You know how the recent A's have been at their worst when their overall OBP tendencies lead them to have guys at first and second with one out every inning, but those guys are too often left stranded on base (sometimes after an additional walk/weak single in Kendall's case on top of that)?  I feel like fielding a lineup with Cust and Branyan might be like that, definitely not because those guys lack the ability to drive guys in with extra-base hits, but because they're both Three True Outcome players to the max.  Now, so is Adam Dunn, and I would welcome him here anytime, but Branyan isn't Adam Dunn, and at the age of what, 29 (guessing), never will be.  I don't think Branyan would complement Cust well...not that those are the only two guys in the lineup, but I think having the better of the two is enough, in this case.

when I sort-of criticized Inge after the Cabrera trade by implying he might not even have a spot on the Tigers' roster at this point (though apparently DET feels the same way, heh), I was informed he was a great 3B defender.  I may have been selling him short defensively, but I still view him as, ideally, a utlity player above anything else.  And you don't want to pay guys like that $19 million over 3 years.  Especially with capable backups like Murphy and Hannahan already on the roster.

I could see the A's adding Crede, if Chavy isn't recovering well and the A's are thinking "we need a better 3B option for the coming year(s). I was just talking to the White Sox' TV announcers and they seemed to think pretty highly of Crede - something about best player, human being, diplomat, concert violinist, surgeon, fabric designer and carbon-based form ever.

Rolen didn't get hurt again, did he?

As far as I'm concerned Kotsay doesn't exist except as a salary liability.

If both Denorfia and Crisp turn out good, well, that's a fine problem to have.

Why not just let him go?

I was going to make a comment about cement shoes and the Bay but that seemed a little harsh.

even pondering Lincecum for Rios.

or draft picks

trading or not trading Blanton or Haren. They're just the latest examples. It is very rare to see anyone on AN accuse Beane of over valuing his players, especially when we're talking trade talk.

This isn't about trading or not trading Haren or Blanton.

You almost never hear Beane accused of over valuing his players, not by the voices on AN anyways. Theo Epstein just won a his 2nd WS title and 5 weeks later people accuse him of over valuing his players. Beane gets a pass.

He's not paying Jones $18 million a year. Jones will make $14 million in 2008, :17 million in 2009 and then get a $5 million "Thanks for visiting, don't let the door hit you in the ass" payday in 2010.

We all do.

He's trying to build the best team possible, the only thing we aren't sure on (and this includes Beane) is if the goal is more short term than long term.

Why would a team have to be desperate to be interested in Dan Haren? That idea makes no sense. Look at the teams who have been most interested in making a deal. Do you really think Boston or the Yankees are ever going to be "desperate" to make a deal? They shouldn't. Arizona could qualify, yet they've refused to include Young or Drew or Upton, not to mention a couple pitching prospects. The Mets don't have the talent to acquire Haren.

Value doesn't always rise. If Beane sets his price too high and misses the peak market then if does make a deal he'll be getting less than what he could have.

I don't think it would be fair to say in Haren's case that "there is no way he can be traded" simply because he's a valuable player- it would just take a trade offer that gave the A's a better chance to be a solid team overall than they would have if they held onto him.

Since I'm a proponent of trading him now, for the right deal (meaning not just for the sake of trading him, but only if the A's get what they need from the trade) let me explain why (and this applies to Blanton and Street also) I think that.
A lot of my thinking on the matter has to do with things you brought up- namely that "it is not easy to construct a winner in baseball, too many variables." I agree with that completely. But this very mindset leads me to believe that Haren's trade value may be as high right now as it will ever be, and since I don't consider the A's to have a roster full of long-term certainties but rather one that's full of many question marks now and going forward, I would prefer not to take the chance that Haren gets injured this coming year or has a mediocre or sub-par year on the mound.

As it stands right now, he's an affordable (contract-wise) starting pitching option for almost any MLB team for 3 years; he finished near the top of all MLB in ERA this past year, and led at least the AL for the first half of the season in ERA and started for the AL in the All-star game (further raising his profile) to boot; he's been healthy throughout his career thus far for the most part, and has raised no red flags regarding his durability; he has no apparent "character issues" that would make other teams reluctant about adding him to their rotation and in fact has been praised for taking a leadership role with the A's generally young pitching staff; he's plenty young and headed towards the prime years of his career and has shown improvement and development every season thus far, which would lead other teams to believe he has room to get even better.

So here's the thing- this guy is about as good a trading chip as you'll ever have if you're a team that is missing pieces at the MLB level and not particularly strong in its farm system.

The viewpoint on where the A's, at the major league level and in the strength/depth of their farm system, stand at this point in time is open to discussion/interpretation.

