[Prefatory note: Big thanks to JediLeroy, who lent his kreepy Photoshop skilz to the illustrations, and to FreeSeatUpgrade, who inspired me to do this with his latest installment of Peanutball.]

Chavvy and the Athletic Factory

Chapter One: "I've Got a Green and Gold Contract"

Over a SICKENING MONTAGE OF OUT-MAKING—T-Long and Melhuse taking called third strikes, Jeremy’s Jetered jeté, Tejada and Byrnes Knoblauching their way into infamy, Big Hurt popping out against the Tigers—the opening credits roll:

CHAVVY AND THE ATHLETIC FACTORY

Directed by Billy Beane. Written by Billy Beane. From the novel by Billy Beane. Produced by Lew Wolff. Edited by David Forst. A Crywolffisher Production.

We hear the TOLLING OF A BELL. Fade up on a CLOCK TOWER striking four o’clock:

[Click on the jump for the rest of the Cinematic Interlude.]

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So the A's have acquired a big bat in the Rockies Matt Holliday.  And he's right-handed.  And he's young.  The A's haven't acquired someone like this since they landed Jermaine Dye and they had Giambi and Dye powering them towards what looked like a powerhouse team for years to come.  Well because of the freak accident that broke Dye's leg in the playoffs, the Dye acquisition didn't work.

The details are still a little fuzzy, but it looks like the deal is for Greg Smith for sure and probably Carlos Gonzalez and Huston Street.  If this is the final deal, I would honestly say that both Smith and Street are pretty expendable in this current A's roster alignment.  Smith, otherwise known as "Nibbles" around AN since about June last year for his penchant for not challenging hitters, should be relatively easily replaced by someone like Brett Anderson or even Josh Outman.  Street, who seemed to find himself a bit towards the very end of the year, will be replaced by Joey Devine.  And let's face it, Beane has always considered closers expendable commodities.  Street wasn't even the A's closer by the end of the year, so who thinks that this is a big loss for the A's?  I don't.

The one big chip the A's gave up, if the rumors are true, was Carlos Gonzalez.  C-Gon didn't have a great year. He had flashes of brilliance for Oakland and you could see that he had all the tools and talent, but the A's don't prize players like that.  They want their players to have the plate discipline.  So perhaps it was a situation where Beane felt that perhaps C-Gon is going to be a star, but just probably not the right star in the right situation.

The question remains on Holliday.  Do the A's try and re-sign him long-term?  I'm betting that the answer on that one is probably no.  I'd love to see the A's do it because they'd have a long-term nagging need finally resolved in Holliday (that being a big stick from the right-side).  But I'm just not sure that Boras and the A's would be able to come to a deal.  I mean, we're talking Billy Beane and Scott Boras here.  Course they could probably charge admission to the cage match on pay-per-view if Beane did decide to at least try to negotiate.

The A's get a guy who was runner-up for MVP of the National League in 2007 (I've heard quite a few arguments that he deserved it, not Rollins, but I'll leave that for salb and grover to decide).  He is probably dreaming about dollar signs heading into the year, so you just have to know that he is going to come to camp ready to perform.  Say what you want about professional athletes, but I truly don't think anything motivates them like the promise of a big pay day.  So you're going to see a motivated guy performing in green and gold.  There was quite a bit of discussion in some of the other threads earlier about whether or not the A's would try to move Holliday at the trade deadline, and I tend to think you will see them try to move him if the A's don't seem to be contending for whatever reason (the young pitching doesn't perform as expected or, as has been the last couple of seasons, the injuries pile up early).  I mean there aren't that many hitters like Holliday that a contender can plug right into the third or fourth spot in a lineup and he fits perfectly.  So the A's did acquire a very nice trading chip if the steel cage match between Beane and Boras never comes to fruition.  The other thing is that the A's could also just let him walk at the end of the year and take two very nice draft picks as compensation.  We know Beane loves to stockpile draft picks.

In the meantime, the A's offense just got upgraded.  Holliday will be a nice shot in the arm for the A's stagnant bats.  If anything, at least you finally get a "hitter".  The A's haven't had very many of those. 

