I've written about a lot of crummy players and players who had crummy seasons so far in this series. I've written about Jai Miller and Andy LaRoche and Jordan Norberto and Bobby Cramer. But Kevin Kouzmanoff! I wrote about all those other players more or less happily, but Kouzmanoff gives me real trouble.

You know what the problem is? The problem is UZR. FanGraphs's fielding metric, laden with issues though it may be, has come, via the dominance of FanGraphs in the "looking up players' sabermetric stats" world, to be how I think a lot of people (myself included in the recent past) know a player's defensive skill and/or performance. Eye-catching totals are not granted as much skepticism as perhaps they should be, particularly when incorporated into an overall WAR figure.

As applied, then: Kevin Kouzmanoff was rated a +16 defender by UZR in 2010. That took a crap offensive season (83 wRC+, .247 TAv, pick your poison) and made him a three-WAR player. Following on the heels of years in which Petco killed Kouzmanoff's superficial batting line but still left him with park-adjusted figures right around the league average, here's how Kouzmanoff went by fWAR from 2007 through 2010:

2.4 2.8 2.8 3.0

Nice progression from 25 to 28! Real nice! But wait. What if Kouzmanoff wasn't all that? Here he is by Baseball Prospectus's WARP in the same period:

1.4 0.6 -0.2 0.6

So FanGraphs has Kouzmanoff a solidly above-average player, a guy who can absolutely contribute to a winning team, while Baseball Prospectus says that, after a nice rookie season (he debuted briefly in 2006 with Cleveland, but 2007 was his real rookie year) that showed some promise, especially with the bat (.457 SLG), he fell off a cliff and was hardly worth rostering from there on out.

Which is true? I don't know. Neither. Both. rWAR.

He's Dayton Moore's problem now, though, as a horrendous, even for Kouzmanoff, start to the season (.221/.262/.353 line in Oakland in 149 PAs) got him shipped to Sacramento and then later to Colorado, from whence he departed this off-season for Kansas City (on a minor-league deal). Adam LaRoche ate into his playing time, for better or worse, and then Scott Sizemore arrived in a flat-out theft from Detroit and took over the third-base job, putting up a batting line that Kouzmanoff (per TAv) has never come close to matching. Sizemore's defense may well make the A's long for the days of The Kouz at third, but the error bars around his -7 FRAA are enormous.

Either way, though, and like I said, the A's don't have to worry about Kouzmanoff. He'll battle for a roster spot in Kansas City. Mike Moustakas, Yuniesky Betancourt, and Chris Getz form a terrific triple for the Royals in front of Kouzmanoff. Or at least they do from Kouzmanoff's perspective, because Moustakas could fall on his face, and the other two are terrible -- a roster spot, if not on Opening Day then at least down the line somewhere, is not out of reach. I'll wish him luck, but I think he's going to need a lot more in his corner than my mental powers can provide to have a real career into his 30s.

First a couple of tweets:

#Athletics announce that Adrian Cardenas has been claimed off waivers by the Chicago Cubs.

— Oakland Athletics (@Athletics) February 6, 2012

Rangers sign LHP Joe Bemiel and OF-1B Conor Jackson to Minor League contracts with invites to ST

— TR Sullivan (@Sullivan_Ranger) February 6, 2012

I'm obviously not here writing about Joe Beimel. The Cardenas news isn't surprising, in the sense that both (a) someone wanted him and (b) there was no trade market. He's been around for a while, so everyone knows:

Instead of handing Adrian Cardenas a job in Chicago, maybe we should wonder why he was available. He's a really bad infielder.

— Kevin Goldstein (@Kevin_Goldstein) February 6, 2012

I mean, I didn't know. But we could pretty well suspect from the fact that Cardenas was never given a real shot at, say, the third-base job, even as Kevin Kouzmanoff struggled his way through many miserable months at the plate.

And yet, despite that, maybe he can still learn to play passable defense or maybe he can hit enough to overcome that as a utility man. There are a lot of maybes for a guy as young as Cardenas is and with the past flashes he showed scouts with his bat. Enough maybes, certainly, for a rebuilding team like the Cubs to take a shot on when all it costs them is Blake DeWitt.

As to Jackson, I'm shorting someone credit here, but I saw a tweet to the effect of "bless the Rangers for signing him so the A's couldn't." I certainly am happy that Oakland did not bring him back -- it's hard to see where he fits unless he's taking time from better players. Not just potentially-better-in-the-future players, but better-right-now players. With Bob Melvin's known man-crush on the guy, I was not alone in worrying about that being a legitimate possibility if Billy Beane had given Melvin access to Jackson.

Query whether (and I'm repeating my own tweet here) the A's floated rumors of Conor Jackson coming to Oakland when they had no interest in making such a deal so that Melvin would think there was a chance but Jackson turned them down. Is that too complicated for how front offices interact with their managers? Are there too many potential pitfalls? Probably. But I can dream about G.M.s playing The Game of [Free Agents] with their underlings.