But I would submit that it is this viewpoint which should inform whether or not trading Haren is something that can or should happen.
It's a question of what will help the A's more going forward- 3 years of a cost-controlled starting pitcher coming off a great year who will hopefully remain healthy and durable and also hopefully remain effective, or 3 or even 4 good prospects across a range of roster positions, at least two of whom are essentially MLB-ready though unproven each of whom may or may not turn out to be good MLB players.

If you're looking at risk and reward, I'd be more inclined to think that the A's, at this point in time, would be better off gambling on the 3 or 4 good prospects than gambling on Haren staying healthy and repeating or improving upon the season he just had.

But that's just my view, and I don't consider other folks' views invalid so I understand why most people would rather keep him as a cornerstone player to build around. I would be tempted to do the same, if I thought the A's as currently constructed were close enough to where they need to be that having Haren in the rotation was going to be the difference-maker the next 3 years. I just don't think it is.

As for "blowing up" the current team and shooting to contend in 3 years- I don't really hear a lot of proponents for that approach nor do I consider myself one of those in favor of such an approach because I agree with you that it's totally hit-or-miss. I think the goal each season should be to field a solid team while also improving at every position as best you can, and I suppose I endorse the "rebuilding while remaining competitive" ideal which might not be a realistic one.

The question then becomes- how do you best remain competitive and also keep yourself in a position to stay that way in perpetuity?
And I guess I figure the more talent you can attain across the board to fill ALL roster spots and improve the strength of your current MLB team and your farm system, particularly at the upper levels, the better off you are.

So I wouldn't keep Haren just to have one good, or even great, starting pitcher while I had:

• serious questions at shortstop and center field, and even at 3rd base (health-wise if nothing else)
• an unproven but promising 1B rookie
• a 2B superhero who will probably be gone by '09
• corner OFs with talent and promise but still in the unproven range (Swisher being more proven, Buck being less than one season into MLB and never having played above AA before that)
• a DH and 4th OF with less than a year of MLB success and mediocre bordering on awful defense
• a rookie catcher who shows promise but is still pretty green, and a more experienced back-up who's never been able to get a full-time C job
• a rotation that will be more question marks than certainties- Harden? Gaudin? Duke? Meyer? DiNardo again? aside from Blanton (and Haren if we did keep him)
• a bullpen where the only real, proven quantities seem to be Street and Embree at this point (and Street is questionable in terms of durability going forward, too) and Duke if he doesn't make it as a SP

I don't know... does that seem like a situation where Haren is going to make the difference to you? If everything breaks (deliberate word choice) right, then maybe. But for the right deal, and that's the key thing here, I think the A's could go a long ways to improving that overall picture for this year and years to follow. So I wouldn't rule it out, and I don't think Beane and Co. would either.

what i mean is i'm not at all excited about branyan and i can't really see it happening, but i guess it could if he was inexpensive and the team got some bad news about how chavy is progressing.

with "gets a whiff of that Colon," or something to that effect.

although he probably reaks of Sex Panther.

... the Colon Bleachers.  

May be NSFW, and sorry I thought of it, but after that happened, it had to be done.    

and who doesn't?

keeping DJ around in any scenario.

to start with the team. They won't start the year with only one legitimate 3B. Starting Denorfia in AAA if he has options seems plausible, but of course I'd rather just dump Kotsay.

Barry's testicles looked way too big.

Seriously though, the sketch looked more like Bobby Bonds than Barry. FIRE THE ARTIST NOW!!!!

off-the-field reasons primarily, though I have seen some posters (A's Eh being one) who doubt he'd even help much on the field...with which I strongly disagree.

I need another "m" in "accomodate."

Flier is the older spelling, which is why it appears first in many dictionaries.  In the second half of the 20th century, flyer gained ground. In my estimation, throughout the 1970s and 1980s (the formative years for many of us here) it was the preferred spelling for all usages, and the dominant one for the paper handbill/brochure sort of thing. Then some time around the mid-1990s the flier spelling started to reclaim the preferred position.

The flyer spelling is boosted by brand name "Radio Flyer". Also, many of the frequent flyer miles programs begun in the 1980s have maintained the "flyer" spelling in their names.

Parallel cases are mixed. Fryer is overwhelmingly preferred to frier. Dryer is preferred for one that dries, but drier is preferred for more dry than.  That seems to suggest a pattern, but it's contradicted by shyer, crier, and pliers, which all point in the opposite direction.

I think all the y spellings gained ground in the post-WW II era. Dryer for more dry did, though never enough to displace drier.  For nearly every word in this category, the minority spelling is acknowledged at least as a variant.