For those of you interested in what Dawkins has been up to in San Jose:

I don't know if he is good enough to work his way up to some first team minutes next season but he is definitely improving and should be able to sold for some capital after his loan ends.

2011

GP: 26 GS: 19 Minutes: 1773 Goals: 6 Assists: 2

2012

GP: 9 GS: 5 Minutes: 445 Goals: 1 Assists: 1

2012 first round MLS supplemental draft pick Eder Arreola is apparently going to be training with the Chivas USA reserves. He is a local kid who played 3 years at UCLA. As a UCLA fan I got to see him a few times against the bay area teams and in the college cup on TV. He is a winger with above average (but not blazing) speed but very good technical abilities - dribbling/passing/shooting/soccer brain. He can play left or right wing.

He was drafted by Houston and played very well in their preseason. I was keeping tabs on him and was pretty confident he would get offered a contract by them but they decided to go in a different direction. I was a little surprised that Kinnear drafted him b/c he is not a typical Kinnear winger (i.e. he doesn't have a ton of pace and is better in a more possession oriented system). FYI last season Coach Salcedo switched UCLA's tactics to be a full-on short passing possession-style system like Akron and Arreola did very well. I think he will fit in great in Fraser's system at Chivas USA.

He is not ready to start at the MLS level right now but he is a great prospect who can probably make some good contributions 1-2 years out if you give him some time to develop in the reserve league this year or on loan with a USL team. All in all a good return on investment in my opinion. It looks like Chivas USA only has 27 roster spots taken right now of the 30-man roster so there should definitely be space for him... and as a undrafted rookie he would not count towards the cap.

Here is a video of a sick left footed volley I saw him score against Santa Clara last season:

(:30 second mark)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5vFOazWVn8

Quakes fans were notified today that the March 17th home game for the Wolff-owned Earthquakes is being moved to AT&T park as part of a double header with the Mexican olympic team. Those of us who are also A's fans found this quite odd considering the fact that the SF Giants have gone so far as to file a lawsuit against the City of SJ to stop the A's stadium deal. I am curious as to what the rest of your thoughts are about this new venture between the two parties. Does this signal a thawing of relations between the two parties? Or is this just a one-off to raise a few bucks to pay off the Zito contract albatross?

http://www.sjearthquakes.com/news/2012/01/quakes-play-dynamo-att-park-march-17

The San Jose Earthquakes announced Wednesday that the club will host the Houston Dynamo at AT&T Park in San Francisco on Saturday, March 17 as part of a doubleheader spectacular with the Mexican U-23 National Team.

Also on the Giants website:

Before baseball returns to the Bay Area, San Francisco will host a St. Patrick's Day soccer doubleheader.

Mexico and Senegal will square off in one of their final tests before their Olympic qualifying matches, headlining a doubleheader at AT&T Park on March 17. Prior to that match, the San Jose Earthquakes will face the Houston Dynamo in a regular-season Major League Soccer contest at 2 p.m. PT.

http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120126&content_id=26477984&vkey=news_sf&c_id=sf

From a few days ago... I didn't see anyone post this anywhere so thought I would throw it up. Our sneaky little friends "Stand for San Jose" are back again... they are funded by the SJ Giants, who are majority-owned by the SF Giants.

A group that opposes the potential relocation of the A's to downtown San Jose filed suit Friday, challenging a recent vote by the San Jose City Council that gave the baseball team the right to buy 5 acres of land.

The council voted Nov. 8 to approve a two-year, $50,000 option for the A's to buy the land near HP Pavilion for $6.98 million.

The group contends the land is worth at least $14 million. It describes itself as a "cross-section of San Jose individuals and organizations" and includes the San Francisco Giants' Class A minor-league affiliate, the San Jose Giants.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/02/BA0E1M7OJT.DTL

Technically the "highest and best use" of the land would value it at $14 million. Ergo, selling it at $7 million to the A's would be a $7 million subsidy. Tough to sell that to the public in these hard economic times, but as far as sports team subsidies go that is pretty miniscule when you are getting a $350 million privately funded stadium and 82 home games per year.

