Barry Zito is 28-30 since going 23-5 in 2002. Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Barry Zito's name is out there. Oh, man, is it out there. It's on all the sports talk shows. It's all over the newspaper notes columns. It's been blogged halfway to death. It's practically flashing on the Goodyear blimp.

Front-office types, among themselves, talk about Zito. Scouts throw around his name. Players on other teams discuss the merits of having him onboard.

It's as official as it gets. The name Zito is deeply, inextricably part of baseball's rampant rumor mill. And it'll be stuck there, too, until Zito is traded. Or until he's not.

"Personally, I don't think I'm going to get traded this year," Zito said. "But that's probably just cause it seems so far from reality, you know. I think if I was going to get traded, it'd probably happen in the offseason. But we'll see.

"It's something that I am prepared to deal with, if that day comes. But I don't like to get too far into it until it does."

Make no mistake about this: Zito is a valuable commodity. A lot of teams would love to have the lanky left-hander. And the A's -- make no mistake about this, either -- would love to keep him. Billy Beane, the A's swap-happy general manager, is on the record as saying he wants Zito in Oakland. "I need him. I'm not thinking about trading him," he told the Sporting News.

But the A's, in a kind of transition mode after trading starters Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder last winter, need a lot more than just Zito. Their pitching has been inconsistent. Their offense has been invisible. They're 11 games below .500 and 10 1/2 games out of the American League West lead. They're in real danger of missing the postseason for the second straight year.

If another team wants to talk about trading for Zito, Beane has to listen. If it's a trade that makes the A's better -- not just for this year, but for years ahead -- Beane has to act.

This figures to be a stressful few weeks around baseball. Many teams, still believing they have a chance to make the playoffs, plan to hang on to their starters. Zito's value may never be higher.

True, he doesn't have the numbers he had in 2002, when he went 23-5 with a 2.75 ERA, winning the American League Cy Young Award. Last year, he was 11-11 with a 4.48 ERA and, for the first time in his career, gave up more than a hit an inning. This year, he's 3-7 with a 4.47 ERA. He's lost some zip off his fastball, and his trademark curve -- as good as there is in the game when it's on -- has been both hit and missed.