Oakland A's Offseason Thread

Cohn wrote a pretty scathing article today in the merc basically blaming Wolff and company for their attendance issues.

Agree with it. Sure A's attendance before Wolff showed up wasn't great but with a playoff contending team, their season attendance actually increased year by year from I believe 98 to 04. Still wasn't worthy of IMO a playoff team year in and year out for much of the first half of this past decade but still it was around middle of the pack and to do that in an old park that everybody rips on and the ownership of Schott-Hoff threatening to move the team to god knows where basically the moment they bought the team from the Haas family, I'd say that was pretty good.

But the tarp and just the experience you get going to A's games is so much different from even earlier this decade. Sure the A's were winning up until 06, a run that started in 99, but even when the A's were "bad" in the 97 and 98 years, the feeling around the coliseum isn't as drab as it is right now.

Wolff probably will use the attendance issue/excuse as a reason why he wants a new stadium, prefertably to be out of Oakland and looking towards the south bay but he and what the A's front office have done the past five or so years played a huge reason why attendance was worst in the bigs last season.

Latest guess of what the 25 man opening day roster would be...

C-Suzuki
1B-Barton
2B-Ellis
SS-Pennington
3B-Kouz
LF-Davis
CF-Crisp
RF-Sweeney
DH-Cust

BEN-Powell(C/1B/DH), Chavez(1B/3B/DH/OF), Fox(1B/3B/DH), Gross(UTIL OF), Rosales(UTIL IF/OF),

SP-Sheets, Duke, Anderson, Braden, Gio

RP-Kilby, Breslow, Wuertz, Devine, Ziegler

CP-Bailey

...could send somebody like Fox to AAA to give him full time ABs and add a long man/spot starter to the pen ala a Mortenson.

Obviously looking at it, Cahill and Mazzaro start the season in AAA.

Honestly fox should be playin ahead of Barton... He's a better hitter than Barton and he could play 1st... Watching both fox and Barton last season it looked like fox jus didn't get enough at bats..

The A's are building around this pitching staff which 3/5 will be made up of "youngsters" I guess you could call them and D.

Barton has turned himself into a very good defensive 1B and I don't see the A's having a better option there other than Doolittle.

Guessing they and many fans think the signs Barton showed last season are a sign of things to come. Barton was rushed to the bigs following that incredible SEP/07 putting him as the starting 1B for all of 09 which didn't work out well.

He was up and down from AAA and the bigs last season but not like he did poorly once he got consistently ABs in the bigs. Yeah he isn't gonna be the power threat most expect out of a 1B and probably doesn't have as much HR potential as a Fox but I think Barton can be a solid option at 1B where he plays good D and hits for a high AVG, gets on base at a pretty good clip, and have enough gap/2B power to make up for the fact that he isn't gonna hit 30+ HRs which is what you'd want from an ideal 1B option.

Ratto and TK saying King should be in the HOF.

Don't need to have a drawn out discussion on this. To see some of the jokers being put in the three HOFs where King broadcast in recent years turns my and probably all King fans' supporters stomachs.

But at this point personally don't see it happening unless some of his other broadcasters push for King but if they haven't done so since his death in late 05, I don't see it happening as the years go on and King's legacy fading.


Also anybody else reading these rumors that a reason why SF only offered Lincecum 8 million in arb is because they want to get in the good graces of the other owners who probably thought Lincecum would be offered well over 8 figures. Reason for them "lowballing" him was because they wanna help the ARB cases for other teams' future stars and that may help them with the whole SJ/A's vote that supposedly is gonna take place sometime soon I guess.

If true and I don't believe it is, then SF is just finding another slime ball way to go in handling this SJ issue, already mentioned how they're skewing polls down south to favor their views on the issue and now this?

When the moment if it ever happens that the A's move to SJ, I hope the A's org and city of SJ basically say go f**k yourselves to the SFG org.

Tomko mentioned both bay area teams as possible locations that he would like to sign with.

I wouldn't mind bringing back Tomko if he's healthy which is a big if like it is with so many of the A's players on their roster right now, as a long man in the pen.

He pitched very well in six starts late last season before getting shut down. I think as a veteran in the pen who could be that long man/spot starter, he'd be ideal as it looks as Eveland who I projected to possibly make the 25 man roster a few weeks back in that role was DFA'ed and could resign with ARZ the team that deal him to the A's as part of the Haren deal.

If the A's decide to have a long man/spot starter in the pen which we don't know if they'll have a 7 man pen, I'd rather have that role go to a Tomko than potentially waste a Cahill, Mazzaro, Outman or heck even a Mort in that role....although could see Outman when he returns being in that role as the A's ease him back in.

I'm not going to believe all these conspiracy theory's about how the A's are trying to do a reenactment of Major League or how the Giants are taking the risk of alienating their best player so they can win a tiny bit of respect in the eyes of the owners. Seems a little far fetched.

