Northern California Baseball Blog and Q&A

Paul Gutierrez
Raised in Barstow, Calif., where he played community college baseball for two years, Paul Gutierrez has worked at Sports Illustrated and the Las Vegas Review-Journal, where he covered his alma mater's Runnin' Rebels at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. During a six-year stint at the Los Angeles Times, he co-authored Tommy Davis' "Tales from the Dodgers Dugout." He came to The Bee in October 2005 and is now a Bay Area sports features writer who concentrates on baseball during the spring and summer.

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January 10, 2008

How does it feel, A's fans?

A week has passed and the fallout from the stunning trade of Nick Swisher to the Chicago White Sox still is slowly floating to the ground at McAfee Coliseum, and all I can think is this: Thank my lucky white cleats I did not grow up a fan of the Oakland Athletics.

Otherwise, I'd be too upset to see straight.

So how does it feel, A's fans, to know that your beloved squad, one that last year at this time was coming off an appearance in the American League Championship Series, is being razed by your deified general manager, Billy Beane ... yet again?

You say you're used to losing good players whose earning abilities outgrow your resources at the end of their contract - while easily chirping off the names of Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada and Barry Zito - that's it's simply part of the A's fabric as a small market, low budget franchise?

Fair enough. But even Eric Byrnes, your one-time fan favorite for his "full-contact" style of play, basically told A's fans on his KNBR radio gig last week that enough was enough.

I half-expected A's fans to shut off their A's radio broadcast, if they could find it on the dial, throw open up their windows and scream at the top of their lungs that they were mad as heck, and they weren't going to take it anymore. And yes, Byrnes might have an ax to grind since he, too, was cast off by Beane not so long ago.

But the difference this time is that this winter's fire sale, which began with the trade of Senor Clutch, super utilityman Marco Scutaro, continued with the unloading of ace Dan Haren, who started last summer's All-Star Game for the A.L., and resumed with the Swisher swap, was done to rebuild the farm system as all three were locked into relatively cheap contracts.

Indeed, the three proven big leaguers netted Beane 11 minor leaguers, including the Chicago White Sox's two top prospects in pitchers Gio Gonzalez and Faustino De Los Santos.

"They weren't going to be any good this year anyway," was how one beat writer justified Beane's moves to me.

Maybe. Probably. OK, most likely. But why is that, exactly? Especially so soon after getting within a step of the World Series in 2006?

Beane, with his wildly successful business model, has earned the trust of his acolytes, who would NEVER, NO NOT EVER, question a personnel move made by Sir William Lamar Beane.

And that goes for some media types, too, who merely brush off the strange white-flag-raising moves, which began in earnest last season with the mind-boggling attempt to turn Mike Piazza back into a catcher and the head-scratching trades of Milton Bradley and Jason Kendall, as Beane simply knowing more than them, so he gets a pass.

Therein lies the problem. Why not question him on it?

Because if he does indeed need to restock a dry farm system, didn't it whither under his watch? And just how exactly did the A's fall from grace, being in the national pastime's Final Four, so to speak, to a club in need of an implosion worthy of a Las Vegas Strip hotel, happen so quickly?

It might be too easy to paint Beane as Nero, fiddling while Athletics Nation burned, or simply falling asleep at the wheel while watching too much English Premier League Soccer when the A's were in need of a simple tune-up.

But it's ripe for the asking.

So how does it feel, A's fans?

-Paul Gutierrez

Posted by Ahmed Ortiz, January 10, 2008 05:08 PM

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