Not much else happening in A's land today, but here's the Cliff Pennington part of the FanFest interviews.

Also, Christina Kahrl has a great look at ten position-switchers for 2012, which includes Sean Doolittle's move from first base to pitching.

Sam Miller has a very Sam Miller examination of ex-Athletic Greg Smith.

The man I call "The Mormon" debuted for Oakland this year, throwing gas (96 mph fastball), whiffing hella dudes (30% of the men he faced), and walking a few more than is ideal (a tad under 12%). He managed all of this by throwing two pitches, the aforementioned fastball that has elite velocity and some sink, but very little horizontal movement, and a curve that comes in quite a bit harder than most curves while still carrying about the same movement.

I'd love to tell you more about de los Santos's PITCHf/x data, but I'm hesitant to without baselines. I have no real idea what to tell you about the whiff rate on de los Santos's curveball. It's probably good, because his whiff rate is above-average overall, but I don't know for sure. At some point, I will overcome the errors and finish setting up my own PITCHf/x database so that I can do the kind of pitch comparisons that I want to do, but that hasn't happened yet.

We'll have to console ourselves knowing that de los Santos's season, which basically proceeded from July 2nd until the end of the year (he was up briefly in June as well, but made only two appearances in the month), continued the clamor among certain A's fans to take away his "closer of the future" label in exchange for "closer of the now." It's hard, or maybe even impossible, to say what the best role for FDLS will be. He's got the talent for a major back-end role one way or the other, and if we're talking about a team that's battling for third place, the order of those roles doesn't matter.

If we're talking about a team that's battling for the playoffs, on the other hand, the order could matter immensely, and one would hope that the manager might accidentally find himself putting his better pitchers in the dirty, no margin, earlier situations. It's possible that De Los Santos's non-elite walk rate will render him a slightly lesser pitcher than others who may come along while his Extreme Velocity and Major Strikeoutage make him seem better than he is, thus slotting him perfectly into the closer role.

Big ol' Landon Powell (I am required in my contract with [redacted] to prepend every mention of Landon Powell with the phrase "big ol'" -- there's nothing I can do about it) didn't have the greatest year of his life in 2011. He got fewer plate appearances than he received in 2009 and 2010, in part, presumably, because he hit just .171/.246/.225 in his 122 trips, posting his third consecutive season with a well-above-average strikeout rate. He got designated for assignment just before Christmas. Nobody claimed him on waivers, so the A's outrighted him off the 40-man roster. He's still in the organization, of course, but Kurt Suzuki is the starter now, Derek Norris is the starter of the future, and Josh Donaldson and Anthony Recker are both on the 40-man and will presumably battle to back up Suzuki/Norris (or even start for a while after a Suzuki trade if Norris is not yet ready).

Powell was well-regarded once upon a time, at least by the A's, as he was taken 24th overall in the 2004 draft. Notable names behind him in that round include Gio Gonzalez (38th), Huston Street (40th), and I guess J.P. Howell (31st). There weren't a lot of All-Stars picked in Powell's immediate vicinity, in other words. Unfortunately, he tore his ACL before the 2005 season and missed the entire year, so he didn't get a full year of play until 2006, by which time he was already 24. And a catcher with a bum knee. His total games played in his full minor-league seasons go like this: 102, 64, 88. Even for a catcher, that's not great.

In that limited time, Powell got on base at a nice clip (.362 despite just a .256 batting average), but he only hit for power in 2007 with Midland. That he managed to carve out a three-year career as a backup catcher in the big-leagues is pretty impressive, but it looks like that run is over. He'll turn 30 next month, he's about the size of the guy who played Jeremy Brown in Moneyball, and nobody seems to want him. He can still make some money mentoring folks in AAA, but it may be time for Powell to move into coaching, the front office, or selling insurance sooner rather than later.

Football season is over, and pitchers and catchers report soon. That's exciting!

notsellingjeans at Athletics Nation is fine with the A's keeping payroll at the minimum level required by the CBA for the next four years followed by a monster free-agent acquisition (Bryce Harper? Jason Heyward? Mike Stanton? Mike Trout?) heading into the new stadium. Me, I'm less sanguine about this idea, and I'm not sure it's the direction Billy Beane would want to go even with the money. Loser's curse means that huge free-agent contracts are nearly always overpays, by the very mechanics of an auction. Sure, the team will have more money in a new stadium, but we're not talking about Yankee revenues, so a big mistake can be crippling.

Plus, Scott Boras or not, I wouldn't be surprised to see four out of five top potential free agents have their first couple of years of free agency bought out. The main thing this does is lower the odds that you can get an Alex Rodriguez in free agency -- you're going to be buying almost entirely decline years for most players.