Sidenote on "highest and best use" - SJ like most cities has a general plan that governs what % of its land is allocated industrial/commercial/residential etc. SJ has too much housing and not enough commercial space, so the general plan is trying to create more commercial/job zoning. However, the highest valued land in SJ is residential zoned property - it is 4x more valuable than commercial zoned land. My point is, it's unfair for people to call this a subsidy based on the "highest and best use" standard when SJ's own general plan would probably force the land to be zoned commercial and not residential. It would be most valuable as residential but SJ's laws wouldn't let it be zoned residential.

Earthquakes, MLS Walk Fine Line Between Fan Groups, Families - San Jose Mercury News

Decent article, pretty even-handed but more of a cursory explanation of the issues surrounding supporters groups in MLS.  More geared toward casual sports fans who are not familiar with MLS supporters groups.

The Romanian media has picked up the story too, though some things were clearly lost in translation:

http://www.sport.ro/stranieri/poveste-incredibila-el-e-romanul-care-a-dus-steaua-in-america-de-ce-e-acuzat-de-rasism-si-cum-a-socat.html

I used Google Translate to read it.

1906 Ultras Statement Regarding Protest

We are protesting the unjust probation that the Earthquakes front office have imposed on our group as punishment for our Tifo (overhead banner) at the Seattle home game on April 2nd. We will not stand for the front office’s unwarranted attempt at censorship. Three days after the Seattle game, Ultras leaders received an e-mail from the Earthquakes front office notifying us that a Seattle supporter complained about the tifo on Twitter, and that the Earthquakes front office agreed that the tifo was vulgar, a violation of the fan code of conduct, poorly represented the club, and that as a result the Ultras were being punished by being placed on probation.

The tifo at the Seattle game was in no way vulgar or obscene, and in no way violates the fan code of conduct. There was no nudity, no sexual acts, and no profanity. The tifo was merely an irreverent take on Charlie Sheen, something which the Earthquakes front office itself has indulged in (see their youtube video from a few weeks ago). If the tifo was so obscene and such a violation of the code of conduct, why did no Earthquakes staff member ask us to take it down, or complain to us during or after the game? Why did not a single Earthquakes fan complain about the tifo? Why did the front office not say anything to us for three full days? For the Earthquakes front office to now come forward and suggest the tifo was obscene is extremely insulting to the Ultras artists who spent countless hours of their free time making it. Our protest will continue until the unjust probation is lifted.

Sincerely,

1906 ultras leadership

Just wanted to check in and see what you 86ers felt about this announcement:

 

Each club is required to provide a chaperone for each 50 travelling fans -a cost that, Barber pointed out, is being absorbed by the club. And travelling fans will also be required to have their picture taken before entering the venue. - Whitecaps CEO Paul Barber

To me it's a terrible development for the league and it's personally offensive to me as a supporter.  MLS is not 1980's England.  MLS SG's are not "firms" whose primary goal is getting into fights with each other.

For all the talk about how the Cascadia rivalry will revolutionize MLS and take us forward, this is a huge step backwards for the league.  It's a draconian punishment based on stereotypes, prejudice, and lies.  Supporters are the league's customers.  Hasn't MLS ever heard of "the customer is always right"?

I found a new soccer study on player injuries that sheds some light on the reason the club should not rush to bring Ben Arfa back on the field:

Ekstrand and his colleagues studied the injuries of about 2,300 players in three European soccer leagues over the years 2001 to 2009.

About one in six players were reinjured, which means a recovery period of up to 30 percent longer than with the first injury.
This can result from "trying to come back from injury too quickly," Brophy said, adding that the study's findings highlight the fact that players and trainers need to make sure players go through adequate rehabilitation before going back on the field.

This helps actually quantify the serious risk of bringing back Ben Arfa too soon - he could have a 1 in 6 chance of re-injuring himself.

For this reason, I fully support Pardew's decision to postpone Ben Arfa's return date at least month from early April to early May:

Newcastle boss Alan Pardew has revealed Hatem Ben Arfa faces a battle to return to first-team action before May as he bids to recover from his double leg break.