I do think that the Giants are trying their very hardest to keep the A's out of San Jose and keep the A's down so they can maximize their profits. And so far they've done a damn good job of it.

What really pisses me off about the Giants is that they aren't being fair. They have to operate in a two market system so they should have to play by the rules. Other teams in a two market system have to share territories and resources way more equally than how it's set up here. They're doing everything in their power to keep the A's down. KNBR doesn't help, although I wouldn't be surprised if the Giants paid them to do their biased coverage. It also doesn't help that the city the A's operate in is scoffed upon as rough and violent and not hip and what not. It doesn't have nearly the prestige San Francisco has.

San Jose is the 3rd largest city in California. Why should they have to be San Francisco's b***h? Why is San Jose's resources considered San Francisco's "right" to own? I think it's in the leagues best interest to maximize profit and havng a team in San Jose would create much more profit for the league then Oakland and the little bit of resources that the Giants receive. San Jose has untapped resources for the league. I think the real issue is that the Giants just don't want to ahve to deal with a legitimate other option in Bay Area sports.

In two sport towns, it does seem like one of the teams turn into the b*****d child though, the Clippers, the White sox, the Mets, the Angels used to be that until they hanged their name to Los Angeles. The Dodgers are still way more popular in socal though.

I have no doubt KNBR who owns a small part of the SFG goes out in their way to ignore or downgrade the A's anytime they can.

For instance just a few weeks ago when the A's traded for Kouz, was listening to the morning show, albeit it was a whole weekend in between the A's trading for Kouz on the Friday before, they didn't even mention it at all for the first 2.5 hours I was listening.

They say, well some hosts on that station say they wanna talk about the A's yet no A's fans call in. Well why should A's fans listen/call in when your station BARELY talks about the team. It's like the chicken/egg theory. I don't know if it's some "game" they play to downgrade the A's org/fan base knowing most A's fans other than maybe a small fraction don't listen to that station on a consistent basis, I know Radnich has done this numerous times over the past decade when it deals with "A's talk".

As for SFG as a whole, hey I've brought this up many times. No doubt in my mind they'd want to see the A's gone entirely from the bay area. They want the market all to themselves or at "worst" for them, they want everything to stay as is where they get the media attention while the A's play in a piss poor venue and are seen as one of the cheapest and worst PR MLB teams in baseball since really Wolff took over in 05.

Already posted that article from Newhouse last week where he interviewed Picicinni who believes that the SFG org had something to do with MLB rejecting his attempt to buy the A's. I pointed this out just a few days ago where I mentioned TEX got sold and I haven't yet seen any other team's sale get rejected since the A's deal was over a dozen or so years ago back in the late 90s.

Agreed that no other areas in this country that have multiple teams..NYC, CHI, LA...have territorial rights and certainly wouldn't be this huge disparage where SFG "owns" 5 counties here and the A's only 2.

I've said before here many times that SJ which is the biggest city in this area and the 10th biggest city in the country shouldn't be basically the "b***h" of the city of SF and their baseball team 40-50 miles up north. In fact they weren't their "b***h" until the Haas family gave up their own rights to the south bay nearly 2 decades ago to them so they could build their new park which now I keep seeing execs within the SF org saying that's untrue but they're lying, big surprise there.

Even print media guys like Ratto, TK, Purdy, and others know it's BS but SFG org which already has most of the media here drinking their kool-aid thinks if they say it long enough, that they'll get the masses here to believe it's true.

SJ "resources" certainly aren't going all out in supporting the SFG org. Brought up this stat before but 3/4 of the corps there even have any kind of working relationship with their org.

If the A's do move to SJ, you already have corps who at this point are "neutral" who've made it public at least in a poll that they'd support the A's and that's something the SFG don't want to see happening as again, they like it the way it is now in terms of a worst case scenario if the A's do stay in the bay area.

Reasons like this above makes me hate the SFG more than any org in sports as a long life Oakland and the A's being the first team I became a fan of and is still my fav team in all of sports. And why I don't understand why some A's fans here in general actually root for that org when that org probably is doing all they can to get rid of the A's from the bay area.

See no reason why MLB shouldn't grant the A's access to the south bay. If you got this untapped potential down there in terms of a revenue generating base that isn't spending money on your product now but will if a team at this point in the A's who are seen as the bottom dwellers in terms of revenue generating for the league moves down there, it would seem like a win win big time not only for the A's but for MLB in as a whole.

As for the A's and the real life "Major League" scenario taking place.

I wouldn't shun it 100%. Since Wolff took over the team, he's done as poorly as you could to try to bring fans into the park.

We all know about tarping off the 3rd deck and etc, but just the fan experience you get at the games since he took over, you talk with other A's fans and they even say it's just not a fun place to go to anymore and that's counting the 06 season when the A's made the playoffs and reached the ALCS for the first time since the 1992 season.