YonYonson has an amusing look at two-sport stars who've played for the A's. The Rickey Henderson high school photo is priceless.

I guess the A's have interest in Magglio Ordonez now? David Wishinsky has a look. I don't see any real way to spin any positive on this. He'd be a DH who doesn't hit much (unlike, potentially, Manny), he'd take time from younger players right at the start of the year (unlike Manny), and there's almost no chance he'd fetch anything good at the trade deadline.

Wishinsky also looks at Bartolo Colon's PITCHf/x data for 2011 and asks whether his sinker was coming in too hot in August. Two problems I have with the analysis: (1) line drives; (2) month-by-month breakdowns. The former is just a matter of some people believing in the data and others not, but the latter is an arbitrary endpoints thing. I'd much rather see some sort of running averages, weighted perhaps, that gives us the entire data set in one view. If Colon made a great start on July 31st and a crap one on August 5th, I'm not convinced we should put those in separate buckets, even as a matter of a rough analysis that isn't trying to be rigorous.

Nico makes that point in a comment at A.N.

The A's also have interest in Koji Uehara.

Sources: #Athletics among teams pursuing #Rangers' Uehara. #Orioles remain interested. #MLB

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 5, 2012

He's a reliever, so it's just money. There's no such thing as a hot middle-relief prospect who'd get blocked by this deal. It could have 40-man consequences, but those consequences would likely just be Pedro Figueroa or Sean Doolittle losing their spots, which is hardly a tragedy.

Part II of Wendy Thurm's look at players who skipped the minors entirely includes two A's, Mike Morgan, who wound up having a perfectly adequate career (597 games pitched), and Tim Conroy, who didn't really (just two full seasons in the bigs). Ariel Prieto is also in there, but he doesn't really count the same because he was 25.

David Wishinsky has some notes from the Seth Smith part of the FanFest interviews.

Christina Kahrl, up at the mothership, has a very interesting look at the potential for MLB to have many 100-loss teams and what that says about the changed competitive landscape in baseball and the fight to find the next market inefficiency. The A's are obviously a big part of the piece, but I'd recommend reading it even if this were a Yankees blog.

Matt Kory has a piece at Over the Monster about Manny Ramirez, whether he makes sense for the A's, whether he makes sense in major league baseball, and what he might do if he's allowed to pick up a bat.

Todd Coffey won't be on the A's after all.:

Todd coffey agrees w/ dodgers

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) February 3, 2012

Manny Ramirez might still be, though. Here's the Enrique Rojas story in Spanish, listing the A's, Blue Jays, and Orioles as options.

In ex-A's news, Greg Smith is coming back to the AL West, this time in Anaheim.:

Angels sign LHP Greg Smith to minors deal, adding to stable of vets like Cantu, Deeds, R. Diaz, Heether, E. Hurley, Langerhans & D. Macias.

— Matt Eddy (@eddymk) February 3, 2012

More ex-A's, more Baltimore news:

Former #Athletics player Jeff Larish announces via Facebook that he has signed with the #Orioles.

— Jane Lee (@JaneMLB) February 3, 2012

Time is running short. I've got 30 of these left to go, and not even close to 30 days left before spring training opens up. But I'm going to pound on these anyway. I promised I'd try.

Jerry Blevins's season with the A's was notable mainly for introducing A's fans to a whole new type of waivers. David Wishinsky got in touch with Bob Rose, who explained what was going on, and why the A's kept designating Blevins for assignment only to wind up optioning him to Sacramento.

Image by Kimberly N.

Blevins, a 28-year-old rail-thin (6'6" but just 175 pounds, and, if anything, that's generous) lefty with 151 games and 141 2/3 innings under his belt in the majors, had very solid performances from 2008-2010, putting up strikeout rates above eight, while keeping the walks in the three-per-nine range. The walks, unfortunately, shot up to 4.4 per nine this season. The PITCHf/x data at FanGraphs doesn't show Blevins throwing any fewer pitches in the zone in 2011, but the rate of swings on pitches out of the zone dropped from about 27% in the previous three years to under 24% this season. Three percentage points doesn't sound like a lot, but Blevins threw 433 pitches this year, so those three points translate to about 12 pitches that in 2010 might have been strikes, fouls, or weak contact and this year were balls. The additional walk per nine innings is about one per 36 batters faced, while the extra balls come to about one per ten batters.

There's nothing profound here, I don't think, but what it illustrates is how razor-thin the margins are for major-league players. Blevins averaged a little over four batters faced per game pitched, so we're talking about one pitch every two to three games raising his walk rate from basically average to almost 50% above it.

(There's an ascription of causation there that I haven't supported, note, and I'm not going to go batter-by-batter through Blevins's game logs to figure out where the walks actually came from. If the A's want to pay me to be that kind of data monkey, I'd do it, but when I'm working for ad revenue? Yeah.)

