I think Beane knows this too. Thomas is a stop gap until some of those high A ballers develop more and some of those AA ballers prove they can actually play.”

***

Granted there aren’t a ton of good prospects at or near the AAA level, but how many do they need? Take a look at their roster and see how many players they have under contract or arb/pre-arb rights to for at least 2007:

Jason Kendall (through 2007)
Milton Bradley (through 2007)
Joe Kennedy (through 2007)
Bobby Kielty (through 2007)
Mark Ellis (through 2008)
Mark Kotsay (through 2008)
Adam Melhuse (through 2008)
Kiko Calero (through 2009)
Marco Scutaro (through 2009)
Justin Duchscherer (through 2009)
Rich Harden (through 2009)
Esteban Loaiza (through 2009)
Bobby Crosby (through 2009)
Kirk Saarloos (through 2009)
Antonio Perez (through 2009)
Dan Haren (through 2010)
Joe Blanton (through 2010)
Nick Swisher (through 2010)
Dan Johnson (through 2010)
Huston Street (through 2010)
Eric Chavez (through 2011)

Ok, let’s take a look at that. 21 of the 25 players I would expect to be on the opening day roster for Oakland will be back in 2007 barring injury, trade or forgetting how to play and getting cut. The 4 free agents will be Zito, Jay Payton, Jay Witasick and Frank Thomas. Minus those, the entire team will be back.

After the 2008 season (3 offseasons from now) 17 of the current 25 players can leave if they want to. Except for Kendall, the entire infield of OD 2006 will be back in 2008. Except for Zito, the entire rotation (including bullpen 6th starter Kirk Saarloos) will be back.

So, basically, the depleted farm system has 3 years to produce a catcher (Powell, Suzuki), three outfielders, a DH, a starter and two bullpen arms, or three bullpen arms and no starters if Saarloos moves into the rotation. And any free agents that are signed (and money will be there, after the departures of Zito, Payton, Kennedy, Witasick, Kendall, Bradley, Kennedy and Kielty) will mean one fewer player the farm system will need to produce.

The A’s farm system will need years to restock, but it will have those years. The farm system is ‘depleted’ at high levels because ALL THOSE PLAYERS are now at the major league level, playing for Oakland. Which is kind of the point of a farm system, isn’t it?

Uh, we WANTED to sign those guys that we did. Way to miss the point.

You can’t subtract Jojima and Lawton and add them to whatever batch of signings you want. You can only include them in our signings because that’s what WE did. If Beane had even made an attempt to get either of those players, then you’d have a good reason to compare / contrast the signings.

By doing that you basically ignored two signings from the Mariners list because it looked “better” towards your arguement. It’s either all or none, not mix and match. I know the rationale is that these were things “available” to us during the offseason. But by making that arguement you could basically go and take whatever signings from whatever teams and bitch that Bavasi isn’t doing his job.

Was this the “best” we could do? Probably not. Was that the best Beane could do? Probably not. Did anybody have a perfect offseason? No.

Oakland is my pick in the AL.

Look, if you think the M’s offseason signings were the best we could reasonably expect, more power to you. I disagree… and Meche+Moyer+Everett+Washburn is pretty close to Millwood+Loaiza+Johnson, salarywise, for 2006. The team decided it was more important to have “clubhouse grit”, return a popular veteran, not to give up on their 1996 draft pick, and cut corners on the premiere FA signing than radically reconstruct a roster that’s sucked the last two years. It might even work out better this way- I was no fan of what the Angels did in 2002 or the Marlins did in 2003 and they have nice shiny hardware to prove me wrong.

Why? Because it doesn’t support your list claim otherwise?

He can hurt his back, his ear, his right foot, either knee, either shoulder, whatever, and still get the 1.4 mil.

It’s basically a 2 million deal for Oakland.

If he performs at all, even for the second half of the season, it’s a great signing and it’s a good risk either way.

But we shouldn’t be tossing out 500k as if they can get anywhere near Thomas’ capable ceiling production for anything less than 2 million.

For 500k, they get a waste of time – and 500k.

List B is Millwood, Loaiza, Johnson, Thomas, and D’Angelo Jiminez.

Both lists come in at approximately the same cost (list B might be several million more if Thomas stays healthy), and both lists come with Matt Lawton and Kenji Johjima.

Which one do YOU pick?

-sigh-

“Unfortunately, we were unable to offer a contract to Frank Thomas (aka, Frank the Tank, Big Hurt) because of our expenditures in regards to locking Willie Bloomquist into a two year deal.”

I merely wanted to comment on this:

“That’s not a bad deal at all, especially for a team like the A’s that stock their AAA team with interesting players who can step in to help the roster flex around injuries.”

Who? Most of the A’s talents have been promoted to the Majors already. There’s a lot of discussion amongst the John Sickels groupies that the A’s farm system is approaching depleted at the advanced levels, much like the Mariners and their recent promotion craze.

I think Beane knows this too. Thomas is a stop gap until some of those high A ballers develop more and some of those AA ballers prove they can actually play.