He added that the player had "every chance of playing against Wolves" on April 2.

However, Pardew has now said Ben Arfa has little prospect of playing in that game.

"I am going to protect him," he said. "I can't just throw him in. The Wolves game sounds optimistic, even though I'm sure, in his own mind, he has set that as his target.

"He is still very much in the process of recovery and has a long road back. It may even take us into May. To break both bones in the shin is tough - not just physically, but mentally, too."

Ed. Note: This is a FanPost written by one of our readers.  It's exactly the kind of community participation we're looking for.  Keep 'em coming, guys.

... or in other words, "What Newcastle fans can learn from the Denver Nuggets."  For anyone interested in the field of sports economics, a great case study was all over the U.S. sports media today with the conclusion of the Carmelo Anthony saga in Denver.  The Nuggets finally traded him to the NY Knicks.  I'm not a huge NBA fan, but I will defer the NBA experts on the outcome of this one:

The Nuggets did well for themselves ... which is more than the Cleveland Cavaliers or Toronto Raptors could say when LeBron James and Chris Bosh bolted for South Beach. The Cavs and Raptors made last-minute sign-and-trade deals for picks and trade exceptions, but those are just possibilities and cap space. The Nuggets have more tangible assets. They have three players averaging at least 16 points per game in Raymond Felton, Wilson Chandler and Danilo Gallinari and a 7-footer in Timofey Mozgov. They got a first-round pick and two second-round picks. I know the Nuggets were attracted to all of the first-round picks the New Jersey Nets offered, but I'd rather have the known in proven players than the unknown in picks of undetermined order. Plus that $3 million, in addition to the $13.2 million in luxury tax payments they're no longer on the hook for, plus whatever cut they'll receive from the taxpaying teams.

While the loss of a superstar like Carmelo certainly hurts the emotions a bit, Denver provided a great example of how a mid-market team should deal with the inevitable loss of players that have outgrown the market, become superstars, and are ready to move on to bigger things.  Instead of immersing themselves in denial like Toronto and Cleveland did with Bosh and Lebron, they owned up to the reality of the situation and got as much out of it as they could. 

In many respects Newcastle did the same thing with the Andy Carroll saga and I believe it will work out very well for the club.  This is the reality of the new economics of football, and Newcastle fans need to learn to accept it.  Newcastle has great fan support and is a big club, but it is not a "superclub" and it is not owned by an oil billionaire with limitless wealth to pour into the club.  The days of Newcastle setting the record for transfer fees with Alan Shearer are long gone and will never come back (unless the Saudi Royal Family purchases the club from Mike Ashley). 

The good news is that Newcastle can still be successful if it continues to live within its means and focus on being "unemotional" in player selection, like Arsenal and Lyon.  The key will be to properly reinvest the Carroll transfer fee into new acquisitions, like how Wenger reinvests the sale of his stars into guys like Van Persie, Sagna, and Chamakh.  We are already seeing good signs of this with Newcastle with their recent purchase of Hatem Ben Arfa.  Let's hope this continues in the summer transfer window.

Here's a couple of articles on the application of moneyball philosophies in soccer.  It's interesting to see how far and wide the impact of the Michael Lewis book has been on other professional sports and the field of sports economics.

Brian Phillips discusses the debate over whether advanced statistical analysis can be successfully applied to soccer in his Slate article: http://www.slate.com/id/2282752/pagenum/all/#p2.  The article also mentions Billy Beane and Wolff's San Jose Earthquakes.  Many in soccer oppose the use of advanced statistics, and while I disagree with them, they have better arguments on their side than the Joe Morgans of the world.

Last fall, New England Sports Ventures, the sabermetrically inclined owners of the Boston Red Sox, bought the storied English football club Liverpool. They installed as their "director of football strategy" an executive named Damien Comolli, a Frenchman known for using unconventional scouting metrics to discover undervalued talent. Suddenly, the English press flooded with articles about Moneyball and baseball wonks and the "whirring internal cogs" of the computers that, at Liverpool and maybe throughout the game, were about to replace soccer's age-old human focus with an American-style reign of algorithms.