The other thing to note from Blevins's PITCHf/x data is that his average fastball velocity declined from 90-91 mph to below 89. Remember the Brandon McCarthy point about the key to not walking anybody being to trust your stuff and throw the ball in the zone. Blevins probably noticed a two-mph drop from where he was pitching in 2008 or 2009, and there's a chance he tried to be a little more fine because of it.

In his overall performance, this change didn't end up hurting him relative to his 2010 performance because he cut his homer rate in half, leading to an FIP of 3.70, down from 4.23. (His BABIP also tumbled down below his career norm (.278 in 2011) after it shot up to .318 in 2010.)

Going forward, Blevins and Brian Fuentes are the two best lefties the A's have. Sean Doolittle is still learning the whole pitching thing and Jordan Norberto can't really throw strikes. Also, I believe that Blevins is out of options: he had his contract purchased in 2007, was optioned to Sacramento to begin the season in 2008 (but spent the second half in Oakland), and also burned options in 2009 and 2011. Unless multiple pitchers have really good springs and the A's decide to trade Blevins, I'd imagine that he'll be a low-ish leverage pitcher (behind Fuentes, Grant Balfour, Fautino De Los Santos, and Joey Devine) for the entire year in Oakland.

David Wishinsky has a bit about Cliff Pennington built around his BABIP question for him at FanFest.

Here's the latest episode (I've already lost track of what number it is) of Tarp Talk, the the A's sabermetric podcast, starring a bunch of people I follow on Twitter and recommend that you do as well, if you care about the the A's. There's FanFest talk and other stuff. (I do think David Wishinsky (was it him? Maybe it was Spencer) misunderestimates just how much many A's fans hate Barry Bonds and might seriously abandon the team if they signed him. Or at least stop paying to go to games.)

Dan Hennessey has a look at Brandon McCarthy at Athletics Nation. Looks like the basic answer is that McCarthy's not wrong about himself: he's throwing more strikes.

The Orioles and the A's might be fighting over a player:

Sources: #Athletics, #Orioles most interested in Manny, but unclear if either has even made an offer. A's looking at relievers too. #MLB

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 2, 2012

Jane Lee has a story about Michael Taylor, in which he says he's revamped his swing since 2010. He's trying to focus on hitting the ball to center field. In other words, Lee is getting a head start on spring training with no-news reporting. (I really dislike reading about baseball during spring training.)

If I notice you mentioning Jack Cust, I will link it, so here's SweetSpot mate Austin Swafford on the Astros' signing of the former Athletic. (He likes the idea of getting him as a bench OBP source.)

Happily, the A's do not have one of the worst position situations in baseball per Matthew Pouliot. They do get a dishonorable mention at first and in right field. The latter I'll buy -- Josh Reddick, Collin Cowgill, and Michael Taylor don't have a ton of upside, it seems, between them. Two of the three probably aren't bad players, but they might be, and they're not stars at the ceiling. As to first base, I disagree with Pouliot. Daric Barton's OBP + glove combo can be very good, and Chris Carter and Brandon Allen might tap into their power yet (though neither plays inspiring defense).

I think Pouliot's priorities are just different from mine. Whichever dishonorable mention team signed Casey Kotchman was going to be removed from the list, which seems absurd to me. A Barton/Carter/Allen-and-see-who-hits combo is worse than Casey Kotchman?

Here's the Seth Smith transcript from FanFest. My question is the last one, as I mentioned yesterday, about how you avoid letting Oakland's difficulty get in your head.

Brad Peacock is Bullpen Banter's #66 prospect for 2012.

Michael Choice is #64. Contact is the potential issue and nobody thinks he'll stay in center field.

Michael Taylor spent the off-season interning for KNBR radio in San Francisco. Query whether it was a legit internship or whether KNBR is yet another FLSA-violating organization taking advantage of people desperate to break into its business.

Via Aaron Gleeman:

Source: "#Twins are not considered serious contenders for (Todd) Coffey." The Cubs & Oakland are among those that are.

— Darren Wolfson (@DarrenWolfson) January 31, 2012

Sure, why not. Todd Coffey. He's a very large dude.

Ex-A's: Dan Johnson signed a minor-league deal with the White Sox, and Juan Cruz signed one with the Pirates.

Al Yellon writes an ode to massive multi-team trades. The list includes the Ben Grieve deal that netted the A's Johnny Damon and Mark Ellis, as well as the Carlos Pena for Ted Lilly swap that involved a lot more moving pieces than that.

Joe Lemire has an offseason edition of his power rankings that have the A's 29th. I'm not convinced they're actually that bad.

Me elsewhere: I wrote a FanFest piece for Baseball Prospectus. It's behind the paywall. It's also a blatant rip of Hunter S. Thompson or someone like him. Whatever, yo.