The other thing it does do, I believe, is send a clear message to A's fans that the A's are going to try to compete in 2009.  You don't acquire a guy of Holliday's caliber with one year left on his contract to wallow in the basement of the AL West.  I also think we could see the A's also sign someone like Furcal as well to try and drastically reduce the pressure on the A's young staff.  You add someone like Furcal to the A's lineup and suddenly you have a lineup that looks like this:

Furcal
Sweeney
Holliday
Cust
Chavez (if healthy)
Suzuki
Buck/Cunningham
Ellis
Barton

Now that is not going to set the world on fire, but it does certainly look like it could put it its share of runs.  Or I might even bat Cust in front of Holliday because of Cust's ability to get on base.  Maybe Cust even sees some better pitches to hit as well because of it?

I love the trade.  Gonzalez might turn into the second coming of Carlos Beltran, but the A's could not go through another 162-game season with that offense.  It just wasn't going to work.  I'm expecting more moves towards the A's being competitive in 2009 on the heels of this, whether that means Furcal or Dunn or someone else, I'm not sure, but I don't think the A's are done.  They're sending a message that they think they can be competitive sooner rather than later, otherwise, why do the deal in the first place unless you don't really think that Gonzalez is all he was supposed to be? 

For once it's nice to have our team doing the acquiring, isn't it?

Whether you support the candidate who promises to bring more offense to the middle infield, or the one who promises to bring Bobby Crosby; whether you voted today for Ozuna or McCann; whether you believe that revenue sharing is "socialism" or that Jamie Moyer would be a terrific candidate for president in about 17 years; no matter what your leanings, chances are that baseball and the A's feel strangely insignificant today and I think it would be like ignoring the "Elephant in the room" - hi Stomper!!! - not to acknowledge this.

To put it into baseball terms, today will be a day of either Jackie Robinson or Pam Postema historic significance and that's not even why you care. You care because there are more important things in the world than baseball. And you're here because you need a distraction and you seek out a community of people who are equally in need of a distraction, are equally insane in their passion for baseball and the A's, and are so mentally and verbally unstable so as to be entertaining. We can help.

If the A's pursue a free agent to upgrade the offense, their choices all come with significant downsides for which they must overpay anyway. I kind of sort them (in alphabetical order) as follows:

Casey Blake
Skills (Blake is a good hitter and fielder, not a great one, and is not truly an "impact player")

Pat Burrell
Age (must pay for some decline years)
Defense (must add a poor OFer at a position where there are many good defensive OFers, and potentially good hitting OFers, who would be blocked.

Adam Dunn
Defense (must add a poor 1B/OFer at a position where there are many good defensive 1B/OFers, and potentially good hitting 1B/OFers, who would be blocked.
Left-handed (if you care)
Strickouts!!!!111 (sorry, I had to)

Rafael Furcal
Health (the A's, of all teams, should be wary of health questions)
Slugging (Furcal is the only player on this list who is not a real HR threat)

Jason Giambi
Age (even if he helps the A's get a bit better now, at 38 he will be gone by the time the A's expect to be special)
Defense (at 1B he makes your infield defense worse and at DH he forces you to play Cust in the OF)
Left-handed (if you care)

Manny Ramirez
Age (even if he helps the A's get a bit better now, at 38 he will be gone by the time the A's expect to be special)
Cost (Ramirez will be paid annually like Teixeira, but will have Manny's attitude and defense)

Mark Teixeira
Cost (the combination of Teixeira's ability and Scott Boras suggest that Teixeira will seek upwards of a 10 year and/or $200million commitment, creating a high level of risk and payroll allocation for even big market teams)

Interestingly the A's, whose already small (3rd lowest in MLB) payroll has recently shrunk even more with the departures of Harden and now Embree, could afford to put a whole lotta eggs in one basket and bid for Teixeira, who has the fewest negatives surrounding the combination of age, health, defense, and ability to balance an A's lineup. At 27 now, Teixeira will probably still be a good player in 10 years, when his annual salary will also seem more reasonable in comparison to how it will look on the day he signs his next contract.

It's an intriguing thought that the A's could make one huge splash, rather than several Blake/Giambi/Furcal type ripples, and could do precisely what they generally try to avoid doing: commit a high percentage of payroll to one player who might become the Jermaine Dye of five years ago or the Eric Chavez of today.

