Oakland A's

The A's have had a steady decline in wins in each of the last four seasons (not that an 88-74 record and second in the West is bad). There is a good crop of youngsters coming through who will be looking to end that trend.

Pitching

Few teams can compare to Oakland in terms of young pitching talent with Danny Haren and Joe Blanton both looking like the finished product at just 25, but the real stud of the rotation is Rich Harden. Harden looks better every time you see him and every time you see him he looks awesome. He has a tremendous fastball that he can locate and dominate hitters with and set up his other pitches. As a 23 year old he went 10-5 with a 2.53 ERA, lets see what he does aged 24.

Barry Zito was once slated to be the ace of the staff but ever since winning the Cy Young award he has been up and down. His effectiveness always lies in how much he uses his great hook. As good a pitch as it is he does tend to go to it too often and no matter how good a pitch is it will always be hittable if you know it’s coming.

Huston Street was very worthy of his Rookie of the Year award but the real test will be to see if the 22 year old can repeat the trick.

Justin Duchscherer, Jay Witasick and Kiko Calero are solid relief pitchers but they will miss lefty Ricardo Rincon. Joe Kennedy is likely to be the one to pick up Rincon’s slack.

Defence

Jason Kendall is the starting catcher but despite his natural athleticism he is not a good receiver. His arm is average and his footwork is not good enough to compensate.

Things get better in the middle infield where Bobby Crosby and Mark Ellis make a solid combo. Crosby in particular works hard to improve all the time and is developing into one of the most dependable shortstops in baseball.

Mark Kotsay never gets the credit he deserves in the outfield. He has possibly the most accurate outfield arms around and it’s a strong one. Add to that tremendous reads which gives him great range and you have a complete outfielder. The only question is who will be in centre out of him and Milton Bradley? Both are great fielders capable of playing both positions to a high standard…at least until Bradley throws a strop.

Offence

Jason Kendall, Mark Kotsay and Mark Ellis all have a good enough approach to hitting and enough speed to be effective at the top of the order but none is a true lead-off hitter.

The team relied heavily on Bobby Crosby and Eric Chavez to generate their offence but both have had injury concerns in recent years and even though the addition of Frank Thomas should give the order more pop he too has become an injury concern in recent years. If those three miss significant time then more pressure will be put on the inconsistent bats of Nick Swisher and Bobby Kielty. Swisher’s 21 homers got him RoY consideration but his .236 average soon quashed that.

Rookie Watch

Santiago Casilla could be this years Huston Street. He has a few issues with re-obtaining a work visa after it turned out his name wasn’t Jairo Garcia and he was almost three years older than he said he was.

He already has awesome stuff including a high-90’s fastball with movement and a filthy slider with some serious tilt. If they can get him to the majors he will make Oakland an incredibly tough team to come back on.

The clubs top prospect is Daric Barton and he'll be looking for a mid to late season call-up. A prodigious hitter with a textbook approach at the plate, his bat might be Major League ready now. The only issue is will he provide enough power at first base? Oakland thinks he will but only time will tell.

Management

Well we all know about Billy Beane and his theories about getting bang for the buck but what often gets overlooked is the incredible work of the farm system he has developed. Not only do they produce a bevy of great pitching talent but every hitter is drilled to be an Oakland A’s hitter and that singular ethos makes it very easy for guys to rise through the system and adapt quickly as they progress.

The clubs insistence upon playing a static non-running game seemed to diminish last year with Ken Macha at the helm and the team looked much more effective because of it. Macha recognised that there just isn’t enough power to keep up the ‘two walks and the three run homer’ mentality. Once he got his big players back the team played some great ball.

Outlook

With their array of arms they will always be in contention but the litmus test will, as always, be how consistently they can score runs. If they can be at least middle of the pack in terms of runs scored in the league then they should be there or thereabouts come September.