has made me really understand the genius of Billy Beane.
This, in my opinion, is going to be his masterwork.

Also, I'm no expert, but I've seen Chris Denorfia's minor league (and major league) numbers, and they're outstanding. How come nobody's talking about the Great Chris Denorfia?

I would say that Kotsay is likely out the door, and if he is still around, the only reason to play him is to give him enough value so that someone takes him from us.

Otherwise, I think we start the season a few different ways.

Either we have Gonzalez jump to the Majors and start in CF.

Or

Sweeney and Denorfia battle for the Centerfield job.

The bonus that comes from that is we can possibly get even more trade value, as when Gonzalez does come up, we have established Centerfielders who can either backup the team in the 4th OF role or be dealt for another prospect to make room for Gonzalez.

In the minors, we seem to have no real GOOD player depth at SS, 2B or 3B. We have roleplayers, but no real outstanding prospects.

Which leads me to believe that if we don't make a deal, such as dealing Chavez to LAD in a package to land LaRoche and/or Hu, that we will see Chavez at 3B for more years to come, and that the A's might go the All Defense-No Offense route at Middle Infield, likely with Petit at Shortstop and either Murphy or Pennington at 2B come mid 2008.

Middleinfield prospects, that is to say, GOOD Middle Infield prospects who can both field AND hit (The ARods, the Jeters, the Tejadas, the Garciaparas of the world) are very hard to find and maybe harder to acquire. The Devil Rays have one, and Hu might be a decent bet for the Dodgers, but I don't know if we can acquire one ourselves.

Though I still like the idea of a Blanton trade to Seattle with a subsequent conversion of Adam Jones back to Short Stop might be a good idea.

Fernando Hernandez, our 23-year-old Rule 5 pick and former White Sox AA pitcher, is probably too old for this team.  

I don't think that Beane was aiming for a five-year rebuilding.  He was looking at having the worst year for this team be 2008 and then have the team close to coming back into contention in 2009 with the real team poised to be among the American League elite in 2010.  

And hopefully the team learned a lot from these last few seasons specifically in terms of how to prevent injuries.  It's like a brand new reset and a chance to start over.  The thing is you want to build towards greatness, you don't want to revel in mediocrity and just hope and pray you can stay healthy and hang with the other teams.

Now the A's just need to make a smart draft choice or two this year, hopefully get some value for a rebuilt Chavez and Kotsay (although not at the cost of giving Denorfia experience).

is 2008 going more closely resemble 1997 or 1998? i'm saying '97, praying for '98.

The best pitchers we got in these deals will either still be in the minors (Anderson definitely, DLS likely), or rookies who probably won't do that well. Cahill and Rodriguez will also probably not be up in time, and Blanton will likely be gone... C. Gonzalez probably won't hit that much since he still has a lot of improving to do. Plus, anything we get out of Carter and Cunningham won't come in 2009. So... I think we're looking at a rough year that year.

The more it doesn't even look that terrible.  I know major parts of it will probably still be jettisoned, but if everything actually broke right for that group (for a change)?  They could finish with the same or better record that they did last year.