Swisher to White Sox!!

And Dr. B, please stop saying he's "just an A-level pitcher." He is way, way more than that, and unforeseen injury or events forbidden, he will prove it over the season. This kid is an uber-talent, and uber-talent pitchers take overpaying to acquire. Unless you're dealing with Kenny Williams.

1.  De Los Santos has yet to pitch above A level.  He's an A ball pitcher until he does.
2.  You make it sound like Henry Sosa couldn't hit the broadside of a barn.  In fact, their walk rates are quite close- 3.3 vs 3.6. I think both Sosa and De Los Santos could use some improvement there.
3.  It's not like Sosa is exactly pitching to contact.  A K/9 of 9 is pretty darn good.
4.  Sosa had a lower BAA and an identical WHIP which translated into a much lower ERA in low A.
5.  The differences in their records in high A are best explained by league factors, the Cal League being much more hitter friendly.

The successes the A's had before last year were largely the products of what went on before the "Moneyball" drafts started.  Do you really think the dropoff last year was just a one year accident?  Apparently Billy Beane doesn't agree with you because he just blew the whole thing up and started over.

I guess it comes down to the fact that the A's haven't been in the WS recently, but that's bad luck more than anything.

Assuming that OBP is no longer undervalued to the extent it was 5 or 10 years ago, I wonder what the new frontier for Beane is.

It's amazing how he has the perfect sense of timing in terms of selling assets at the most opportune time. Haren, IMO, was kind of a product of the ball park, while Swisher might be slightly overvalued as teams like the White Sox (dead last in OBP last year) scramble to fill gaping holes.

It'll be interesting to see if he trades Street for normal quality relief pitcher value, or if some gullible GM will overpay based on the fact that he's a "closer" (a very likely scenario)

I think DrB is right in that the book changed the perception hard core baseball fans had of the game.  Along with the Fantasy Sports boom, I bet you there are a hundreds, probably thousands of people that check this site or ones like it that feel they would be far superior to the majority of the people in baseball front offices today (same with coaching).  Not only has it turned some people off of scouting as a tool for player analysis but a large percentage of the hard core baseball fans mock them with an almost hatred of traditional baseball ideals.  Many of these same people decided to make blogs to show their superior baseball intellect with their copy of Bill James' handbook by their side for reference.  Like camera phones and the interenet in general, it made everyone feel like they were the expert.

Don't get me wrong though.  The book (and others like it) did a few good things in that it helped shift baseball in the direction of a mix of statistical analysis along with scouting reports (not one or the other but a mix of both) and it brought new fans to the game that might not have been before (which is always a good thing).  Other than that, I don't really get the infatuation people have with it or Beane.  He has had years where he was near the top in draft spending, his payroll was close to 80 mill last season.  Until he can manage to keep a core of players together long enough to actually get somewhere in the playoffs, I just don't think he is the best GM in baseball (although he is closer now with the retiring of Ryan, Jocketty and JS).