Also me elsewhere: I'm part of the Lineup Card at Prospectus for the first time, writing about "Undeservedly Obscure Baseball Films." I chose Keanu Reeves's Hardball. This one is not behind the paywall, and everyone else's contributions are awesome.

Master Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni was designated for assignment by the Blue Jays. It's about time, really, seeing as how the man passed in 1996.

Stealing shamelessly from my comrade Chip Buck at, here's another edition of Jane Lee's mailbag.

First question is about whether Stephen Parker will be ready in 2013. Jane's answer says that Parker has been a poor fielder (she says "inconsistent," but that's just a euphemism for poor) and hasn't torn the cover off the ball all the way up. My answer is that Scott Sizemore is 27, put up an "on pace for" of about 2 1/2 WARP last year despite an awful defensive rating by FRAA while learning a new position, and has multiple cheap years left. Is there any reason to think he can't do the job?

Second question, which is from Jonathan T., but I think must actually be from one of my Twitter friends, asks why Adrian Cardenas was DFA'd instead of Pedro Figueroa. Lee's answer is that he doesn't have a defensive home, but that's a pretty crummy answer. He's a utility player. There are no defensive homes for utility players. The question is whether he's a better utility player than Eric Sogard and/or Adam Rosales. The A's presumably do not believe he is (or believe that he's more likely to pass through waivers than Pedro Figueroa would be).

Third question is what other missing pieces there are for the A's. Jane Lee says "not much," while I say "talent." Talent is the missing piece for the A's.

Fourth question asks Lee to predict this season's surprise player. That's right. Go read it for yourself if you don't believe me.

Fifth question is about the new stadium. My long-standing lack of ability to care very much interferes with my great ability to snark snark snark.

I like what David Wishinsky did here, cutting together his questions for Bob Melvin at FanFest with stats and other information. If you're going to do Q&A, that's, I think, a great way to do it. (Also, my name is in there.)

The Josh Reddick part of the blogger Q&A is up here at Athletics Nation. I didn't ask any questions directly of Reddick. I asked one of Smith and Reddick together, but only Smith got a chance to answer. Another questioner came in with one before Reddick was able to put in his two cents.

I also like what cuppingmaster did at Athletics Nation, looking at post-Tommy John guys with similar pre-surgery results as Brett Anderson to see what we might expect the lefty to do after surgery. Sample size and great diversity of results prevents him from coming to any solid conclusions, but I think it's great to see the list of results anyway.

Some of us on Twitter have been hammering on cuppingmaster to start blogging, because he's a smart guy with interesting things to say, so I'm glad to see him dip his toe in a bit. (If you're reading this: can I use your real name when I link you? I like to when I can.)

Melissa Lockard has a Q&A with Jose Canseco. Jose Canseco!

I got to see David Wishinsky's Barry Zito game-worn hat in person, but for those less fortunate, he wrote about it. There are pictures, and he tracked down the quote that Zito wrote on the inside.

Here's a fantasy outlook for some A's, which includes Brandon McCarthy as a breakout candidate. That's ... a little weird. What did he do in 2011 again?

As I've mentioned here and on Twitter, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in a blogger event at FanFest in Oakland on Sunday -- for an hour at the end of the event (from 1pm to 2pm), six of us were to have press-conference style meetings with three panels: Bob Melvin, Brandon McCarthy and Cliff Pennington, and Seth Smith and Josh Reddick. I didn't record the panels, because I've transcribed interviews before and I hate it. You'll find the transcripts at Athletics Nation, where the Brandon McCarthy one has already gone up.

Here, instead, are my thoughts and general observations, with some quotes sprinkled in.

Bob Rose

(A's PR man Bob Rose spent about 15 minutes with us before the event really kicked off.)

• Rose is really good. He gave us a postmodern spiel, circling back around multiple times on how he knows that we know that he's a P.R. guy, that his job is to spin things positively, but then he proceeded to spin things positively and I, for one, came away, if not convinced, then at least upbeat.

• Rose was also really good at flattering us, talking about how happy they were to have us, how we're the future, etc. etc. I'll take it, though.

Bob Melvin

• I liked Melvin's shirt. It was a nice windowpane check.

• As Melvin's done in his interviews with the more established media, he emphasized that defense will be a priority in spring training, and gave a hint about how that will be done -- they'll spread out over their complex and do a lot of drills, it seems like. It should be noted (though I didn't mention this in the conference) that the A's turned batted balls into outs at a league-average rate last year despite the rash of ugly errors that stick in our minds as much as I'm sure they do in Melvin's. One can argue, perhaps, that with Cliff Pennington, Mark Ellis/Jemile Weeks, Coco Crisp, and David DeJesus, the team should have been better than average.