Jason Davis of Match Fit USA discusses how the moneyball philosophy is behind NESV's Liverpool's most recent spat of big money transfers (selling Fernando Torres to Chelsea for 50 million pounds and buying Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll): http://www.ussoccerplayers.com/ussoccerplayers/2011/02/is-liverpool-playing-moneyball.html

 

No great player is so undervalued that only a statistical analysis will undercover them. The Red Sox are able to “win with Moneyball” because they have the funds necessary to sign the type of player that can to make up for the system’s shortfalls.

Heh, our Texas division rivals are bankrupt and need financing from MLB to stay afloat through bankruptcy proceedings.

Andrew LeBlanc, an attorney for the top lenders, said he had “grave concerns” about the Rangers receiving more funds from Major League Baseball, which has already provided $18.45 million in loans since last year.

The best part is that A-Rod is one of the largest unsecured creditors, with $24.9 million in deferred compensation owed to him.

The Rangers filed for bankruptcy Monday, saying it was the only option to proceed. Among the top 30 unsecured creditors is Alex Rodriguez, who is owed $24.9 million in deferred compensation six years after he was traded.

Of course, it's not really that surprising after seeing the Rangers' owners run Liverpool, the most storied soccer team in England, into the ground with debt.  It looks like they are trying to sell Liverpool and the Dallas Stars as well as the Rangers.

So what place should debt have in sports?  Soccernomics, a moneyball-like book about the business of soccer, has a chapter on debt and basically concludes that the most successful clubs have a little bit of debt.  It also shows that having a lot of debt or no debt hurts a teams competitiveness.  More importantly, if a team is going to use debt, they should use it to finance an asset - either a new player acquisition or a stadium upgrade.  Debt should not be used the way Gillett and Hicks have used it - in leveraged buy-outs of a sports clubs old shareholders.

http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/now-pitching-for-san-jose

Interesting and fairly detailed article in the December issue of San Francisco magazine on the A's intentions on moving to San Jose. I think it would be a great move because it would get them further from the Giants, get them the new smaller and fancier stadium they need, be in a larger population area that has a higher per capita income, and be closer to Silicon Valley's numerous corporate headquarters.

...this article will be the first place where the two A’s owners have decided to make their case for San Jose.

It also says the Giants are still strongly opposed to the move.

The Giants will likely disagree. Though the team had no comment for this story, managing partner Bill Neukom was quoted in the summer as saying that the A’s “can’t have the South Bay.”

I know a lot of you don't want the team to move but I think that is already a foregone conclusion. If it's not San Jose, then it won't be anywhere in California. Staying in Oakland or moving to Sacramento are pipe dreams. I think we need to rally around management here so that they can have our full support in their upcoming battle against the Giants in trying to get the territorial rights to San Jose.

http://www.mercurynews.com/annkillion/ci_11981252?nclick_check=1

Killion makes a bunch of accusations based on Lew's statement that he doesn't want to "cover old ground" and try and stay at the colliseum long term. I don't really say anything wrong with Lew's statement he's just not getting anyone's hopes up or trying to make false promises. Would you rather he give it to you straight or tell you for years he will keep the team in oakland before pulling a fast one and moving off to Oklahoma City (ala Seattle Supersonics). I have some friends who are Sonics fans and they are absolutely devastated, and Seattle politicians have threatened legal action over the false overtures of the ownership group pretending to be interested in keeping the team there.

Killion goes off on a tangent saying trashing the colliseum will cause attendance to decline:

Almost two decades ago, Giants owner Bob Lurie originated the "I hate my ballpark and you should too," public relations campaign.

In case Wolff, busy with hotel development at the time, overlooked Lurie's campaign, here's a brief summary of its effectiveness: an unmitigated disaster.

