Long before this particular post I made it clear that I'm not a fan of A's General Manager, Billy Beane or outfielder Matt Holliday and a piece on Baseball Tonight seems to suggest that the combination is less favourable to the A's than I had thought. I had posted previously that I thought Holliday would struggle in Oakland and as we approach the halfway point of the season average is down 40 points, slugging down 100 points, HR project at less than 25 and RBI around 80, so about league average for a corner OF, but the A's are paying a substantial premium and the Baseball Tonight piece suggests we could be paying even more. I thought that the worst case was wave Holliday bye-bye at the end of the season, couple of first round picks coming back, thank you very much. But not so. Apparently the A's would have to offer Holliday arbitration and, if he accepted, which he would in all likelihood, we could then be on the hook for $15-$19m next season! And if we trade him, Buster Olney suggests that we would have to eat some of this years salary if we expected to get anything worthwhile back by way of prospects.
I felt that bringing Holliday to Oakland was a crock from the outset, even if he had reproduced something approaching career numbers it wasn't going to be a good return on the expenditure without may other unlikely pieces falling into place. They haven't, Holliday hasn't produced, is currently hoovering up $13m and we're in 4th. Not wanting to belabour the obvious too much, but we could be in 4th with a Gatorade cooler in left field.
I will be really interested to see what Beane can achieve as it would seem that he and the team are backed into a very uncomfortable corner.