• Some of this was prompted by the type of questions he was asked, but Melvin definitely seems to fit the "baseball man" type, talking about how Conor Jackson and Hideki Matsui are "intangible guys" (ghosts!) and how much he loves Collin Cowgill. (Amusingly, he told us that Cowgill is the type of player who can spend the whole game on the bench but still somehow get his uniform dirty. This is a fun line, but what makes it more fun is that Bob Rose specifically told us to ask Melvin about Cowgill because Melvin would use that line. It was word-for-word. Tremendous.)

• On the other hand! Melvin did refer to the 7th and 8th innings as "more leveraged" situations. It was the phrase that struck me more than anything else. It seems fairly well-established that the 9th inning job is a clean-inning role, while the earlier, setup roles involve getting out of messes, low margins of error, etc. What seems to me less used outside the stat-nerd community is the word "leverage."

• I followed up with Melvin on that point, asking him what he thought about the closer mystique, given his understanding of earlier-inning leverage, but he deflected, saying that he saw "both sides" of the issue.

• What's clear to me is that Melvin protects his players, even when they're not his players anymore. Conor Jackson was just starting to recover from his injuries and illness in the second half of 2011. Brandon Allen is a "terrific talent" who just needs to be given the opportunity to work through a slump rather than be benched at the first sign of struggles. Hideki Matsui is an intangible guy, as mentioned above.

  I don't really have a basis for comparison. Every manager protects his players to some degree, and the question is the degree. Suffice it to say that Melvin is no Phil Jackson in terms of motivating players by criticizing them in the press.

Brandon McCarthy

• McCarthy was on time to his shared session with Cliff Pennington. Pennington ... less so.

• McCarthy's presentation is fascinating -- he's candid and willing to engage with questions on a level that isn't mere cliche, he's funny, and he's clearly intelligent. But if you didn't speak English, you'd think he was saying nothing and showing no emotion, like any other player. He was nearly affectless with us, which was such a sharp contrast with the actual content of his words as to be startling.

• He's really tall. I know that intellectually, but to be sitting down when he came into the room and walked to the front was something else, especially given how normal-sized a lot of baseball players tend to be.

• McCarthy's uncertainty on the question of how much pitchers control the quality of their contact was great to see. You all know how big a fan I am of uncertainty and a willingness to express it.

• McCarthy telling us that "it's really awkward" when players in a clubhouse think they're leaders but nobody else does was the best moment of the fifteen minutes, to my mind. It was a real look inside, I think, without throwing anyone under the bus in particular, a way to express that not everything in clubhouses in beer and roses and not every player is a well-respected warrior while not Boutoning himself.

Cliff Pennington

• He grew a beard. He was actually asked about it in the general, public Q&A. In our session, McCarthy joked that he had to grow the beard in order to assert his role as the veteran player on the infield. (This was in response to my inelegantly phrased question about what his approach might be to being not only the proverbial quarterback of the infield, but the longest-tenured player there, too.)

• One of the senses I got from a variety of sources, but I'll put it here because I have a quote from Pennington on it: being a leader in baseball largely comes down to the question of "do you do everything you're supposed to do." I'm pretty sure I heard Bob Melvin, Chip Hale, and multiple players express variations on this theme. There is obviously a culture, at least on this team, though I'd guess it's true league-wide, of leadership being about process and effort. Somebody, I don't remember who, specifically mentioned the word "production" as something that leadership is not about.

  (Though of course if you don't produce at some level, you can't become a leader because you won't stick in the big leagues long enough to have any credibility or even to just know the players on the team long enough to lead them well. That's not to undermine the point, though -- nobody mistakes Cliff Pennington for an All-Star, but he's good enough to play, so when you add that to his apparent personality and approach, he becomes a player who leads the clubhouse.)

• I've noticed this on TV a little bit before, but Pennington's voice betrays, to my faulty ears at least, no hint of his Texas past.

• I mentioned this on Twitter, but McCarthy has introduced Pennington to some of the statistical work on the internet. I didn't get a chance to ask which websites in particular (as Pennington mentioned McCarthy showing him some sites), but I got the sense that he might've been giving me a diplomatic answer. They did specifically mention Mike Fast's remarkable work on catcher framing at Baseball Prospectus, though (after I confirmed for McCarthy that it was Fast's work he was thinking of -- go me).

Seth Smith

• I know there are some worries about who the lumberjack on the team is going to be with Conor Jackson gone (hopefully), but let's not worry. Smith's beard and general demeanor are perfectly lumberjack for me. I don't think we need to worry about bringing Jackson back.

• As you might expect of someone doing their due diligence, Smith talked to Jason Giambi and Mark Ellis, Colorado teammates, about what it was like to hit in Oakland. He's either legitimately not worried about the Coliseum or presenting very well -- he considers himself a line-drive hitter who isn't affected too much by any park. (Although the first five or six times he fouls out on a ball that would hit the crowd in any other park, he may change his tune.)

