After a very busy off season, the Oakland A’s are poised to make some noise in the American League this year, and for once they won’t go unnoticed. At least this is what the A’s are counting on.
The A’s busy off season has landed them star players through trades such as David DeJesus and Josh Willingham, to go along with free agent signings: Hideki Matsui, Grant Balfour, Brian Fuentes, Brandon McCarthy, and the return of Rich Harden.
The return of Joey Devine and Josh Outman from injuries add further depth to the roster. This newly acquired depth will help the A’s compete in 2011 against the injury bug that has plagued them in recent years and should keep them in contention deep into the season. Increased depth also gives them the ability to acquire an impact player at the trade deadline if the A’s find themselves in need of help to make a deep run into the playoffs.
If you think it is premature to start thinking playoffs, I’d like to give you a few points to consider:
The A’s are in a position where winning has an increased importance this season. This year, more than ever, a winning season has the potential to drastically increase the fan base. While this is always important, it means more to the A’s in 2011 than ever before: The A’s are in a position this season to drastically increase their visibility and promote their brand world-wide. The signing of Hideki Matsui brings with it the 24/7 media coverage of the Japanese fan base locally as well as foreign. Matsui will definitely be responsible for selling several more tickets to A’s games during the season, but his impact will have a greater effect on TV-coverage world wide as well A’s merchandise sales. Having a winning team will further impact their ability to capitalize on this opportunity. Matsui being signed to only a one year contract necessitates the A’s taking advantage of his presence this season by building a winning team around him.
Speaking of increased visibility, Hollywood is releasing “Moneyball” the movie starring Brad Pitt on September 23. At the risk of repeating myself, I will once again emphasize the A’s taking advantage of exposure and merchandising opportunities by building a winning team to take them deep into the playoffs in a year when Hollywood will help put the A’s in the spotlight. It is not only better for the team to be competitive at the time of the movie release, but it is also important for the public image of GM Billy Beane, who is the main character of the movie. A losing season at the time of the movies release would arm his critics and allow them to argue that he has lost his touch and is not the genius portrayed in the movie.
The Giants World Series victory last season further pushed the A’s out of the Bay Area media spotlight. The A’s need a winning season to compete with the Giants for ticket sales, advertising revenue and merchandise revenue around the Bay Area. The A’s have long been playing in front of an empty stadium and the Giants deep run last season unfortunately converted some previous A’s fans into panda hat and fake beard wearing regular attendants of AT&T Park. The aforementioned Hollywood and International exposure, along with a winning season would help bring back some of those fans along with create new fans. (Plus if it bothered the A’s front office as much as it bothered die-hard A’s fans, then the A’s need to answer back with their own World Series run).
Sadly, this year’s team features eight potential free agents at season’s end: Mark Ellis, David DeJesus, Coco Crisp, Josh Willingham, Hideki Matsui, Conor Jackson, Rich Harden and Brandon McCarthy. Surely the A’s will be able to retain some of these players, but they will inevitably lose some of these players to free agency. The A’s have long argued that their stadium is a major deterrent in signing major free agents to come and play for the Oakland A’s. If the A’s are able to increase their attendance and put together a winning season, and still fail to retain their free agents and sign additional free agents as they had trouble doing this off season (Adrian Beltre and Lance Berkman both turned down offers to play elsewhere), their claim they need a new stadium to remain competitive will be proven accurate.
Financial benefits, increased fan base, and potential stadium benefits? When you look at it, it sure does look like the A’s had a master plan going into this off season. Maybe Billy Beane really is the mad-genius he was portrayed as in Moneyball.
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