I heard about this possibility a few days ago and an email from the A’s suggest that this is now a done deal. Er, why? I’m not a great fan of Holliday, either as a real baseball player or fantasy, in fantasy he goes top 10, I wouldn’t touch him in the first round of a 15 team league and wouldn’t be happy picking him up before late in the second round and now his home is in Oakland, into the third round. But that’s fantasy and doesn’t necessarily reflect true worth in the real world, so let’s have a look at the real world. Holliday is the current definition of a Coors Field warrior, horrible home/road splits, .357 hitter with 84 home runs, a .423 on-base percentage and .645 slugging percentage at Coors and .280 with 44 homers, a .348 on-base percentage and a .455 slugging percentage on the road. Q.E.D. So why would a smart guy like Beane pull the trigger on this deal? Answers on a postcard please because I don’t have one. The Coliseum is where home runs go to die, and fail to make it even to the warning track so the A’s next season will be paying $13.5M for a .280 hitter, maybe 25 homers until he walks at the end of the 2009 season and Scott Boras goes and negotiates a long term deal elsewhere. And Holliday won’t be happy during his A’s tenure if he is struggling to put up his power numbers and can see the value of his next contract diminishing with every deep fly ball out. I didn’t see enough from the end of season roster to believe that the A’s will contend next season, with or without Holliday, so why not come third or fourth without him and keep the $13.5M in a warchest for the move to the new stadium? I wouldn’t quibble about the price, Street, Carlos Gonzales and Greg Smith, if Holliday was going to be a final piece in a puzzle that was going to spell ‘contender’ or if we were getting another year but this looks like it will be just a footnote in both the A’s history and Holliday’s career. It may well be that Street ends up getting flipped by the Rockies so there are deals to be made out there, why not do them directly? The A’s don’t need Holliday and he doesn’t need the A’s, if for no other reason than enlightened self interest I’m sure Holliday will be professional but even if he get’s dealt at the trading deadline it will have already felt like a long season I suspect.