A's Announce Final Roster

does that mean Blevins goes to AAA? I assume Cramer is the long man.

Ross is a future starter and should be treated as such. With the depth in the pen, better to use Cramer as a long-man/6th while Ross continues to develop with regular starts in AAA. Letting Ross rot in the pen last year might have hurt his development. This way you can use him as a very good 5th next year or a trade chip later in the year if needed.

Also, as we’ve seen this series, the A’s offense has gone from worst in baseball to barely passable (still a huge improvement). LaRoche’s bat is still desperately needed and his defense is passable enough to make him the better choice over Sogard. It might put a bit more ware on Penny, but if it becomes a problem you can always move McCarthy down for a week and call Sogard up. Green will be the starting SS in a year and a half anyway.

The 4-lefty/3-righty bullpen with the 3-lefty/2-righty starting five will make this a very southpaw-leaning pitching staff. I guess it isn’t that big of a deal, especially in the bullpen since Breslow seems to be pretty good against both side batters and Cramer won’t likely get that many innings. I’d imagine that this formation is pretty temporary…once Bailey is back, I imagine Cramer would head back to Sacramento and when/if Harden gets thrown into the mix, I’d think that Blevins would be one to go – since he still has an option left.

As for LaRoche: I’d find this move pretty surprising. He’s probably no better or worse defensively at short than Sogard, but probably offers a better bench bat. However, I thought it might have been good to really get him back to his old self at the plate by getting regular at-bats at Sac and then calling him up later before he had the chance to opt-out of his contract on June 1, rather than have him get maybe 4-5 at-bats a week in the majors.

But, I can think of two reasons perhaps why he was brought on-board now:
1) The A’s might have a pretty quick leash with Kouzmanoff at 3rd. There’s no denying that Kouz has declined with the bat every year he’s been in the league. He’s seen a steady decline in virtually every rate-stat…his fielding reached elite levels last season, but he’s fast approaching 30 and started having back problems late last season. He’s also not very versatile and hasn’t ever done much offensively beyond hit the occasional homer, even in his best offensive seasons. He’s also fairly expensive and will likely earn 6+ million in his final year of arb next season. The A’s may see LaRoche as a younger, healthier, cheaper alternative to Kouz with a little worse glove but more offensive potential and a bit more versatile, both in the short and medium terms.

2) The team is really concerned about Rosales bouncing back from his foot injury. To make room for LaRoche, Rosales was transferred to the 60-day DL. I didn’t see a note about whether the DL-move was retroactive at all, but in any case that early-May return for Rosales doesn’t really seem realistic at this point. It seems like with Pennington virtually limited to only hitting effectively from the left side, the team wanted to keep a right-handed bat on the bench in the infield, rather than go with Sogard. The team might also be preparing to see just how much LaRoche can do in case Rosales doesn’t recover to his old form until later in the summer.

Is that he’s the guy who can’t be used. As the only IF backup, he becomes like a backup catcher. The only time he plays is the rare occasion when Ellis, Pennington, or Kouz sits. And with his defense, I’m not sure we want him doing that too often. I’d rather have Sogard over Jackson, leaving LaRoche as a useful bat off the bench.

But once someone (anyone) is back he’s gone…

It’s very helpful for those of us who haven’t had time to follow spring training but want a nice summary of the resulting roster.

C: Miguel Olivo
1B: Justin Smoak
2B: Jack Wilson
SS: Brendan Ryan
3B: Chone Figgins
LF: Milton Bradley
CF: Michael Saunders
RF: Ichiro Suzuki
DH: Jack Cust

C: Adam Moore
Inf: Adam Kennedy
Inf: Luis Rodriguez
OF: Ryan Langerhans

Starters

Felix Hernandez
Jason Vargas
Doug Fister
Erik Bedard
Michael Pineda

Relievers

Brandon League
Josh Lueke
Tom Wilhelmsen
Chris Ray
David Pauley
Jamey Wright
Aaron Laffey

Kennedy, Langerhans AND Cust? The mediocre 07-09 era A’s live on!!!