(NOTE: The tone of this piece would have been drastically different had it gone up on Saturday night rather than Monday morning.  For that matter, its tone would likely have been drastically different had the Baltimore Orioles not all turned into Silly McJelloArms at the sight of a sacrifice bunt.  This shouldn’t affect your reading of this post overmuch, but I felt I should remind you to be grateful to read the following rather than a haphazard smattering of curse words and threats against unnamed public officials.)

I’ve spent the last two weeks of my baseball life inching in and out of varying levels of panic.  The upside of the small sample size is that things can go very, very well in a very small amount of time.  The downside of the small sample size is that things can go very, very bad in a correspondingly small amount of time.  All of this would make a shortened baseball season very exciting, much like a thrilling roller coaster ride, were it not for the damage to one’s blood pressure and fractured psyche that would make it much more similar to sitting at a bus stop next to a large bipolar man holding a knife and muttering softly to himself.  So there’s a reason the baseball season lasts longer than a month, beyond the sheer impossibility of fitting that many bobblehead giveaways into a four-week period.

The constant flux of the small sample size nevertheless makes it imperative for the A’s fan’s physical and psychological well-being to know whether the 2013 Oakland Athletics are the 12-4 world beaters that they were halfway through April, or the 14-12 fringe contenders they became over the next two weeks.  Finding out which will be simple enough – all it will take is to sit back, relax, and watch the team play baseball games for the next five months.

Or you could just rely on my simplistic, systematic break-down that is almost guaranteed to be wrong and make you feel like an idiot for ever trusting me.  Your call.

World Beaters – Past performance and pure talent make it impossible that Brett Anderson and Jarrod Parker continue to be as bad as they’ve been this season.

Fringe Contenders – The ravages of time and human physiology make it impossible that Bartolo Colon continues to be as good as he’s been this season.

World Beaters – Come what may of the pitching, the River Cats have Dan Straily and Sonny Gray ready to go at a moment’s notice.  This level of depth, far more than any individual pitching talent, is the strength of Oakland pitching.

Fringe Contenders – Sonny Gray wears glasses now.  Nerd.  

Anyone got a picture of me wearing those glasses last night during the game?

— Sonny Gray(@SonnyGray2) April 27, 2013

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So after just over a week of the 2013 baseball season, the Oakland Athletics are playing .750 baseball, are at the forefront of  most offensive categories in the American League, and have just finished spoiling the Anaheim home opener in one of the dumber games I hope to see all season.  It’s too late, and my digestive system is too strained, to write anything coherent right now.  Fortunately, I have something even better:

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Few heard about this and even fewer cared, but we lost my favorite proto-Athletic yesterday when Oakland traded a minor league infielder you’ve never heard of for a minor league pitcher you’ll never hear of.  I had high hopes for Stephen Parker when was drafted out of BYU in the fifth round of the 2009 Draft, and those hopes looked to be well-founded when he hit 296/.392/.508 with 21 home runs for High-A Stockton in 2010.  Parker stalled out shortly thereafter, however, with an OPS under .800 in the last two seasons.   It didn’t help that since he was drafted, the A’s have added Miles Head, Addison Russel, Scott Sizemore and Jed Lowrie to the organization, as well as converted Josh Donaldson from catcher to third base, all of whom would seem to have a lead on Parker in the race for starting third baseman.  Yesterday’s trade was the final nail in the coffin that houses my dreams of a Mormon successor to Eric Chavez.  Sorry to see you go, Brother Parker.  If you make the major league squad in Milwaukee, feel free to assume that Bernie Brewer is sliding into a giant pool of cream soda after every home run. (Read the article)

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I know that CurveBall City is where all of you go for breaking, up-to-the-minute baseball news, so I feel a little guilty that I’m only just now getting to a commentary on Oakland’s trade for Jed Lowrie from like a million years ago.  It’s obvious that keeping this site and its literally tens[1] of readers up-to-date on all the latest A’s news is my highest priority, but this one required just a bit more processing time than usual.

Am I crying right now? Maybe.

The trade that brought Jed Lowrie to Oakland wasn’t Oakland’s standard “Billy Trades All Our All-Stars for Magic Beans” kind of trade, and nor was it the “Billy Trades Two 14 Year-Olds and a Handful of Rickey Henderson Rookie Cards for an Underappreciated Journeyman” trade that has become so fashionable this offseason (see Jaso, John and Young, Chris).  This was a value-for-value trade – one in which we got something good, but had to endure a little pain to get it.  And unlike most trades of late, I’m not so sure we came out ahead on this one.

But that may just be the emotions talking.  On the off chance that you’re not already familiar with the terms of this deal, Oakland dealt Chris Carter, Brad Peacock and Max Stassi to Houston for Jed Lowrie and relief pitcher Fernando Rodriguez.  While Peacock and Stassi may come back to haunt us one of these days, they were also representative of two positions of organizational strength – pitcher and catcher.  It is entirely possible that both Peacock and Stassi will become viable starters for Houston or wherever they end up, but it’s unlikely that either will become a star, and whoever now occupies their spot on the Oakland depth chart will likely be as good or better.  Chris Carter is something of a different story.

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