What was the point of sending him down for assignment and cutting him? Don't they owe him his 2010 salary? Wouldn't it have been easier to just cut Miles loose? I'm sure he was making less money, or am I wrong? Did Miles have more years than 2010? I know we got Rosales also from Cincy, but do we really think he's gonna turn into somebody we'll use?

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I guess I have to cancel my custom jersey order, and go back to my Ryan Langerhans home jersey.

sigh.

The A's released Willy Tavares today.

I'm not quite sure how to feel right now.  It's like my world is upside down or something, I mean I knew with Willy T it was like a guaranteed playoff appearance, and now that's just... gone.

We'll miss you, Willy.  You were always my favorite Athletic.

(Just kidding. Dude was *awful* last year.  Thanks for Rosales, though!)

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! That's a great joke, right? Well, sadly it's no joke: the Milwaukee Brewers are building a statue of Bud Selig outside Miller Park. I personally hate the guy and think this is a ridiculous notion. To me, he has always put his wallet and the wallets of the owners ahead of the game itself. This is his legacy. And the Brewers choose to honor Selig in a freakin' statue outside of their ballpark. Truly incredible.

Anyway, that is the only link I have for you today. I just wanted to be sure that everyone on AN knew of this atrocity, and to be sure that everyone check the comments in the link above, some of them are hilarious, e.g. "Next they should erect a statue of a giant steroid filled syringe behind him, so he can turn his back on that too."

Dump away!

Now I know what you're thinking: "hurry up and do another Dugout ripoff already!" but screw that, I have needs too: the need to talk about incredibly far reaching conspiracies that are directly connected to my own paranoias! Or maybe its just some relatively hack-y investigative journalism, I dunno, I don't have much of an ego so I'll let you draw your own conclusion there.

Look, Jose was is and will always be RIGHT about everything he wrote in Juiced. He has been 100% so far on everyone he called out for roids, and silenced many critics (who still called him a douchebag regardless, because, well, he is.). One thing that always got me was when he said he was "blacklisted by MLB because he knew the TRUTH and was about to blow it up" many thought: "Oh get out of town Jose, MLB doesnt secretly blacklist anyone, its baseball not the Illuminati!" guess what: it looks like he was RIGHT. He OPS'd 850 in his final year and wasnt looking for an outlandish contract, he was still a useful DH yet no one offered him any kind of contract for the 2002 season. I used to laugh at the WWE because of how insanely irrational and illogical and corny the storylines were, and that baseball was better to waste my time thinking about because it was real. Now after seeing the crazyness thats gone on in Jose's life, Im starting to think MLB might be just as absurd, only (sadly) this is real life. 

How does this all pertain to the A's getting Adrian Gonzalez? Read on...

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 After reviewing the entire roster for every team in the AL west it looks like we don't stand a chance at the playoffs. I am a die hard A's fan so I am going to stay positive. I think we will do better than last year and even break ,500, my prediction is 82-80, but competing against the Angels, Mariners, and Rangers for a playoff spot looks next to impossible.

When I broke it down, no team has bad pitching, not even mediocre. Every team in the AL West has good pitching. Maybe the A's have a little better than others but not by much. As for hitting, A's rank last, the Angels haven't changed much, and the Mariners and Rangers look to be better than they have been the past few years.

Unless Beane makes some huge aquisitions, it seems like 2011 season might be only a minor upgrade from this upcoming 2010 season. I will never loose faith in the A's and they will always be my team, but things are moving much too slowly. I feel like beane needs to start making normal transactions, not his own little game of giving the little guys a shot. When the little guys can hit over .275 with 20+ HRs that is when they should get a shot.

Instead of spending 10 mil getting a few guys who have "great defense" skills, why dont we spend that getting 2 guys who can hit the ball and hit it good.

So as it looks right now, the A's can break .500 this season but I don't see us doing any better than 3rd place in AL West. If someone has some news or information to comfort me, please do so...I need it.

1. UPDATE:

Here are a list of players that will most likely do very well in 2010:

Mariners: C: N/A 1B: Garko, Kotchman 2B: Lopez 3B: Figgins SS: N/A OF: Bradley, Gutierrez, Ichiro PITCHERS- Bedard, Fister, Hernandez, Kelley, League, Lee, Lowe, Snell, White -The A's definitely have a better bullpen, but I would say SP is the same. Mariners definitely have a better offense. Rangers: C: N/A 1B: N/A 2B: Kinsler 3B: Young SS: Andrus OF: Cruz, Hamilton, Murphy DH: Guerrero PITCHERS: Feldman, Francisco, Harden, Mathis, O'Day, Oliver, Wilson -The A's have better pitching overall. But god look at the Rangers offense. Just look at their outfield alone, now throw in Guerrero, Kinsler, and Young. Thats ridiculous. Angels: C: Napoli 1B: Morales 2B: Izturis, Kendrick 3B: N/A SS: Aybar, OF: Abreu, Hunter, Rivera DH: Matsui PITHCERS: Fuentes, Kazmir, Pineiro, Saunders, Shields, Stokes, Weaver -Their pitching is average. Nothing special. But they make up for it with a dynamite offense. Not a single starter on their team (except for 3B maybe) bats under .270. So lets break it down by position. Stats are BA, OPS, HRs. C: Suzuki (.274, .734, 15) VS. Napoli(LAA: .272, .842, 20) 1B: Barton (.269, .784, 3) VS. Garko (SEA: .268, .765, 13) Kotchman (SEA: .268, .721, 7) Morales (LAA: .306, .924, 34) 2B: Ellis (.263, .708, 10) VS. Lopez (SEA: .272, .766, 25) Kinsler (TEX: .253, .814, 31) Izturis (LAA: .300, .794, 8) Kendrick (LAA: .291, .778, 10) 3B: Kouzmanoff (.255, .722, 18) VS. Figgins (SEA: .298, .789, 5) Young (TEX: .322, .892, 22) SS: Pennington (.279, .760, 4) VS. Andrus (TEX: .267, .702, 6) Aybar (LAA: .312, .776, 5) DH: Cust (.240, .773, 25) Buck (.219, .620, 3) VS. Guerrero (TEX: .295, .794, 15) Matsui (LAA: .274, .876, 28) OF: Crisp (.228, .714, 3) Davis (.305, .784, 3) Sweeney (.293, .755, 6) VS. Bradley (SEA: .257, .775, 12) Guttierez (SEA: .283, .764, 18) Ichiro (SEA: .352, .851, 11) Cruz (TEX: .260, .856, 33) Hamilton (TEX: .268, .741, 10) Murphy (TEX: .269, .785, 17) Abreu (LAA: .293, .824, 15) Hunter (LAA: .299, .873, 22) Rivera (LAA: .287, .810, 25) Summary: Our bullpen is amazing, the best in our division. All 4 teams have similar starting pitching, a couple Aces, and then some guys with great potential. As for offense, I see we can maybe compete in the SS and OF categories, as for every other position, we are blown out of the water.

