the A’s starting pitching is going to tank and the angels will make some type of move to improve their offense with or without tex.

It will work in his economical favor as a draw to bring all those disgruntled fans back to his park. Holliday is a bargain in that respect but he can’t get it all done by himself. They are short a few pitchers now and that could be a big achilles heel for them. They may get lucky and win a bunch of games keeping him all year, but if not, Beane can just flip him and end up with something good still out of it.

will be ‘outed’ (sorry, couldn’t resist the Billy Bean pun) as a mediocre GM.

Here’s the thing: With the spate of small-mid market teams enjoying success in recent years, where are the A’s?

What success have they to show for all of Beane’s supposed “genius?”

I predict that the Rangers, Mariners, and the Angels (again) will all reach the WS before the Oakland White-Cleated Bastards.

It seems strange that all of Beane’s highly touted prospects turn out to be one-hit wonders and injury-prone wusses. Stranger still is that his trades don’t generally work out all that well and, when they do, usually result in the successful player becoming the pivot point for yet another bad trade. Beane’s entire “small market” excuse is little more than a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point.

When you cut to the chase, is Billy Beane even among the top ten of baseball GM’s?

@ Arizona
@ San Diego
@ San Francisco
@ LA Dodgers

im sorry, but just about everyones power numbers would go down if thats where the overwhelming majority of their road games were spent. True, playing in oakland will not help and neither will going against our staff but i think all of the people who somehow expect a .330 hitter to turn into a .275/20 homer guy, youre in for a sorry wakeup call and so are the angels

The guy has had so much success that you can’t discount his moves. Two losing seasons in a row don’t make someone automatically bad, and he was just a few pieces away health-wise each time. The only question mark I have about the trade is him giving away a couple of pitchers, but he looks ready to replenish with some amazing talent, so this trade could easily work out in his favor.

on the Orthodox calendar?

A’s fan here, I’ll try to avoid too much bashing…

A’s trading for Holliday doesn’t necessarily mean we are going for it, as Beane might flip him before the season even starts. It is very possible it was simply a value upgrade.

Nevertheless, we probably are going for it and Angels fans should be worried about it. Lots of rumors floating around Furcal and Giambi as well for us, which would give us quite a good lineup. If that were to come to fruition and the Angels didn’t sign Tex your lineup would be significantly worse than ours. Yall should be happy at the prospect of dumping GA though. The man has always been and will continue to be Ken Griffey Jr.-lite…and Griffey is finished being a productive hitter in the MLB.

Anyway, A’s pitching seems unlikely to improve significantly, but unless the Angels make a big move the A’s will be close and our minor league system is ready to spit out a lot of talent.

Btw, hating on Billy Beane is just silly, show yourselves some dignity. He certainly gets a lot of credit even when he is potentially making a bad move, but he is a Top 5 GM. The fact that so many of you senselessly complain about him and the A’s reaffirms what a good job he has done making life difficult for the Angels.

Also, “Mathletics”…that is an insult?? seriously? Mathletes rule the friggin world dude, get with the program because being anti-intellectual is only cool in beer commercials, which are of course crafted by mathletes.

How you mention Holliday as “The Great White Hope”. Maybe in the NBA or NFL. There are enough “Aryans” in the MLB to retake the OC!!!!!!!!!!!

As the playoffs this year may or may not have proven, we need some competition. One of the reasons we won in ‘02 was that both us and the A’s played like .900 ball for whole stretches of the second half. Sharpens the knife-points, that kind of mano-a-mano.

Truth is the offense is iffy w/out Teix & w/out other upgrades. A’s fans love bashing G.A., but even the best possible Willits/Matthews platoon won’t approach his production; and Figgins — who would probably move to LF if he’s not traded — can no longer hit anything but singles. An everyday lineup with Morales, Figgins, Wood, Aybar, and Matthews/Willits (plus Mathis 40% of the time) is a lineup that will not be scoring many runs, even if Howie’s hammies stay clean and Napoli continues to mash.

The good news is that we will likely NOT go with such an anemic lineup. Plus, the Holliday signing will goose Arte into trying to keep Teix, which is really where our energies should be at right now.