A’s Going Too Far

The Oakland A’s are lucky they don’t play in a British soccer league because at the rate the team is divesting of top-level talent it might be the equivalent of a AAA club next season and then be forced to downgrade into the minors the following campaign.

Out with the old, in with the new, is the theme by the Bay. What that really means is out with the expensive, in with the cheap. It doesn’t take a United Nations interpreter to understand what’s going on. The A’s have already run up the white flag on the 2012 season, the roster will be populated with guys we have never heard of, and that the only way Oakland can contend for a playoff spot is if it drops down to the Pacific Coast League.

In the feel-good movie “Moneyball,” Oakland general manager Billy Beane pretty much outsmarts the world by introducing creative principles of identifying talent and procuring winning players on a shoestring budget. As everyone knows Beane had the opportunity to become general manager of the much wealthier Boston Red Sox, but turned down the perennial pennant contenders to stay with the financially challenged A’s. The average sentimental movie watcher applauded Beane’s choice.

Given what has occurred since, however, I am thinking Beane should be regretting his decision. The Red Sox hired Theo Epstein and won two World Series, ending the Curse of the Bambino and making Epstein a legend in New England for doing what nobody else could do for 86 years. While Beane enjoyed the satisfaction of proving his theories correct in terms of innovatively selecting the right players and plugging then into the lineup, he long ago ran into a dead-end. Other teams’ leaders tipped their hats to Beane, borrowed his ideas, and with more money to spend have undermined any chance of success Oakland has had.

So Beane is left in Oakland holding the two of hearts instead of a full house, with no money to spend on either maturing, home-grown talent, or free agents, and with the impossible task of trying to hold onto fans or recruit new ones as the A’s spiral downward. Ther are not enough Frisbee games, bobblehead giveaways, or cap days to compensate for losing.

Most recently Oakland shipped closer Andrew Bailey to the Red Sox. Just before that they traded away starter Gio Gonzalez to Washington. Oakland seems doomed before spring training. The A’s seem destined to field the most obscure group of players in baseball history come April. Over the decades, when the itch moved them, baseball commissioners have stepped in and voided trades or transactions for “the good of the game.” They declared an owner was going too far in depleting the team’s roster or in cost cutting. Indeed, those with long memories will recall the A’s themselves being involved in such decisions. Twice, in 1976 and 1977, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn headed off the plans of former A’s owner Charlie Finley to trade pitcher Vida Blue.

As a member of the American League, it is expected that the A’s will compete with a big-league attitude and approach. If the A’s don’t have the money to field a competitive team and don’t have the willingness to seek out big-league talent, then the owners should sell the club.

Come spring we may see Brad Pitt, the faux Billy Beane, and “Moneyball” winning academy awards, but the real-life Billy Beane struggling to win games.