Pretend You’re Billy Beane….

You’re sitting around your Oakland office, looking at all the shenanigans in the Free Agent market. Now, you don’t have enough money to pay a free agent, but you’ve noticed that starting pitchers seem to be in high demand this offseason — overvalued, even.

Plus, you currently have three of the best young starters in baseball on your staff, and you know you’re likely to lose at least two of them in the next two years. What do you do?

The real life Billy Beane has decided to move boldly and take advantage of the situation.  Beane traded Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder within the space of two days this week, picking up two good young starters (Dan Meyer, who could be an ace, and Dan Haren), a good bullpen arm (Kiko Calero) another fine young arm who still could develop into a star (Juan Cruz) a nice young outfielder (Charles Thomas) and an “A” prospect in catcher Daric Barton.  Seems to me that this is another example of Billy Beane taking advantage of market inequities, proving that there are many ways to play Moneyball.