Oakland Athletics

With the Oakland A's coming off a 75-87 record, and their third straight losing season, is it time to question General Manager, Billy Beane's motives?

During his time as General Manager, Billy Beane has made it a habit to trade away his most proven and successful players just before they reach their full potential in exchange for younger talent, who ultimately get traded away for even younger talent.

Last winter, A's General Manager Billy Beane actually went on a "shopping-spree" and acquired Matt Holliday via trade with the Rockies. Then he got Jason Giambi, Orlando Cabrera, and Nomar Garciaparra via free agency.

Holliday and Giambi were supposed to bring power to a team that desperately needed some, but ultimately Beane's plan didn't quite pan out.

After a mid-season revelation that his team was not quite ready to compete, Beane unloaded the players he acquired during the offseason, in order to give younger players a chance to strut their stuff.

As the A's continue to build what they (and all of us fans) hope is going to be a dynasty that peaks in 3-7 years from now, the core of the team is going to be the starting pitching, which has been the symbol of the A's since Barry Zito, Mark Mulder, and Tim Hudson were on the staff.

However, many of the young future cornerstones, especially Trevor Cahill and Vince Mazzaro, struggled in 2009.

The A's are presumably looking to improve next year, as the "building" begins to take hold.

The Oakland A's ended the season on a seven game losing streak. To make matters worse is the fact that September was the only month of the season that the A's actually had a winning record under the direction of manager Bob Geren.

There's a song the A's remind me of, it's by the Sick Puppies called "All the Same." The premise of the song is about a girlfriend who threatens to leave, but always comes back.

Here's some lyrics from the song:

I received the news as most others seem to receive news these days—via an online social network. According to the A's Facebook fan page status update, what Oakland loyalists had suspected and dreaded was official, delivered with all the cheeriness of Pravda reporting that the Politburo had again thrown its support to Dear Leader Stalin:

The search among colleges for athletes has grown more complicated and increasingly competitive, especially during the past 10 years. There are countless components that require attention in developing and executing a successful plan of action, along with several key "players" who make up the team that run the offense.

Parents can play a significant role in the recruiting process and, in my opinion, they should make an active commitment to enthusiastically assist their children from start to finish in what will be a very important life decision.

"Everyone I know, everywhere I go/People need some reason to believe/I don't know about anyone but me." —Jackson Browne

If the Oakland Athletics' season were compressed into a single game, this would be point that is often affectionately referred to as garbage time. 

Kuip and Foss would be at least three-deep into the Dibs, with the latter undoubtedly regaling the audience with old war stories from his playing days in the '70s, anything to distract viewers from the tedium on the field. 

Obviously, all A's fans (and many baseball fans) know the story of Brad Ziegler.

He was signed by the A's out of the independent leagues, wasn't very good, was converted from conventional pitching to submarine-style pitching, took off, and ran off the longest scoreless-innings streak to start a career last season--at age 28.

While it looks like Ziegler's 2008 (1.06 ERA) was much better than his 2009 (3.27 ERA), that's actually not the case, as he had a 3.72 FIP last year and sports a 3.07 mark this year.

The Oakland A’s enter the All-Star break coming off a nightmare first half, one in which nothing has gone as planned. And despite their win-loss record, that’s actually a good thing.

Billy Beane built these A’s with offense in mind, loading up on veteran sluggers who were supposed to take pressure off the team’s young pitchers. However, while Oakland’s hitters have failed to show up so far, their pubescent pitching corps has arrived en masse.