Thanks to Dirt Dog, I have a new favorite mediot quote of the off-season and it comes from the ever reliable Buster Olney:

“There is surprise in some baseball circles that the Red Sox are holding to budget with certain players and are not going the extra mile, especially since they raised ticket prices… I don’t think Clement is a good fit in Boston, stuff-wise, he has too many idiosyncracies, superstitions, and doesn’t handle pressure well.”

Instead of being loyal to a gamer like Derek Lowe, the Sox have to go out and get a sub-.500 guy with a bunch of “idiosyncracies” like Matt Clement.

Christ.

Olney also said on ESPN Radio yesterday…

“the notion that the A’s can contend for the division is laughable.“

Now think about this. Last year, Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson combined for a 4.02 ERA in 414 innings pitched. I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that Barry Zito and Rich Harden could best that in 2005. That would leave the three kids, Blanton, Haren and Meyer, to match the average pitching from the remainder of 2004’s rotation. The rotation will probably be a bit worse, but not dramatically so. The bullpen, however, will be vastly improved. Juan Cruz, Huston Street and Kiko Calero will join Chad Bradford, Justin Duscherer and Octavio Dotel to form what may be baseball’s best set of relievers. Offensively, they should improve at catcher, second base, shortstop, third base and at a corner outfield spot with the addition of Charles Thomas. They will probably have a bit of regression from Eric Byrnes and Mark Kotsay and Nick Swisher may or may not match Jermaine Dye’s 2004. Now, I am not sure if the A’s will contend or not. I happen to think they will. But that’s not the larger point.

Since Jeff invited me to post here over a year ago, I would say we have done just an ok job of carving out what we are going to offer. But I think that what I have taken to the most is dispelling much of the widely held contentions floated around by famous baseball writers for mainstream outlets. Quite simply, there’s too much crap out there and I derive considerable enjoyment from actually performing some rudimentary analysis that the writers themselves ought to perform in order to arrive at their conclusions.

Because “2/3rds of the Big Three are gone therefore the A’s don’t have a prayer of contending” should not entitle you to “expert” status.