Josh Reddick

• Reddick and Smith are both from the south, Reddick from Georgia and Smith from Mississippi, but Reddick has the much more noticeable accent. He doesn't sound like a cartoon character, but he's very clearly from the south. Smith's accent was more faint to me, to the point of not being immediately identifiable as southern.

• Reddick described getting "to experience the Dallas Braden effect" in early workouts in Arizona already. We have that in common, I guess, because Braden flashed his man nipples at us in the tunnel after the interviews, while we were sort of milling about trying to figure out which way was the exit. (In fairness to Braden, it wasn't unprompted. One of our number shouted "209" at him. Lifting his shirt and yelling back was the only logical response.)

• Chili Davis's style, per Reddick, is apparently pretty hands-on, but, as you'd hope is true with any coach, focused on finding the particular strengths of each player and helping him amplify and play to those strengths.

Other

• On a scale of one to ten, with one being least cliches, I'd rate the interviews like this: McCarthy 2, Cliff Pennington 5, Bob Melvin 6, Seth Smith 8, Josh Reddick 8.

• Please don't take that as criticism of the players themselves, or of Melvin. It's not their job to be candid and tell us all their anxieties, to tell us candidly which players are crummy, and on and on. Players have to deal with each other every single day for hours at a time, and managers have to get those players ready to perform at their best. Cliche is not just a normal mechanism, it's a wholly valid one.

• Cuss count: by my recollection, it's McCarthy 3, Melvin 1, and everyone else 0.

Here are some FanFest photos from Rhamesis Muncada at New A's Ballpark, which I've been neglecting to link here before. I keep my eye on the site, but I try to avoid engaging with the ballpark issues too much because I fear that I'll get sucked into it and spend all my time thinking about redevelopment law and waterfront property values. Let me just direct you, dear readers, to that site, which you surely already know about, for all your new ballpark needs. Those are the dudes for real.

YonYonson at FK also has some photos, including a genius one of Jonny Gomes and his hair.

David Schoenfield doesn't see the A's signing Manny Ramirez when they've already got Chris Carter and Brandon Allen and Daric Barton. I don't disagree as to the "should" of this one, at least on the field, but I've given up trying to predict what the A's will do this off-season.

Via FK, where monkeyball pooh-poohs the idea, here's Marc Topkin speculating about Kurt Suzuki being traded to the Rays. (Well, it's about a bunch of things, but there is such speculation in there.)

Here's the Brandon McCarthy part of the blogger Q&A from FanFest over at Athletics Nation. The "doctorwojo" question isn't actually me -- if I remember correctly, that was David Wishinsky. I'll make some appearances in the other transcriptions, of Cliff Pennington, Seth Smith, Josh Reddick, and Bob Melvin.

David Fung at AN has a look at some projected standings as generated by Marcel. The A's, once again, come out pretty damn decent. One possible issue to note is that Marcel doesn't account for parks (intentionally -- that's not a bug or something), so the projections for guys like Seth Smith and Josh Reddick and Jonny Gomes will likely reflect something other than what they'll actually be capable of in Oakland.

Bullpen Banter has Derek Norris at the #73 prospect in baseball.

In beloved ex-A's news, Matt Stairs is going to work in television at NESN. That's Boston. He'll be a studio guy.

Jon Shepherd at Camden Depot looks at cities to which MLB could expand, which doubles, if you're pessimistic, as a list of cities to which the Giants want to shove the A's. (I'm anti-Las Vegas, by the way. It's no closer, practically, than Oakland from where I am, and it would, I believe, put the team into my MLB.tv blackout area.) ((This assumes that I'd remain a fan if they moved to Las Vegas. You root for laundry, and there's no reason for the laundry to change, but it'd be a rough bundle of emotions, and I'm not sure what I'd do.))

I'm back from FanFest. I'll have a wrap of that tomorrow, but for now, links.

Susan Slusser wrote on Friday afternoon that the A's signing Manny Ramirez might not be so crazy after all. Her analysis is predicated on the contract being a minor-league deal. If that is the case (and it sounds like this is informed opinion on her part, not pure reporting but not pure speculation either), then I'm less against the idea than I might have been otherwise.

Bob Melvin (preview!) told a group of A's bloggers today that he thinks Brandon Allen will be good, but he hasn't had the opportunity to really play through a slump and come out the other side and succeed again. Giving a young DH (whether it's Carter or Allen) 50 games and then bringing on Manny Ramirez if that player hasn't hit doesn't sound to me like Melvin's idea of how you develop a young hitter.

Wishinsky went from cold to lukewarm on the idea.