Lurie, frustrated with his own aging and shared facility, kept trying to move the Giants. To the South Bay. To Tampa/St. Pete. Anywhere but Candlestick Park. He let everyone know how much he hated his ballpark. And, in a stunning development, his words didn't woo fans to games, but rather persuaded them to stay away. In droves.

The Giants' average home attendance steadily declined from a peak of 26,074 in 1989, a year the team was in the World Series, to 19,759 in 1992.

That's about what the A's averaged last season, the fifth consecutive season of attendance drops. The A's drew 27,179 in 2004, the season before Wolff bought the team. Last season, they were down to 20,559.

In our little baseball petri dish, we have proven that you can't expect to draw well if you publicly hate your ballpark.

For all you statistics majors out there, this is a good example of the old truth, "correlation is not causation." Let me give you a more probable cause for the attendance decline for the Giants: their record went from 90-72 in 89, to 85-77 in 90, 75-87 in 91, and 72-90 in 92.

As for her quip at the end there blaming Lew for the A's attendance declines... the A's record was 91-71 in 2004, it was 75-86 last year.

I'm sure Lew wish he had the power to make fans show up or not merely by making propagandistic statements about how beautiful the colliseum is, but unfortunately he does not have said power, sorry Ms. Killion.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=4015171&type=blogEntry

Neyer doesn't agree with Killion on the fan base thing, but the title of his entry accuses Lew of being removed from his fan base. How is Lew's statement out of touch? I thought it was pretty much well agreed among the fan base that the Colliseum is on the lesser end of baseball stadiums and that Mt. Davis sucks.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/20/BAAK161PL7.DTL&tsp=1

I am dissapointed if this means the A's might leave or stay in their current park, but I am excited if this leads to a move to San Jose.

Oakland Athletics officials today asked the City of Fremont to halt the planning process required to build a new stadium and move the team there, saying they want to reconsider their options.

The Fremont city clerk's office issued a notice today saying the A's have asked the city to stop the environmental review and notice of preparation processes, which would have paved the way for the team to build a $1.8 billion "ballpark village" next to the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge.

"I think this means the A's aren't going to build this here, at least not at that site," said Fremont Mayor Bob Wasserman. "I think it's terrible. Fremont's lost the best opportunity we've ever had."

Judging by the quotes from the anonymous agent in Tim Brown's latest column, pretty freaking stupid:

“It’s beyond odd,” said one high-profile agent who’s been crying collusion for two months. “You can put together a pretty impressive team with the guys who are still out there.”

Sure. Collusion. That has to be it. It has NOTHING to do with the economy. Apparently sports agents don't read the news. If they did, they would know that a bunch of major companies announced tens of thousands of new layoffs today on top of all the other hundreds of thousands of layoffs over the last few months. They would know the stock market has lost 40% of its value over the last 6 months.

“Teams are trying to create a system where players are fearful of free agency,” the agent said. “They’re trying to get players to take the bad deal early.”

Sure. It's all a big conspiracy by the teams. It has nothing to do with the economy. Additionally, the conspiracies behind the fake moon landing, Roswell, the JFK assassination, and the inside job behind 9/11 are also somehow interconnected to this. Am I forgetting anything? Oh yeah and the fluoride in our drinking water conspiracy to poison us all. That is also connected.

**Update: GDP fell by 5.5% last quarter, worst quarter since 1982.

Jose Canseco was recently interviewed on the Howard Stern show and I watched it last night on demand. Unfortunately I do not have a link, but I can give you a quick recap. I think that interview should be shown to every single high school, college, and minor league athlete, as a way of discouraging them from using steroids. As most of you know, Howard Stern is on satellite radio now, so there are no FCC regulations and they can say what they want.

Jose was very open in discussing his recent troubles with steroid use. He said he quit steroids cold turkey for a period of about 8 months last year. He said that his body was producing zero testosterone and that he lost most of his muscle mass. He also discussed how he literally could not get it up in bed during the entire 8 months. It was physiologically impossible. Now he has to take steroids on a doctor prescription in order to produce the natural amount of testosterone that the male body needs, which he can no longer produce himself, because of how messed up his body is.

