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Holliday has one year left on his current deal, there is no way Oakland can afford to resign him, in fact If they don't compete, he will be flipped at the deadline for prospects, If they keep him to the end of the year they will get 2 compensation picks.
Holliday has one year left on his current deal, there is no way Oakland can afford to resign him, in fact If they don't compete, he will be flipped at the deadline for prospects, If they keep him to the end of the year they will get 2 compensation picks.
Either way, it works out for us. Holliday (if he stays healthy) will get a great package in July, or will give us picks like we had in Swisher's year that we used to build the 2006 ALCS team.
Smith is going to be BOMBED in Denver...Gonzalez will develop nicely and Street's career is on the way out anyway. Holliday will bat .300 with 20 homers and 85 RBIs most likely, but that's a lot better than Gonzalez's .250-5-40 type numbers he could put up.
This has to be one of the more surprising trades around in awhile, though it definitely works better for the As than the Rockies. They didn't give up much, and Holliday fits well with Oakland's lineup. I think Beane kinda realizes that the AL West is more open than people realize (the Angels seriously overperformed their run differential last year, and if they fail to re-sign Tex and K-Rod, they suddenly look a bit vulnerable), and figures that if the A's can get something resemblign a lineup together, they'll be in a position to make a run for it pretty quickly. And if it doesn't work out - you still gotta consider the Angels the favorites, after all - Holliday can always be flipped for prospects at the deadline.
I suspect that one of the keys to the trade is an analysis by Beane that Carlos Gonzalez may not turn out to be the player he has been hyped to become.
He has been rated as a top prospect by Baseball America for the past few seasons. However, in looking at his minor league performance as he progresses each level you notice that his BA declines a little bit each of the past four seasons, yet his power only remains constant. This is a little bit of a concern, in that one would hope that the slight dip in BA is due to his learning to put more "thump" in his hitting, resulting in a positive power slope. Add in the fact that his BB/K rate hasn't improved at all the past four seasons too, and you get the impression this may just turn out to be a decent major league player, but not a future star performer.
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