Off-the-cuff thoughts, 15 minutes or less...

MLBTR is reporting that the Yankees are very close to completing a one-year, $5.5M deal with Nick Johnson to be their DH. 

Earlier this offseason, the Angels inked Hideki Matsui to a one-year, $6.5M pact.

Clearly, the Yankees made a decision that they prefer Johnson to Matsui, and I have to think it's for a reason other than money, because the one-million dollar difference in the deals they signed wouldn't seem to be enough to dissuade a $200M+ payroll team's decision making.

At one point this offseason, Cashman said that he was considering leaving the DH position open for a "floating" DH, which certainly has some credence since he has tens of millions committed to aging offensive players.  He also mentioned the option of leaving DH open for AAA Cuban defector Juan Miranda. 

Instead, he ends up signing a player who is more injury prone than Matsui strictly to DH, even though the lack of flexibility was Matsui's greatest knock.  Although Johnson could play first base, Teixiera is an iron man there, and Swisher or Miranda could spell him on off-days. 

The real head-scratcher for me, though, is the marketing aspect.   At one point this offseason I read sportswriter speculation that Hideki Matsui generated as much as $15M in additional revenue for the Yankees, based upon merchandise and television broadcasting of Yankees games back in Japan.  That figure is likely an exaggeration, but undoubtedly Matsui offers more in the way of tertiary revenue than Nick Johnson does.  Signing Nick Johnson doesn't increase the Yankee brand. 

So, what does AN think was the thought process behind the move?  I have respect for the Yankee front office and for Cashman's decision-making...do they simply think Johnson is a better bet to stay healthy?  Is the age difference the ultimate deciding factor?  Or did the landscape for the Yankees change significantly after Lackey and Cameron signed and Halladay and Lee were traded?

This Saturday is the deadline for teams to offer contracts to their
arbitration-eligible, pre-free agent players - players like Jack Cust,
Santiago Casilla, and Michael Wuertz, with somewhere between (almost)
three to six years of accrued major league service time.

I'd like to discuss the strategy that teams are employing this
offseason with these arbitration-eligible players and get your
feedback after the jump.

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Drawing inspiration from my buddy Taj, who has come around on a few thoughts of his own...

Three weeks ago, I posted a projection of the A's offseason plans; this post is an update and hopefully an improvement upon that one.

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Should the A's spend this offseason, or save?  Should the team sign a few established veterans with question marks, or simply let the kids play?

AN seems divided.  The community is struggling to reconcile its desire to be competitive and spend an available $10-15M, with the painful realization that a.) much of the organization's best internal talent is still 1-2 years away, b.) the team had the worst attendance in baseball last year, and c.) the team, as presently constructed, will not make the playoffs in '10.

There's one very unique way, and one very unique target, who allows the A's to reconcile those two stances. This post will discuss that offseason strategy after the jump.

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Ironically, Davis' success has made him a polarizing figure on AN in recent weeks, as seemingly each community member has picked sides:  ride this feel-good, improbable center field success story ...or sell high while we can?

This post won't answer that question....yet.  We have to find a few hypothetical trade partners and packages first.  You'll find that discussion after the jump. 

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The big story in all of baseball yesterday was the highly anticipated Matt Holliday deadline trade, as the A's received a handsome three-prospect return for sending the best hitter on the market to the Cardinals.  Holliday instantly rewarded his new team with four hits in St. Louis' win Friday night.

After allowing myself a few hours last night to both pour over the stats of our three new acquisitions and to reflect on Holliday's contributions during his brief A's tenure, I found myself once again doing what A's fans are trained by habit to do:  look toward the future.

After months of speculation and thousands of AN comments, Holliday was finally traded.  So what's next?

With the trading deadline still one week away, there's ample time for Beane to continue to be active.  And for my money, the player that is most likely to go is Orlando Cabrera.

All four of Cabrera's logical potential suitors are AL contenders:  Boston, Seattle, Detroit, and Minnesota. 

After the jump, we'll discuss each of those four teams and why Cabrera is such a likely candidate to be dealt in the next week.  Hopefully you'll offer your opinions and perhaps even a reasonable hypothetical return prospect package for Cabrera from those teams.

Be sure to vote in the poll below!

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The Cardinals' other prospects included in the deal are, according to Tim Kurkjian, outfielder Shane Peterson and righty Clayton Mortensen.

(add 3, 9:35 a.m.):  Buster Olney reports that the A's are paying $1.5M of Holliday's remaining salary, leaving the Cardinals on the hook for approximately $4.5M. 

More updates in this post forthcoming.

(add 1, 8:35 a.m.):

Here is a link to Kurkjian's article.

Here is Peterson's complete college and minor league statlines.

Here's Mortensen's stats.

Here's Brett Wallace's.

(Those links are to thebaseballcube; to see pictures of Mortensen and Peterson, as well as their split stats, click on the two links provided by flipgatey in the third comment below).

(add 2, 8:50 a.m.):

Buster Olney echoes Kurkjian's information as well, including prospects coming in return:  Wallace, Mortensen, Peterson.

I think it's very likely that Dana Eveland is the PTBNL that will be joining Craig Italiano and Ryan Webb en route to San Diego in exchange for Scott Hairston.

