A’s Baseball: Gone, but Not Forgotten

December 2, 2005 | Baseball | By: Mark VandeWettering

Well, it’s still several months till preseason baseball starts up, but there is still some baseball news going around. The Athletics scored free-agent Esteban Loaiza in a 3 year, $21 million dollar deal. This has sharply increased speculation that GM Billy Beane means to deal Barry Zito in an attempt to get an offensive right-handed bat to complement Eric Chavez.

Names like Frank Thomas and Mike Piazza have been kicked around, but honestly, I can’t really imagine that Beane will cough up any significant dollars to sign either one of those guys. They are getting up there in years, and if you ignore the single steroid laden counter example, most hitters ramp off pretty sharply once they hit 37 or 38.

If I was a gambling man, I’d say that in all likelihood I’ve seen Barry Zito’s last game as an Athletic. Who will they get in exhange? I haven’t a clue.

See Mychael Urban’s column on mlb.com.