On a more hilarious side-note, he was promoting an up-coming boxing fight that he will be fighting against Danny Bonaduce (former child star from the Partridge Family, also a huge steroid abuser). As many of you know, poor Jose is almost bankrupt now, after going through 2 divorces and spending most of his money, he had to foreclose his houses last year in the real estate crash and he said he now rents.

He also discussed the "Juiced" book and what he thinks about Mark McGwire not getting into the hall of fame. He said he doesn't think Mark blames him for it. They tried to get him to talk about Tony La Russa's recent article about Mark but he wouldn't bite. He mainly said they need to either let all of the roid users into the Hall or none, but they can't pick and choose guys like Bonds or Clemens who would have gotten in with their pre-steroid numbers. He said he personally thinks Mark should get into the Hall of Fame because he said he thinks he is the greatest right handed slugger of all time, and pointed to Mark's 49 bombs as a rookie. He also said he wished he didn't have to name all of the people he did but that otherwise there would be no point in writing the book because nobody would believe him unless he started pointing to specific users.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2009/01/rays-close-to-s.html

According to Ken Rosenthal, the Rays are close to signing Pat Burrell to a two-year, $16MM deal.  It'd be a solid move, as the Rays can increase his value by not using him in the field.  The '08 Rays struggled against lefties (.726 OPS) and Burrell crushes them (.952 OPS in '08).

Wow!

#1: This should significantly bring Giambi's/Dunn's/John Jaha's price down for us.

#2: We should try to outbid the Rays for Burrell at that price!

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Dennis-Eckersley-hates-when-you-call-his-hairsty;_ylt=AsweQiJ_sigWoawRDKUOMSwRvLYF?urn=mlb,113578

Dennis Eckersley hates when you call his hairstyle a mullet

Dennis Eckersley still has a closer's mentality. When you sit down and talk to him it's easy to see why TBS hired the Hall of Fame pitcher to be an analyst. Eck had no fear on the mound and now he has no fear when it comes to offering up an opinion — from the Rays to his long hair — as I found out last Friday during my behind-the-scenes look at TBS' Inside MLB studios in Atlanta.

This is the first interview in a set of Q & A's with the show's personalities. 

Word on the street is Gallagher is hurt. Are the A's just running into a string of bad luck (trading hudson for meyer, record DL uses two seasons in a row, and now trading major injury risk Harden for supposedly solid Gallagher) or are they not checking out players enough before the trade for them? I personally think it's just bad luck but it's news like this that makes me second guess myself...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/05/SPK7125IO5.DTL

"Potentially more bad news for the A's, who have lost 17 of 19: Starter Sean Gallagher, obtained in the Rich Harden deal last month, is likely to go on the disabled list today to make room for Gonzalez. Gallagher has had some shoulder soreness, which might account for his four walks and two hit batters in three innings Monday. Dan Meyer is expected to take Gallagher's spot in the rotation, at least initially."

"The A's have not announced that Gallagher will be placed on the DL, but after Tuesday's game, manager Bob Geren confirmed that the right-hander has some shoulder discomfort. Earlier in the day, he had mentioned that Gallagher's next start might be pushed back but he did not explain why that might be."

*** UPDATE *** A'sfaninNC points to some rotoworld news: "Sean Gallagher is expected to go on the disabled list with a sore shoulder.  That explains the wildness Monday. A source told the San Francisco Chronicle that Gallagher felt a “pop” in the shoulder in his July 25 start against Texas."

Why the hell would he go out and start again 5 days later after feeling a pop? I'm going to give the medical staff the benefit of the doubt and assume that he did not tell them about the pop.  Geren needs to sit the team down and tell them if they are hurt they need to tell the training staff (hint, hint huston street) and that hiding it always makes it worse.

Interesting Breakdown of Ziggy's mechanics over at Hardball Times...

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/brad-ziegler-al-rookie-of-the-year/

"The vertical difference between the straight-line trajectory and the actual trajectory is 11.5 inches, almost an entire foot! A batter used to adjusting his swing down by four or five inches for a Blanton fastball will swing right over the top of a Ziegler fastball."

