TruffleShuffle

roast

nobody knows if prospects are involved. stop pulling a cubsGM everyone.

dominguez is just a lousy hitter. he's supposed to be outstanding at third so the bar for him is pretty low offensively, but if he hits like gary scott then it doesn't matter how great his glove is.

nah he'll be coaching both teams.

yeah i didn't realize volstad has over 3 years of service time. he's a back of the rotation guy, meaning that once he hits arbitration he's a candidate to be non-tendered unless he suddenly gets better. not seeing much value in dumping zambrano for volstad unless it results in saving a bunch of cash that is invested elsewhere.

volstad has some value, but you really don't want to be populating your starting rotation with a bunch of young guys who can't be anything more than league average (randy wells, travis wood, maybe volstad)

stop being a fool. wrigley is a great baseball park, albeit one that has outdated facilities and infrastructure. the coliseum is a football stadium where the a's happen to play baseball. the coliseum never would be around to be considered one of hallowed halls of baseball because it sucks and no team would play there for 100 years.

I have understood that all along. oh ok, so you just decided to argue against a point that i wasn't making, good work.

It just seems like Billys luck has run out the past 4-5 years. They're no longer generating the top prospects they once did and all of the top prospects they acquired in his masterful trades have been doing bellyflops and Beanes just seemed weird and desperate the past few years adding guys like Mastsui, Nomar, Giambi and of course Holliday in an extremely un Beane-like trade. Now they're just stuck hoping that Daric Barton, Michael Taylor, and Chris Carter can pull things together along with the haul they got for Gio and Cahill. For now, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them add someone like Manny or Vlad. like TT said, the stadium issue is just massive for them. the coliseum is a dump that's outdated and not suitable for baseball, especially when you have a gorgeous pac bell park (or at&t, whatever the hell it's called now) sitting on the other side of the bay. i actually sympathize with lew wolff (as much as one can sympathize with an extremely rich person, anyway) - he legitimately seems committed to keeping the a's in northern california and has tried a lot of things to get the new stadium done, without holding the local community hostage by threatening to move the club, but he keeps running into roadblocks. the city of oakland has been useless, a lot of the fremont community complained about the possibility of the a's relocating there (plus BART, the light rain, wasn't helping matters), and the giants can block a move to san jose. if the san jose plan doesn't go through i'd have a hard time blaming wolff for moving his team to whatever city is willing to give him a sweet deal.

that was like the oklahoma st-stanford game, except not fun.

yes, you did. when i wrote "whatever you can get" i meant that - basically i was talking about trading them away without caring about the return (i threw in the part about eating salary because obviously with zambrano if someone is willing to take his whole salary off your hands, you do it), because wsr seemed to be saying that if you aren't going to win then you mineaswell spend as little money as possible.

michigan has no business being ahead in this game... but i picked them to win so i'll take it.

Too far away, though. Who becomes the centerpiece? Banuelos? I like Banuelos, but I don't know if I like him as the centerpiece to a Garza deal. i would definitely take banuelos, sanchez and another pretty good prospect. i'd also take montero and betances. preferring sanchez over montero seems like crazy talk to me, because montero is ready to rake right now in the big leagues, whereas sanchez is still 3 years away, is no certainty to stay at catcher and might have some issues making contact.

I think they've been working him at third. EDIT: I thought I heard that but tried to look it up and couldn't find anything. Is it defense keeping him from staying at catcher? I thought it was trouble keeping the weight down. Hell, I wouldn't want him at catcher regardless. this was the bp scouting report last offseason. i haven't heard much about his weight being an issue.

i really don't think the a's traded away gonzalez and cahill because they're broke.

to put this another way, the cubs certainly look to be a few steps behind the cards, brewers and reds this year and are quite unlikely to contend. should they just give away byrd, dempster and zambrano for whatever they can get, even if it means eating a bunch of salary? after all, those three aren't going to push the cubs into the top tier of the division, so isn't that just a waste of money?

by this logic no small market team with no hope of contending this year should ever spend money on a veteran and should aim to have a major league payroll of like $10 million. Oakland sure seems to be operating under this logic when they trade all their good cheap players for prospects every offseason i'd argue they're trading overvalued assets. they got a hell of a haul for gio gonzalez and i like what they got for cahill considering that he's going to become more expensive soon and his numbers have been fueled by BABIP flukes and pitching in a cavernous home park.

you're acting like the a's are a no-market team.

Sure isn't the worst thing to have a high number in either. so if they'd signed josh willingham to a few million a year would that have been ok? after all he's a consistent 120 ops+ guy. side note: he and crisp are about equally valuable.

by this logic no small market team with no hope of contending this year should ever spend money on a veteran and should aim to have a major league payroll of like $10 million. I just think that teams like the A's should first try to sort out what they already have and then spend money to fill holes. Coco Crisp isn't as God awful as some made him out to be when we were supposedly interested in him, but at the same time he's not a guy that's going to help the A's be better than they are. As is, they'll have trouble contending with the Mariners and Coco Crisp isn't going to change that. they have no outfielders so they spent money to fill a hole in centerfield. seriously, their outfield options before this signing was brandon allen, colin cowgill, michael taylor and josh reddick, none of whom has established himself as a capable major league player. the options were to stick with an outfield of kids and force them to play every day even if they struggle, call up another kid who's not ready from AAA (or some worthless AAAA roster fill), or sign a veteran outfielder. crisp has a reasonable contract and a skill set (defense, speed) that could be valued at the trade deadline. oakland aren't going to be players for the prince fielders of the world, but it's ludicrous to protest every time they sign a veteran because he won't "help them be better than they are." they're not going to have a payroll of $15 million for fucks sake.

by this logic no small market team with no hope of contending this year should ever spend money on a veteran and should aim to have a major league payroll of like $10 million. I don't know how spending 10% of your payroll on a guy who has only once in the past six years put up an OPS+ over 100 can be considered a smart move. because ops+ isn't the sum total of a baseball player's skills?

by this logic no small market team with no hope of contending this year should ever spend money on a veteran and should aim to have a major league payroll of like $10 million.

For Oakland that's a ton of money. $7m is just over 10% of their payroll from last year, and their "big contracts" are brian fuentes ($5m), grant balfour ($4m), kurt suzuki ($5m), dallas braden ($3.35m) and brett anderson ($3.25m). i think they can probably handle $7m for crisp since their payroll will struggle to be $50m this year.

i'd [expletive] my pants if campana was worth 13 wins over 5 years. also if he's that good, we should pencil him in as our starting cf since he's quite valuable as a min salary guy.

why ouch?