It's even exciting to think that by making one huge commitment one time, the A's could consider Daric Barton as expendable as Huston Street and the young lefty starter of your choice, and could dangle an awful lot of talent in order to solve deficiencies in areas such as SS.

And spending that kind of money on a single player, no matter what position they play or how the rest of your payroll looks at the moment, is almost always a mistake and is the kind of mistake that can haunt and cripple a team for years. Would it be this time, with this team?

One of the downsides of a rebuilding season is that occasionally a player will be put in the majors before they're ready, especially when you have a series of serious injuries.  Gio Gonzalez seems to be a victim of this.  He's still only 22 years old (he'll be 23 years old in 11 days).  I don't really think his stuff is bad, I think it's just a matter of him having a tough time hitting the zone and when he finally does, it's in predictable fastball counts where a hitter can tee off on his 91-92 MPH fastball.  He should probably get pulled from the rotation before he gets ruined mentally.  Course you have to expect a lineup like the Tigers to be itching to face someone like Gio.  He's a lefty, struggling to hit the zone and when he does, it tends to be centered.

Josh Outman followed and didn't fair much better.  He gave up three runs in less than three innings.  He does look like he has a pretty good fastball, but the Detroit announcers kept commenting on how straight it was.  Speaking of Detroit announcers, I love it when folks from larger markets continually rag on the A's.  I mean, Dude, all the Pizza, Pizza money in the world isn't going to get you into the playoffs this year.  Who cares if you have guys like Sheffield, Ordonez and Polanco in the lineup if you aren't going to come anywhere near the postseason?  I really wish Major League Baseball would get with the 21st Century and give us the option to watch the A's broadcasts.  After 143 games, I'm pretty tired of hearing all the chumps calling games for other teams.  The A's TV team isn't the best one in the majors, but they aren't revolting like so many others out there.

The A's actually outhit the Tigers 13-12 but A's pitching wound up giving up a lot of extra base hits as well as walking five batters and hitting three.  It's just one of those games where the A's offense actually showed up but the pitching wasn't in sync.  

It's weird because I can honestly say that outside of these last two years with the A's, I can't remember going through a whole lot of losing seasons with my favorite teams.  The New Jersey Devils have been very good for a long, long time.  The A's have been very, very good for a long time.  It really makes one appreciate those good times and long for them.  Remember the days of Giambi and Dye in the middle of the order and Hudson, Mulder and Zito going every three out of five days?  I'm going to appreciate this so much more when the team finally takes that jump forward again.  It's nights like this with Gio that make you realize that it might be longer away than I think.

By the way, check in with fellow A's fan saint over at Silver and Black Pride tonight.  The Raiders open up the season and with JaMarcus Russell and Darren McFadden, you never know if the Raiders could be bound for a good year this year.  I'm no Al Davis fan, but the silver and black are somewhat interesting in 2008 because of those two young talents.

Just for argument's sake, let's say that this list of free agents for the upcoming offseason is presented to you as a general manager of the Oakland Athletics.  If you scan down the list, what looks appealing AND affordable? Remember, we're talking the A's here and I don't think this team is looking to necessarily break the bank...yet.  If the A's are going to sign someone longer-term, it likely isn't going to be this upcoming offseason.  Not unless the A's believe that their young pitchers like Cahill, Anderson, Simmons and Mazzaro are ready to contribute a LOT in 2009, which they very well could be.  It's just not something to bank on yet.

This organization is looking like it's built for 2010 and beyond.  And the good news is that once this team gets good, it's going to be in for a long period of being a great team, not just a good one.  That being said, the A's front office has to realize that this team needs some offense.  I mean, pretty much every pitcher in baseball knows that the A's offense is a cakewalk right now, including the A's own pitchers who seem to be suffering a bit from "If I let up one run, I'm screwed disease."

So with players like Carter and Cardenas a ways away, I think you're going to see the A's try and plug a couple of holes in the offense by opening up the wallet.  Not enough to make anyone incredibly excited, but it wouldn't surprise me to see the A's sign a couple of players off the aforementioned list.

