(Update by baseballgirl: To add to all of this, Buster Olney just tweeted this breaking news:)
Reds and Oakland completed trade of Aaron Miles and PTBNL or cash for Willy Taveras and Adam Rosales...
emperor's afternoon update: Willy Taveras and Dana Eveland have been DFA'd, with Taveras lasting even less time with the A's than the immortal Ryan "Long Live" Langerhans...yes, folks, Eveland is outta here!!
And as if all this weren't enough AP-wire-shattering news, the team also claimed Minnesota Twins' IF farmhand Steve Tolleson off waivers... Jane Lee tweets that to make room for Tolleson, Gregorio Petit has also been designated for assignment
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The gif that keeps on giving.
So the Gabe Gross net is 1 year, 750 thousand big ones plus incentives, plus presumably a shoehorn to fit into the A's crowded outfield landscape... whatever it is, I'm sure we'd all agree that it's better than Eric "After the Fire, the Fire Still" Byrnes here, whom we get to see 19 times in 2010 with our saucy pals the (still favored by the sane money to win the West?) Marinaras. How many of those contests will break our way thanks to one of everyone's favorite future idiotic sportscaster's inimitably imbecilic gaffes? Many, I hope; a few, I'd conservatively imagine.
It's so funny, every time Beane makes a sort of lateral move like this, you can't help but conspiratorially speculate that he has some nefarious parlay underway, and this is the one where he swings that Kara Tsuboi-plus-Stomper-plus-Larry-Davis-and-a-case-of-Grape-Italian-Ices for Yunel Escobar trade we've all been waiting for... surely he will have Atlanta paying for 2/3 of Stomper's contract (and 3/4 of Larry's McNugget intake) even as he swindles our shortstop for the next decade from the Braves. The English call this tradition Hunting the Wren, but I wouldn't have time to explain it so you'll just have to take my word.
Overhead view of A’s 2010 outfield. Not pictured: Travis Buck.
If this is not the case and BB is not planning to flip an outfielder or 17 elsewhere for a Savior to be Named Later, what does this signing indicate? That, if MLB grants us a waiver allowing us to play all our OFs at once, then we will stand a good chance of at least competing in, if not outright winning the West? That our offense is still so tepid on paper that we need two plus-defenders at every position, preferably simultaneously? That, if we injected all of these guys with an HGH-and-Spanish-Fly cocktail, they'd combine for at least 20 HRs between them? That the top brass figures that if we can't get 10,000 in the stands, at least we can have a few thousand in the outfield?
Supposing for the sake of argument that the implied idea is not to stockpile more potential centerfielders than the rest of MLB combined, what do we make of this? I can't imagine Travis "Passed" Buck is out this morning, bright and early, looking at prospective houses to purchase in the East Bay based on the Gross signing, that is for sure... you wonder, if poor Travis was the batboy, would the team sign MC Hammer's kid instead?
Anyway I think it’s a good insurance signing, unless like I said you’re Travis Buck’s real estate agent, but beyond that what is the play-within-the-play here? I know it’s in all likelihood wishful drinking (the boorish, somewhat pathetic cousin of wishful thinking), but it’s hard not to anticipate that some sort of additional manifestations are pending to address the SS situation, or rather the lack-of-a-legitimate-major-league-SS situation, so I’d appreciate all of your thoughts on this move... the more arcane, surreal and labyrinthine, the better.
You think I’d make you read this crap without at least giving you some cool rare music?
Today's doggie treat is in honor of Gabriel here.
