Disgrace Period

So I've been trying to figure out why I've been so unmotivated to fill the blog hole for the past few weeks, and it finally came to me: I have absolutely no enthusiasm for what we normally write about at this time of year, which is the upcoming MLB season.

Now, that's actually an overstatement, because I've been preparing like mad for my roto drafts, but the actual nuts and bolts of what's going to happen with actual teams this year? Feh. Feh on the whole enterprise, and feh most proud on my preferred laundry, the Oakland A's.

Time was that we -- we being the small cult of A's fans who would actually go to games and watch the telecasts -- knew that no matter what indignity might befall us, being the runt of the MLB litter, that All Father Beane had a plan. A great and masterfully cunning plan, built on his ability to squeeze into small cracks of value and three-way trades where his facilitating abilities were as meaningful an asset to the club as any of the talent produced. But then it all went sour, and here's where.

He traded Tim Hudson to the Braves for a great big bag of nothing, and went all-in on Eric Chavez, who turned out to have the durability of a leper. With HIV, rickets, and a skin condition.

Up to that point, you see, it was all defensible. Losing Jason Giambi to the suddenly OBA-happy Yankees (who, it should be noted, only won when they got rid of his no-defense no-base running no-truth telling about PED carcass) was heartbreaking because of who Giambi was, but on the actual field, there was a Scott Hatteberg to provide happy hidden value. Losing Miguel Tejada to the clueless Orioles was sad, but what the hey, Miggy was a little sketchy as a suspiciously precocious Dominican, and even in the best of times, he didn't take a lot of walks. Lesser cuts, like the end of the one year Johnny Damon rental despite playoff heroics, the annual shedding of high value closers, or the farewell to quiet soldier Ramon Hernandez, didn't completely kill the vibe, because All Father Beane Had A Plan.

What he had, of course, was the good luck and fortune of being in the seat when the farm system gave him a once in a lifetime confluence of high value and durable young pitchers (Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito) who happened to have their good years match up in the slot machine pull that is MLB- life. After that, the only "magic" was a lot of occasional seasons from not quite good players (Terence Long, Randy Velarde, Mark Ellis, John Jaha, etc.) and a masterful sell job perpetrated by the All Father and Moneyball author Michael Lewis.

Since the book was written, the club has had one playoff run (the Last Hurrah Year of Frank Thomas, which coincided with the second wave of value pitching from Sell Sell Sell candidates Rich Harden, Dan Haren and Joe Blanton) and an avalanche of players who not only aren't good enough, but are in no way fun to watch. I give you -- and it's a give, and perhaps a heave -- Jack Hanrahan, Nomar Garciaparra, Giambi II, Bobby Crosby and a steaming beige load of Mark Kotsay Lite outfielders, which is to say, the least exciting outfielders in MLB.

And here's the thing that makes all of that utterly indefensible: the fact that when the farm system produced the occasional position player who was actually worth buying a ticket to see -- Andre Ethier and Carlos Gonzalez, primarily -- Beane moved them to the Dodgers and Rockies, respectively, for a year of the Milton Bradley Circus (admittedly, one of Milton's "better" years) and three months of watching Matt Holliday's value erode in a pitcher's park while surrounded by flotsam. I won't even get into the Harden and Blanton salary dumps, neither of which has produced anything of baseball interest, unless your idea of fun is to watch Matt Murton prove why he's a AAAAll-Star, or Josh Outman prove the age-old adage that young pitchers will break your heart, roughly around the same time that they break something in themselves. When they have kept and played kids, the kids (Daric Barton, Dan Johnson, Travis Buck, Crosby, the list goes on and on and on) have stunk, especially in the outfield. A failure to adequately access your own talent is just as deadly as the failure to assess others.

Is the franchise hopeless? Well, they are no smarter than anyone else in the division at this point, since the Mariners and Rangers have turned over their front offices to people with clues, and it's not as if the Angels are going to lose their attendance and managerial stability advantages anytime soon. With the Giants pulling a Peter Angelos and cockblocking their move to the only slightly more fertile land of San Jose (seriously, guys, you do know that town is also in the throes of an economic meltdown based on plummeting real estate values and the new corporate austerity, and that there have been no new stadiums built in California in my lifetime, right?) and the hometown of Oakland thoroughly disenchanted from the constant moving threats and ballpark begging... well, let's just call a spade a spade here.

Yes, yes, yes, the A's are hopeless.

They exist as a distressed property that exists strictly as a low stakes reclamation zone for resalable assets. So bring in Ben Sheets for his three-month showcase that he's healthy and competent again, and ready to be wrapped up in a bow and sent off for some grade Z collection of circus meat. Trot out Coco Crisp in his downmarket spiral (seriously, Coco, if you thought the games were uninspiring in Kansas City, just wait until you play to fewer than 4,000 people on a weeknight at the Coliseum), because he's cheap and plays defense and that's all that matters right now, because the defense allows us to make Sheets Et Al look better than they are when it comes time to sell them. Bring in the new Mike Sweeney (yes, I checked -- the old one isn't here anymore) to add service time to his pension and provide "veteran leadership" to the rest, never minding the fact that when the team was actually good and fun to watch, veterans were few and far between, and could actually play baseball.

Just do not, for the love of your eyes or the flickering hope that the All Father is smarter than Brian Sabean or a guy doubling down on his bets at the casino when he's already lost the rent money, actually watch the team play baseball.

Because, well, life's too short to spend your time rooting for hopeless.

Or, really, writing about them.

The Bad Tooth, in one of his more cogent moments in writing about fandom, put forth the proposition that if a team wins a championship, they should receive a five year Grace Period where the fan base does not pule about any decision, no matter how questionable, because of the past glory. Like many Toothy ideas, it sounds reasonable at first glance, but fails under repeat study, because it's not like you should lose your ability to question authority just because something good happened, and said championship could have been a fluke in the first place. (There's also the very hard-hearted notion that calling off the dogs just because the people that run your laundry finally did what is expected of them is just silly. You can also call this being a Yankee Fan, or why Brian Cashman drinks and can't find cheap but playable back ups to save his life. But I digress, admittedly to a team that some people actually care about.)

But independent of the merits of that argument, I'm starting to wonder if an equal and opposite period should exist -- a five year Disgrace Period where the team collects no benefit of no doubt from the fans, because they have had the unmitigated gall of putting, well, 90% of the people the A's have employed to play baseball in the last three years.

Leading to long posts that should really lead up to grand I Wash My Hands Of You declarations. Or springs without hope.

All Father (Beane) Knows Nothing, kids.

Now go write about a team that actually plays baseball, rather than whatever this is.