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OAKLAND ATHLETICS
A's look to new bats to bolster young pitching staff

By Jonathan Siegel

Last Mother's Day, my wife was out of town, so my daughter and I decided at the last minute to take in the ballgame. Dad splurged, and this being the A's, we wound up four rows back and one section over from home plate. The first batter hit a hot smash down the third base line that I was sure was going for a double, but the much maligned Kevin Kouzmanoff made a nice play. About six innings later, I noticed that pitcher Dallas Braden still hadn't allowed a base runner.

Braden went on to pitch a perfect game. The sun was shining, the beer was cold and the stadium bothered me not at all. Is baseball great or what? A's ownership may make little effort to spiff up the Coliseum, as the goal seems to be to drive down attendance and grease the wheels for a move to San Jose, but minority owner Billy Beane does try within his means to put a competitive product on the field. Last year's team finished second in the AL West (as predicted here) with a .500 record. The team featured the youngest pitching staff and the best earned run average in the American League, but was 11th in runs scored.

The A's remain built on pitching. To his youthful core of four starters (Trevor Cahill, Brett Anderson, Gio Gonzalez and Braden) Beane has added five credible potential fifth-starter candidates. All have at least something in their health or history to give one pause (that's why they're "fifth-starter candidates"), but apparently the idea is that at any one time at least one of them will be healthy and pitching decently. Brandon McCarthy is in the lead for now, but don't be surprised to see Bishop O'Dowd's Tyson Ross or even returning prodigal son Rich Harden holding the slot down for a while. Harden, of course, in his familiar fashion, will be starting the year on the DL.

Having been rejected by more prominent free agents (apparently owner Lew Wolff's constant insistence that the stadium and its environs suck is not a selling point), the A's decided to spend the modest sums burning a hole in their pocket on two type-A free agent relief pitchers, four-time All-Star Brian Fuentes and Grant Balfour. They will supplement the core of last year's pretty good bullpen: closer Andrew Bailey, Michael Wuertz, Craig Breslow, Brad Ziegler and Jerry Blevins. Others may be mixed in also, and this has the makings of a very strong unit.

If you liked last year's infield, you will like this year's, as it is still Kurt Suzuki catching, Daric Barton at first, Mark Ellis at second, Cliff Pennington at shortstop and at third Kouzmanoff, whom the A's spent the winter trying to replace (OK, Adrian Beltre I can see, but Chone Figgins?). Barton, still just 25, was the A's best position player last year, fielding superbly, sporting the fifth-best on-base percentage in the league and bucking the A's karma by making it onto the field for 159 games. Mix in a little more power, and he may be poised for a big breakout. Cliff Pennington was a true surprise (to me anyway) last year, playing a really, really good shortstop and not being a total loss on offense. The other three all played at least OK defense, but were disappointing at the plate, especially Suzuki, who, thrust into the middle of the order by the A's offensive problems, showed that he didn't belong there.

The best hope for offensive improvement comes at designated hitter and in the outfield. Jack Cust has been replaced as DH by Hideki Matsui. "Godzilla" had a strong second half for the Angels last year, leading to hope that, like, say, Frank Thomas, but unlike, say, Jason Giambi, he may still have something left in the tank during his sunset-years tour with the green and gold.

In the outfield, the hope is that centerfielder Coco Crisp can be healthy for more than half a season and that two outfielders acquired in trades over the winter, David DeJesus and Josh Willingham, can bring some punch. Crisp was surprisingly good on both sides of the ball when he could play last year, and DeJesus and Willingham are both at least solid major league hitters. They will certainly be an improvement on Mark Carson and Mark Watson, who got substantial time last year when Crisp was hurt and Ryan Sweeney (who returns after knee surgery in a more appropriate role as a fourth outfielder) went down. Lurking in the wings is power hitting Chris Carter, who hit 34 homers last year, mainly in Sacramento, and may see significant time at left field, first base and DH.

The A's hopes for AL West honors are helped by the opposition. Texas especially, having lost Cliff Lee, has significant pitching questions; the Angels have the same offensive woes that led to their third-place finish last year; and Seattle, well, they just blow.

The A's do appear doomed to labor in eternity under the cloud created by the continuing inability of Bud Selig's stadium committee to actually come out and recommend the building of a new stadium in San Jose. Apparently the Giants, led by owner/litigator Bill Neukom, are determined to extract a huge ransom for their alleged "territorial rights" or to simply drive the team out of (or into) the bay. The players' collective bargaining agreement expires in December, so compounding these issues are the periodic unsourced rumors that the A's are one of two teams on the short list for contraction, as if the players' association is about to give up 50 major league jobs.

This is the kind of stuff that typically surrounds the team, so I won't be losing too much sleep over it. Instead, I'll be taking in the games at our grand old dump, where the sun will be out, the beer cold and the A's the 2011 AL West champs — 90-72, you read it here first.

Jonathan Siegel is a senior partner at Siegel & LeWitter, an Oakland employment law firm. Email: jsiegel@sl-employmentlaw.com