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Oakland A's
Scouting Report
By the Numbers | Players To Watch | Projected Roster
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What few thrills the A's provide should come from the aging
Henderson, on his fourth tour in Oakland.
(Brian Bahr/Allsport)
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The
Athletics
lost more games and attracted fewer fans than any other
team in baseball last year—and still made money. Was it a
successful season? "No, not at all," says
president Sandy Alderson, though he acknowledges that being
in the black is important. "We're a
team trying to compete on a businesslike basis. It's
important to remove the pressure of losing money because
that creates fear of a team relocating and other negative
components. We have to keep the financial pressure
off."
In other words, you won't find Oakland overextending itself
financially to pursue the pennant. Its philosophy is
simple: Stick to a budget that at worst leaves the club
with a balanced ledger and maybe, just maybe—or as
Alderson says, "if we get
lucky"—be competitive. So they make do with one of the five lowest
payrolls in baseball. Lots of
luck.
The Athletics have taken this approach the past two years,
overachieving before a late-season collapse that left them
with 78 wins in 1996, then sinking to 65 wins last year.
They drew only 1.2 million people in '97, actually a slight
improvement over
'96.
"When you don't have a lot of veteran talent or
leadership, the results tend to be more volatile,"
Alderson says. "You get the highs and the lows. We've
experienced both extremes. And it's a heck of lot easier to
go from 78 wins to 65 than the other
direction—from 78 to
91."
So, through trades and free agency, Oakland changed
overnight from a bad, young team to a suspect, old team.
They took the
$13.4 million in salaries they unloaded and spent the money on
pitchers Kenny Rogers, Tom Candiotti and Mike Fetters,
outfielders Rickey Henderson and Shane Mack, and infielders
Mike Blowers and Kurt Abbott (the only one of the bunch
younger than 32).
The curious bottom line: They will pay their 40-man roster
$18 million, $100,000 more than they spent last year—a little
more money for a lot less long-ball excitement than they
had before they dumped Mark McGwire, Geronimo Berroa and
Jose
Canseco.
What the Athletics hope to gain through those deals,
besides stability, is sorely needed help for their pitching
staff. "Last year we had people guaranteed a spot in
the rotation whether they pitched good or bad," says
DH-first baseman Dave Magadan, who
led the American
League with 13 pinch hits in '97. "We
didn't have anybody
else."
Oakland's retread-laden lineup takes some of the burden off
a corps of talented prospects, including catchers A.J.
Hinch and Ramon Hernandez, shortstop Miguel Tejada and
outfielder Ben Grieve, a franchise player in the making.
Grieve, 21, hit .312 in 24
games with Oakland last year while ensconced comfortably in
the
number 3
spot.
"He's the best young hitter I've ever seen,"
Magadan says. "He's got power to all fields, he hits
for a high average, and—what really sets him apart—he's
got a great eye at the plate. He's the real deal. Plus,
he's got this quiet confidence that I
really like. He doesn't go around telling everyone how good he
is."
Even with Grieve, Oakland's short-term future is hardly
encouraging. The Athletics are locked into a lease through
2004 at the expanded Oakland Coliseum, which is a football
stadium masquerading in the summer as a ballpark. To
generate the revenue
required to increase their payroll, the Athletics need their
young players to blossom together, the way it happened for
Montreal in the mid-'90s. "We're not going to
front-load the process the way [Wayne] Huizenga did in
Florida," Alderson says. "What we need
to do is stair-step it, to improve gradually. It's a
stair-step to heaven."
—by Paul
Gutierrez
Scouting Report | By the Numbers | Players To Watch | Projected Roster
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