I think San Diego and Oakland's recent roster decisions have hinted at this.  Here's why:

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Did you make it this far?  Whew!

Like I always say, any writer can lose his readers in the story itself.  It takes a special brand of boredom to disengage the audience in the headline.  But when you see an opportunity to mix Cheryl Crow, a French apothecary, and nonsensical grammar into the title of a fanpost, you don't hesitate; you act.  You start slinging apostrophes now and ask questions later.                                                                         

This is my first post in more than six weeks, and only my third in the last three months.  I've also dropped game threads this year after managing Friday night's action last season.  At first I thought I AN would struggle without eye-popping post-game headlines ("A's lose 7-0") and pulse-quickening teasers to the overflow game threads ("the game continues").  But somehow the site has held on.

With today's off-day for the A's, I'd like to turn the focus back on AN and introduce Athletics Nation NO(t)STRADAMUS, a celebration of self-deprecation.  In (Not)stradamus, we each look back at our own bold, sometimes ill-advised predictions made in fanposts and comments.  Especially in the preseason, but really all year long, we all enjoy "throwing darts at the board" and attempting to handicap the A's playoff chances, possible free agent signings, and hypothetical trades.  The goal here is to look back at your own predictions over the last few months or years, and find the one that missed the worst.  Looking back at your own archive on your personal AN page, you want to find the dart that not only missed the board, but impaled the bartender standing 6 feet to the left.

It could be a comment in a game thread or fanpost, or it could be a full-length diary you wrote that, looking back, really missed the mark.

Here are the ground rules:

1. You can make fun of your own poor predictions - and mine too of course, since it's my absurd idea - but please refrain from piling on when other people post their own NO(t)STRADAMUSes.  Just chuckle quietly at your computer...they'll never know.  But please do feel free to rip on your own contribution.  It's easier to be funny when you're self-deprecating, and it doesn't offend.
2. Using the AN search function or your comment archive on your personal AN page, try to find the actual comment or diary and link to it.  Sometimes it can be good entertainment to look back at an old discussion to see how strongly everyone involved felt about it at the time.
3. If you want, you can provide your own follow-up or context to the link.

I'll get it started.  Without further ado, here's a few AN pieces I'd like to have back: 

• "All Aboard the Furcal Train!" - November 14th, 2008.          

Can I get off now?  What a trainwreck.   The time stamp for this post says it was made it in the afternoon, but you'd swear I wrote it at 3 a.m., bleary-eyed and in nothing but my G.I. Joe boxers.  (Don't lie.  You've checked AN in a similar state once or twice yourself).  Apparently at the time I was willing to give Rafael Furcal $60 million dollars.  Remind me of this the next time I mention that my dream job would've been to be a major-league GM.  As we know, Furcal ended up signing with the the Dodgers for literally half the guaranteed money that I suggested, and now has an OBP south of .300 and a nearly identical SLG% a quarter of the way through the year.  Don't wait for the women and children to calmly get off the $60M Furcal Train.  Just shove and push and do whatever you need to do to save yourself from that disaster of an idea. 

• "The Super Lineup" - April 24th, 2008.

What do you get when you cram the talents of Rajai Davis, Donnie Murphy, Chris Denorfia, Bobby McRosby, Emil Brown, and Old Sweeney into the same lineup? 

A giant pool of suck, that's what.

But no!  Apparently I can clearly to point to April 24th of last year as a date on which that I was a flaming idiot.   At the time, my calculus was clearly this:

Against left handed pitching,

three mediocre right-handed hitters + SIX more shitacular right-handed hitters =

wait for it...

The Super Lineup. 

This worked a grand total of once, against the Francisco Liriano the first time it was deployed last season.   Then left-handed pitchers leaguewide remembered that those players are not good at baseball.

• "NO(t)STRADAMUS" - May 27th, 2009. 

I just have a feeling this one already sucks, even without the benefit of hindsight or anyone reading it yet. 

So how about you, AN?  What's your prediction or proclamation you'd like to have back? 

Announced immediately after today's game ended, per AP:

The Oakland Athletics optioned left-hander Gio Gonzalez, infielders Daric Barton, Cliff Pennington and Jack Hannahan and outfielder Chris Denorfia to Triple-A Sacramento after Saturday’s 3-2 win over San Francisco.

The A’s, who open their season against the Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim on Monday night, finalized their 25-man roster by officially adding pitchers Brett Anderson, Andrew Bailey and Trevor Cahill.

Oakland’s projected opening day starter Justin Duchscherer and right-hander Joey Devine, expected to share the closer’s role with Brad Ziegler, will open the season on the disabled list along with Rule 5 outfielder Ben Copeland.

-snip

This means that Gallagher is opening in the bullpen, which Slusser hinted at in a blog post today.  Gallagher reminded her that he had served as a swingman before in his time with the Cubs.

Although the AP article doesn't say it, one can infer that two of the three new DLers - Duke, Devine, and Copeland - must be headed to the 60-day DL, in order to make room for Anderson/Cahill/Bailey.   The A's had 39 players on their 40-man roster; placing two on the 60-Day DL would allow them to keep 42.

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