Obviously opposing batters know by now that Ziggy throws a lot lower than normal pitchers. I assume that they are trying to adjust their swings downward. Even with them getting second and third looks at him it will probably still be hard to fully adjust because of all the built up muscle memory etc. It will be interesting to see how things go these next two months.

On a sidenote, question: will Ziggy break Hersheiser's record this season or next season? Follow-up question: will ESPN give him 15 seconds of coverage or 20 seconds of coverage after he breaks said record?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/16/SPHC11PNK3.DTL

" The Harden deal increases the chances that the A's could make more moves before July 31, with Street and starter Joe Blanton potentially on the block. Rumors about Blanton and Philadelphia gained speed Tuesday, and there were also rumblings that teams have interest in Duchscherer. There's still a chance, even with Oakland six games behind the Angels in the AL West, that the A's will move to pick up a big right-handed bat, a need they have this year and beyond."

What does everyone make of this?

Philly has pat burrell but no way are they trading him slash no way can we afford his salary. Is beane going for jayson werth? He seems kind of old at 29 and not a good power bat, just a mediocre one, but good obp.

Not many righty power prospects in philly's system. Dominic brown is a lefty. I'd be stoked on getting adrian cardenas, a future mark ellis replacement, but he bats lefty. Lou Marson has good obp but is a catcher which we don't really need.

Am I just really tired and out of it or does espn have an article up titled "A's claim OF Davis off waivers, designate Saarloos for assignment"???

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3364298

I guess I'm not surprised we demoted Saarloos because we have good ol' Lenny D (ps: lenny d haters can go to hell... dude is my hero for outpitching the bosox's 100 million dollar pitcher June 5th last year). But obviously with all the reports about Big Hurt one would have figured we would be replacing Saarloos with Hurt, not Rajai Davis. Rajai is a nice player but is very anti-moneyball... pure speed and no slugging... although he does have a decent obp. I am extremely shocked we claimed Rajai.

pps: BB: dump rajai asap and sign Hurt!

ppps: Hurt detractors: you can't use Mike Sweeney's first home run of the season today as an excuse for not needing to sign a better power hitting DH. One homer doesn't mean Sweeney all of a sudden developed .540 slg% pop (Hurt, 2006), or even .480 slg% pop (Hurt, 2007) for that matter. We need Hurt asap.

pppps: "Meanwhile, Oakland right-hander Rich Harden threw off the mound for the first time since going on the disabled list April 3 with a strained throwing shoulder. He is slated to pitch in a simulated game Saturday in Seattle as his next step."... what is the over/under on whether harden hurts himself saturday and doesn't resume throwing for 3 months???

I think the A's should trade Ellis to the Rockies for Ian Stewart. Ellis is in his prime and may be in decline by the time we are ready to compete in 2009/2010. Ian Stewart can flat out mash... but he's blocked in Colorado by another young 3b - Garret Atkins. Perfect opportunity for us to swoop in and trade for him. The Rockies have been using Jayson Nix at 2b and he is terrible. They really need a 2b. They also need starting pitching so maybe Beane should offer one of our 12 or so young starters or Joe Blanton for Ian Stewart.

From yahoo:

"Stewart, the Rockies' No. 2 prospect according to Baseball America, is on a roll for Triple-A Colorado Springs, hitting .318 with three home runs, 12 RBIs, 10 runs and two steals through 11 games. His path to Denver is complicated by the fact that he plays the same position as Garrett Atkins. He auditioned at second base this spring, but Colorado opted for the better defensive option in Jayson Nix. If Nix continues his sub-Mendoza Line ways, perhaps the Rockies will decide that Stewart's bat could win them more games than his glove would lose. If not, he, or Atkins, will need to be dealt to open up playing time."

We need a 3b to replace Chavez. Hanahan and Murphy are not long term solutions at 3b. I say the time is ripe for Beane to jump into the trade market! Stewart is blocked similar to Carlos Gonzalez at Arizona. Great opportunity here.