Bruce Jenkins, meanwhile, thinks the A's are a circus. He basically denies the argument that Manny Ramirez is good in the clubhouse and calls him a "slouch by nature." I don't really have to address this seriously, do I? There isn't a "slouch by nature" in the history of the world who hit 100 homers in the big leagues, much less 555. Some reports have Ramirez as a distraction, some have him as a good guy. Some say he works hard, some say he doesn't. I don't know who to believe, but I do know this: it's not some columnist writing linkbait columns.

Oh, and in that same Slusser article, she mentions Oakland's interest in Conor Jackson. This sounds like a sop to Bob Melvin, because I don't understand where the guy fits. He's not an asset with the glove at the corner outfield spots, he doesn't hit well enough to carry any position he's capable of standing around at, and if they think he has some clubhouse / teaching value, then they should have just signed him instead of Jonny Gomes to be the right-handed fourth outfielder.

Forget about the 40-man, I don't see where Jackson fits on the 25-man roster.

Adrian Cardenas was designated for assignment to make room for Jonny Gomes. Joseph Lopez says the move makes sense because there wasn't room for Cardenas at the big-league level. You'll remember, of course, that Cardenas was my predicted cut. (You didn't remember? For shame.) That doesn't mean I necessarily think he's the right cut, because Pedro Figueroa is still on the roster, as is Sean Doolittle, but I don't think it's an absurdly wrong decision, either. He hasn't hit well enough to think he's going to be a reasonably useful player in the bigs, and it's not clear the A's think much of his defense, either. Utility guys without sticks, even ones who are still just 24 and have no major-league service time, aren't such a rare commodity.

John Verburg at Motor City Bengals covets Cardenas for the Tigers.

Up at the mothership, Christina Kahrl has a wonderfully informative look at what player basically defines the average hitter for each position. I was hoping there'd be an A's link in there so I'd have an excuse to post it, and indeed: Seth Smith, though he'll be playing left with Oakland, represents league-average right-fielders.

This kind of mental picture of what league-average actually means is, I think, a great way to avoid underrating averageness on your own squad. It's easy to see a bunch of players who don't make the All-Star team and never will and call them scrubs, but when you compare your own team's shortstop to Clint Barmes, you might realize that you don't have it so bad after all.

David Wishinsky has an amusing (in a morbid way) look at the A's career home run totals and finds some players with more career homers than the entire Oakland roster. Tommy Milone, you'll be happy to know, is tied for 15th on the current A's career homer list.

For those who actually live close enough to Oakland to get to games without it being a special trip, FreeSeatUpgrade has a look at the 2012 schedule over at FK.

Susan Slusser's roundup of FanFest is here. Brandon McCarthy as the Opening Day starter is the only real bit of news, and even that is barely news, given how little the pitching rotation order matters.

Actually, that's unfair: Daric Barton will be limited to DHing until mid-March. The team knows already that he's their best defensive first baseman, though, so the only real question at hand is whether his bat is solid enough to allow his glove a chance to make an impact, or whether Brandon Allen or even Chris Carter can hit enough to overcome their weak gloves.

There is a funny bit about Seth Smith accidentally calling Tyson Ross "Tyler." He should take heart: Bob Melvin called Cliff Pennington "Chad" in (preview!) our blogger session with him today.

I have posted no links for a short period. Few things were happening. But here are some links.

Baseball America's Top 10 A's prospects is live. It's the four pitchers up top with Michael Choice coming in fifth. Jermaine Mitchell and Michael Taylor at eight and nine are ... interesting. David Wishinsky uses the same word in re: Mitchell and points out that Clay Davennport's projections for the outfielder are not rosy even though he'll play the season at 27. He doesn't have a lot of growth left if he's to follow a typical aging path.

Jonathan Mayo's Top 100 list is also out and the A's have six players on it, with Jarrod Parker the top listed player at #26.

Tommy Milone, sadly, is not on the list.

In future top prospect news, the A's signed a 16-year-old shortstop named Yairo Munoz. That link has video that I did not watch because this computer likely cannot handle it. Munoz's defense is apparently stronger than his offense, and he got just shy of $300,000 to sign.

Jeremy Barfield's latest blog post is up. He talks about his feeling that he's underachieved so far and how he has to, in his words, keep blinders on regarding the A's outfield situation and the odds that he can break into that.

We know from Twitter that Barfield is a particularly plugged-in individual. I wonder how many minor-leaguers follow the roster machinations of their major-league squads, and how closely. Were I an agent with a perfect relationship with my client, I would probably advise him to completely ignore everything going on at the major-league level. You can't do anything about it, so listen to the development team about what they want you to work on and go out and perform your best.

Bartolo Colon is officially an Oakland Athletic for one year at the cost of $2 million. I'm sure he'll be adequate.

In fondly remembered ex-A's news, Brad Ziegler avoided arbitration with the Diamondbacks.