It's not just fans who see it, the media sees it too. For example I was watching Chron Live months ago and in discussion just talking bay area baseball, the SF beatwriter Schulman said that the A's brass has done a bad job marketing the team and making the coliseum a worser place to visit as a fan even though it's the same stadium that 2-3 years earlier drew over 25+ K per game and had the occasional sell out be them games against the big draw teams or even fireworks.

Now even big draw teams that come, you rarely see sellouts now, firework games even barely sell out half the stadium and weekend games where the A's used to draw 30K, they barely get even half of that also.

The team isn't as good as it was the first half of this decade but everybody sees or feels there's just a different vibe you get from the coliseum now.

No doubt about the moment Wolff bought this team he wanted to move out of the city of Oakland and what they've done since hasn't change the minds of the people here. From screwing up the 40 year anniversary reunion in 08 to basically not embracing any history of the franchise since he's been here, canceling fanfest before the season and subbing it with "A's day" the day before the season started, there are reasons why the A's were dead last in attendance last season even though the A's personal brass decided they wanted to go for it last season with all the veteran players they brought in.

The only thing they got right was Rickey's retirement ceremony but they lucked into that probably.

The conspiracists will say that Wolff and company want to drive away basically all the fans to give MLB a reason why they should move, and seems as it worked. Like I mentioned earlier the A's the years even during another horrible ownership era with Schott/Hoffman before Wolff took over were middle of the pack in attendance and in just 4 or so years the team has dropped all the way to dead last in 09.

Has there been one off the field move that Wolff and company have done to inspire fans to come in and spend their hard earned money on an owner who basically could care less about the city and the majority of fans who attend games or a team who they feel is ready to sell out fan favorite after fan favorite and until really the second half of last season, played a boring brand of baseball.

Bad product is one reason why attendance has dropped but I think the bigger issues are the reasons I stated above that have to deal with ownership and the way they've handle the PR with the fans.

I agree with you on this completely. But where I don't see the Major League comparison is the fact that the A's aren't purposefully trying to lose games. Maybe they're trying to win games and be competitive and still prove that they can't draw fans.

I wanted to see the A's resigned in Oakland, but right now I just want to see the A's as a legitimate franchise again and the only way that seems possible thanks to Wolff is moving to San Jose.

I hate Wolff so much. He's taken so much of the enjoyment of going to a baseball park and watching a game for me. Something I love to do. And to think that I actually was excited that Scott/Hoffman would sell the team.

That MLB park committee studying the potential locations for an A's park will supposedly release their findings next MON.

Basically four sites.

Downtown site in SJ, NUMMI plant in Fremont, and the two JLS/waterfront sites in Oakland.

A's signed a 16 year old to a 800K signing bonus.

Small write up about him...

Quote:

Michael Feliz, RHP, Oakland Athletics

With an imposing yet projectable 6´4”, 200 lb frame, Feliz (16) showed his aptitude for development over the last two months in the DPL. His 91-93 mph fastball exhibits strong downhill plane and movement while his curveball shows nice potential to become an above average secondary pitch. Needless to say, DPL hitters are happy to see him leave the league and get his pro career started. Feliz becomes the first Tainos player to get his professional career started.

nice....i like to see that the A's are still active in the international arena.

Yeah, but as I've said many times before hopefully one of these days the A's could land one of the top positional prospects in the international free market.

Sano would've been a nice get since he was supposedly the top hitter in the past few years, not just that of the 09 year.

A's had offered Chapman the 2nd highest figure last month but he signed with CIN so it shows the A's are willing to spend the big bucks now for these high risk but high reward type of international talents.

The first player from this renewed interests internationally the past few years could be up sometime in 2010 with Leon the Mexican teenager the A's signed I believe in 07 who dominated late last season at AA when the A's moved him to a SP. He could start this upcoming season in the minors at AAA and see some time the second half in the bigs.

Been reading the past few days that the A's have gotten calls for Buck in trade requests but have rejected them.

I don't know what plans the A's have for Buck, it doesn't look like just based on their transactions and the way they handled Buck last season that he fits in their long term plans

Carter, Taylor, Doolittle, Brown, Sweeney, and maybe Davis fighting it out for three OF spots in the upcoming seasons. I don't know where that leaves Buck who most believe is gonna get dealt but if those stories are true that the A's have rejected multiple attempts from other teams interested in trading for him, what are they doing with him then?

Obviously Buck feels that he's not in the picture and he even admits that his failures the past couple of seasons be them being unproductive when given the chance or health, his stock within the org has plummeted.

Seems like a far cry when in his rookie season, once you got past April of that season, he hit well over .300 in every month afterwards and was thought to be one of the faces of the next generation of A's teams.