me that the A’s aren’t trying to just pocket revenue sharing money. As people have pointed out above, Oakland has dismal attendance, so they don’t have a lot of money to work with. But I never get the idea that they are just trying to dump payroll and giving up on playing competitive baseball. Beane is very careful with how he spends his money, but it always seems to me that there is a fairly clear budget and he is looking to spend all of it.

The only way trading for Gonzalez works to kill the conspiracvy theorists is if the A’s acquire him and promptly tear up the two remaining years of his contract and sign him to a massive extension that at minimum triples the amount of money he was already looking to make over the next two seasons.

That’s what Im saying. And its hardly “batshit stupid” to sign an elite player to a long term contract. This isnt the Royals signing Kendall or Farnsworth, this is an elite player.

I think the post is a success, just that you may disagree with the author grover. I do too by the way……

But also, I recognize that the A’s were not mentioned in the recently released union grip memo, but there was still a lot of talk that they could have been, and might be in the future.

I also think this is why Sheets got the money he did, at least part of the reason, given his injury history and risk.

Reyes has a contract worth around 5-6 million a year that expires next year, which I don’t like. I’d mich rather just try to sign him as an FA next year. Matt Cain will also be a free agent next year, as will Adrian Gonzalez. All 3 of these guys can be the cornerstone of the A’s, or basically what Matt holliday was supposed to do.

…want or need someone else to get you to the top. That’s what they tried doing in the early part of the 2000s and while it put them in positions to win in the playoffs, they didn’t get the job done.

The effect of that was that once the window closed they were left with a farm system that was short on talent. They had to rebuild it. For all intents and purposes they’ve done this now but it’s taken a few years to get there. However, the MLB team is not QUITE ready to be in contention enough to really have it make sense for them to do a major trade full of prospects for a top-level player.

In a couple of years, we’ll probably be talking about that. By then, someone like Gonzalez could just be signed instead of trading for him now, AND the A’s would have the ability to use some of those prospects as trading chips for someone ELSE.

They’re going to have options – and good ones – if they play it right. No need to get ahead of themselves right now.

Getting an elite player with leftover unusable prospects is the REWARD for doing a good job rebuilding.

What happens If people figure out Carter can’t recognize or hit breaking stuff and Taylor flops?

The value of Adrian is he represents a known quantity and a near guaranteed return on the investment.

redirect Gonzalez’ flight to Oakland and say that these green and white jerseys are just the Padres’ new colors. That has a higher chance of happening than trading for/signing him and it’ll cost less.

You’ve been shot down in flames.

Misinterpretation?

Youre’ right, of course, PL78’s comment that you quote does not expressly say that that is his suggested trade package. However, it is clear that he took the idea and commented on it without making any negative remark about the group. Allow me to block quote PL78:

Here’s a list of our players that I wouldnt mind trading 3 to 5 of them for AG and then signing him to a long-term deal, thus getting MLB off our backs and letting Beane still work his natural style of finding undervalued players:

Trevor Cahill, Ryan Sweeney, Raj Davis, Jemile Weeks, Henry Rodriguez, Gio Gonzalez, Dallas Braden, Josh Donaldson, Jake Fox, Travis Buck, Daric Barton, Sean Dolittle, Sam Demel, James Simmons.

So PL78 expressed a willingness to trade 3-5 players from a list that included the same 4 players that appear in the comment you quote. At no point in his original post, nor during the first time the four players were mentioned in combination, did PL78 raise any objection or limit who could be paired in a deal for Adrian Gonzalez. There was no misinterpretation… PL78 left the door wide open as to the possible combination of players that could be involved in a trade for Gonzalez.