Thinking back to that seemingly dreadful day when the A's traded Mark Mulder, I was bummed.  Looking at the trade now though, I realize how much we really got out of Mark Mulder (and a few others).

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Hey everyone this is Brandon C. from SB Nation's Yankees Blog Pinstripe Alley. I was wondering if anyone would like to join our standings prediction group. The group is open to any SB nation writer or reader and you get to compete with everyone in SB Nation and see who makes the most accurate pre-season predictions.

You can sign up here http://www.fan-exchange.com/signup.asp

You can join the group here http://www.fan-exchange.com/my/headtoheadadd.asp

The Group ID is 8

The Group Password is mlbsbnation

Please make your username your SB Nation name

Good luck and hope to see you there!

Not sure if this has been posted yet, I did not see it and it doesn't exactly qualify as breaking news but I am in 2 feet of snow in Philly so here you go

From MLB Trade Rumors.com  According to a team press release, Toronto has acquired left-hander Dana Eveland from the A's in exchange for a player to be named later or cash considerations.  About two bucks maybe?

In nine starts for the Athletics last season, the 26-year-old posted a 7.16 ERA with 4.5 K/9 and 5.3 BB/9.

Dominican right hander Michael Feliz according to MLB Trade Rumors and Twitter .  I don't have too much information on Feliz or the contract but pending a verification of age Feliz is set to earn 800K signing bonus.  According to Dominican Prospect League he is 16 years old.  He did make the Dominican League all-star game .

Does anyone have any information on Feliz?  I have attempted to find out more but keep getting directed back to the Dominican Prospect League website,  which isn't very informative

Someone submitted a fanpost on this site commenting on how thye A's might steal 200 bases this year (with Crisp, Davis, and Taveras in the starting line-up). 

With that in mind, I think it might be useful to look at one of the many stolen base records associated with the Oakland A's...and no, Rickey Henderson does not hold the record, nor is he part of the group that does.

I draw your attention now to the 1976 Oakland Athletics.  In 1976, Charles Finely still owned the team.  The A's had won the AL West Division the previous year, without Catfish Hunter, but had lost the ALCS in a three game sweep to the Boston Red Sox.  Before the start of the season, the A's traded Reggie Jackson and Ken Holtzman to the Baltimore Orioles. 

That year, the A's were managed by Chuck Tanner.  Tanner must have had a perpetual green light on at first base, because the A's set a modern major league record for stolen bases, swiping an impressive (in fact, unheard of) 341.

The top three base stealers were Billy North--who also led the major leagues with 75, Bert Capaneris with 54, and a very young and speedy Don Baylor came in a close third with 52.  The rest of the team swiped the remaining 160. 

All of this mad dashing around the basepaths wasn't enough to win the division, however, as the A's came in second at 87-74--although they only finished 2 1/2 games behind the Kansas City Royals in what must have been a much weaker division than previous years. 

Rickey Henderson wasn't signed until 1977.  Imagine how many bases the A's might have swiped had he been on that team, under Tanner's managing (571?  More?)!

What I have not been able to track down, is the number of times the A's were caught stealing that year, but it must have been quite high (anyone have a copy of the Baseball Encyclopedia?)

Speaking of which, at the A's fanfest, the subject of statistics came up time and again (usually in the context of asterisks and steroids).  One statistic that I discussed was the changes in what was defined as a stolen base.  Prior to the 20th Century--though again, I am not sure how far back into the past (Baseball Encyclopedia again folks?)--walks, advancing on wild pitches and passed balls, and advancing on sacrifice flys / hits were also counted as stolen bases. 

A great many of the National League major league ball players recorded stolen base totals in the low 100s over the course of the 19th century, but it's likely that most of those were not what Rickey Henderson, Vince Coleman, or Lou Brock would call a stolen base. 

In any case, I am happy to see the stolen base being brought back into the A's offense.  I have argued here (and elsewhere) in the past that it has been sorely missing from the A's game plan for far too long.

With that in mind, even though Taveras is not on the roster, after all, what do AN members project as the A's stolen base total this year?