SOME CALZONE FOR DEREK

"BILLY BEANE DID NOT SUDDENLY GET STUPID"

There's lots and lots and lots of good analysis of Beane's dealings of two of three aces, but Will Carroll's above comment sums it up best.

Most of the internet community is in agreement that Beane has improved the team for 2006 and beyond, but there's still considerable debate as to whether the 2005 version will be competitve next year.

Let's take a quick look at the changes using last year's Win Shares:

GONE:
Hudson 16 WS
Mulder 15 WS
Miller 15 WS
Dye 12 WS
Redman 9 WS
Rhodes 1 WS
Lehr 1 WS
= 21 wins

NEW:
Kendall 25 WS
Ginter 12 WS
Thomas 9 WS
Cruz 7 WS
Calero 5 WS
Haren 1 WS
Meyer 0 WS
= 20 wins

The 2005 A's still look like a good team to me. This quick sketch isn't perfect, of course. It's not taking into account where those Win Shares are coming from, and using Baseball Crank's Established Level Win Shares might make things even more accurate.

While a proven innings-eater like Redman would have been pretty useful given the inexperienced rotation, it's clear that Haren, Blanton, and Meyer don't have to be the Big Three v 2.0 in 2005 for the A's to make another run at the AL West next year. In fact, with a healthy Chavez and incremental gains from Bobby Crosby, if ANY of Beane's rookies have a big year in 2005 the team could be a lot better than last year's ensemble.

And that's still not assuming Beane freed up the cash to make a run at Carlos Beltran or J.D. Drew.

Stoneman and Bavasi, you've still got work to do. (And dumping David Eckstein doesn't count.)