The first instinct from Oakland's Nick Swisher trade is that the A's will basically spend 2008, and probably 2009 as well, selling low-win, star-free baseball.
Then it hits you -- this could be the Barry Bonds end game.
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| Squint your eyes and you can imagine this pose in green, gold and white. (Getty Images) |
This is about baseball, and Bonds' next job, if there is one. This is about how Billy Beane has traded his way into needing a drawing card just to make the 90 losses seem more palatable, and how his ongoing fascination with Bonds may just get the better of him at last.
The Swisher deal, which sent the charismatic outfielder to the White Sox for three prospects, means that the A's have now traded their two most recognizable healthy players (Dan Haren being the other) for nine minor leaguers. In other words, the team slogan "Oakland: Gateway To Sacramento," is being fully implemented.
Now the last time they had a cleanout like this, they moved Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder two days apart three years ago. That turned out fine, relatively speaking. They swindled the Cardinals, the Braves swindled them, and they got an ALCS berth out of it.
This, though, is more reminiscent of the last few years of the Charlie Finley Era, where the team became faceless, skill-less, and appeal-less. Their most recognizable players are coming off injuries or mediocre seasons, and the rest of the field is young, unproven or just bland.
In other words, just the opening Beane needs if he is inclined to test his theory about Bonds.
Bonds has all the numbers and sabermetric appeal Beane values, at what can only be assumed to be a wholesale price. He may also have the ability to bring new hinders into the old seats at the Oakland Coliseum, although we suspect that effect may be grandly overestimated.
But the A's have reached the point where they really have nothing to lose here. They are wedged in by the needs of a bereft farm system, a soft fan base, a stadium plan that if they could pull it off would take them out of Oakland, and a bad season that promises more of the same.
In other words, if this isn't rock-bottom, you'd need a pretty hefty mattress to make it seem comfy. And Bonds can be that mattress.
(And isn't that a sentence you'd like to have back?)
Bonds is by any measure still a productive hitter, though a decidedly non-productive fielder. But he wouldn't have to even own a glove unless Beane tells manager Bob Geren to make sure Bonds has one.