Names that would fit?  Well, someone like Rafael Furcal would seem to be ideal.  He's injured and he might come cheap because of that injury.  Look at what the A's have done in signing free agents.  It's buying folks who come in the bargain bin but have great upside potential.  Sometimes it has worked well, as in Frank Thomas 2006, sometimes not so well as in Mike Piazza.  Furcal might be willing to come to Oakland, prove his worth again and that he's fine after his surgery and then sign for a relatively large contract elsewhere.

A few others that have been mentioned ad nauseum on AN include Jason Giambi, Hank Blalock and the recently traded Adam Dunn.  I might actually cheer for Jason Giambi if he was to return, time might have healed this wound surprisingly enough.  I don't actually feel like throwing something at my TV when I see him.  Maybe I'm just losing intensity in my older age.  Speaking of older age, perhaps the A's would consider Bonds again this offseason.  You have to think that guy can still hit despite everything.  I'm not advocating for it, mind you, but the improvement in this dreadful lineup could be immense. 

All of those options are left-handed and we know how Beane has craved a right-handed bat for a while now.  There really isn't much out there in terms of a big right-handed bat that doesn't sound like Lanny Con-Beerez.  And we just know that isn't happening.  At the same time, Jay Payton and Milton Bradley are available.  Oh wait.  Seriously though, Pat Burrell is probably the only realistic option and while he would be appealing, I think he'll be looking for more than the A's will be willing to offer.

The only other two options I could see are also left-handed.  Dallas McPherson has also been mentioned a bunch around these parts and he has mashed up on Triple-A pitching this year.  And Billy Beane has always coveted Brian Giles.  Beane does often finally get whatever he covets.  So Giles wouldn't surprise me at all and Giles is a better player than people think, especially having played in Petco for too long.

I know it's early to start talking about our 09 shopping list, but we don't have much else going on these days other than the upcoming September call-ups and seeing how Gio Gonzalez is going to do his next time on the hill.

Is there anyone on that list you find appealing?  Juan Rivera?  Would you bring Frank Thomas back?  Discuss.

Well, maybe it is.  At least right now.  But I never really thought the A's were going to compete for the AL West in 2008.  I thought this was a team that Billy Beane was building for the future while hoping it wouldn't be a complete failure on the field this season.  A lot things happened to make the team worse than most thought, especially lately, but I do truly believe that the A's are going to be much improved in 2009.

And we're starting to see signs of the team building for the future.  Instead of pulling Lenny DiNardo out of the pen or Kirk Saarloos out of baseball purgatory to take a start, the A's are turning to Gio Gonzalez today.  I'm really excited to see his stuff.  I think he'll be one of the pitchers for the A's foundation moving forward.  He's going to be very important to the A's success (or failure) over the next couple of years.  The funny thing is that Gonzalez will likely be a third or fourth starter down the road.  In front of him in terms of ability are Brett Anderson, Trevor Cahill and possibly even Vince Mazzaro.  And these pitchers don't appear to be very far away.  Mazzaro has made great strides forward this year and is now in Triple-A.  Caill has been exceptional in Double-A and probably won't be far behind with his absolutely mouth-watering worthy groundball to fly ball ratio.  Imagine that in the Coliseum.  Brett Anderson is also pitching like a future ace at Midland.  These pitchers aren't as far away as we think.

Course pitching isn't and hasn't been the problem with this team.  It's the hitting that is the pain for any A's fan.  It wasn't that long ago that Giambi and his crew of out-of-shape RC car racers were smacking the ball all around the Coliseum.  So it's been especially painful to watch this current crew cutting their teeth.  But with guys like Suzuki, Ryan Sweeney and Carlos Gonzalez maturing before our very eyes, I'm pretty sure that I see what Beane and company see and that's a team that just needs a little bit of help offensively.  So if Beane uses some of that money this offseason to sign a bat and maybe trade for another one using a chip like Henry Rodriguez than the team could be much better than people will think in 2009.

That's the beauty (and sometimes curse) of having great pitching.  It's that you realize that the team doesn't need that much offensively to be a good team.  So while it seems like this current crop of players the A's are running out there are painfully inept, fear not because you can't keep a good organization down.

The A's will prove that in 2009.  Mark that down now because it's about all we have to help us survive the rest of what will be an ugly remainder of 2008.