In the worst kept secret of the offseason, Manny officially confirmed signing with the A's to Pedro Gomez today. As for whether or not Manny is really a different person as Gomez claims in the video, I don't really care. To me this move makes sense in quite a few ways. First and foremost, it costs the A's nothing really other than $500 K which I think Lew Wolff burped up after his breakfast burrito this morning.
Second, Manny is suspended 50 games so the A's don't really have to make any decisions with him until then. If the A's find that Chris Carter or Brandon Allen or someone else can be a beast as a DH prior to then, then you just release Manny.
To me it's classic Billy Beane. You take a shot and if it works out then great, if not, you essentially have lost nothing except some spare Wolff change. And if the A's pitchers somehow prove to be much better than we think or Cespedes is a beast immediately and the offense is actually scoring runs and giving other teams a run for their money, well, then you're adding a piece on June 3 who has a career 500 plus home runs. I honestly don't expect the A's to compete in 2012. But with Cespedes and Manny in tow as well as some of the great young pitching coming through the system, the green and gold are infinitely more interesting, don't you think?
The other thing is maybe Manny can help teach Cespedes a few things or two about hitting. I mean if you're going to have a 26-year-old adjusting to life in the bigs, why not have him learn some things from arguably the greatest right-handed hitter of our generation? Let's just hope we don't wind up with Yoennis being Yoennis as a byproduct of that schooling.
