The Numbers
	2002 record: 103-59, .636 (2nd overall) Runs scored: 800, 8th in AL Runs allowed: 654, 2nd in AL Run differential: +146 (5th overall) Starters' ERA: 3.62, 2nd in AL Bullpen ERA: 3.82, 7th in AL Payroll (Opening Day): $39.6 million (28th overall) Attendance: 2.17 million (18th overall) 3-year record: 296-189, .610 (2nd overall)

2002 in review
What went right?
Miguel Tejada knocked Derek Jeter out of the shortstop trinity, winning an MVP award by pounding out 34 home runs and 131 RBI, and by playing every game for the second consecutive season. Barry Zito picked up the Cy Young award and cemented his place as the most dominant pitcher on the A's staff, riding a well-placed fastball and nightmare-inducing curveball to 23 wins, 182 strikeouts, and a 2.75 ERA. Scott Hatteberg performed exactly as predicted, posting a .374 OBP with moderate power in a tough hitters' park, making the loss of Jason Giambi a little less painful for Oakland fans. Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and the underrated Cory Lidle combined with Barry Zito to give the A's the best top-four starters in baseball, throwing a combined 867 innings with an aggregate 3.24 ERA.

Eric Chavez consolidated his defensive gains, increased his walk rate, and banged a career high 34 home runs. John Mabry played like a man possessed after coming from Philadelphia in a deal for a troubled Jeremy Giambi, slugging .523 after his arrival. The A's didn't lose a game from Aug. 13-Sept. 6, packing the usually half-full Network Associates Coliseum with a raft of screaming fans, and building a sizable cushion in the AL West standings. Perhaps most importantly, Oakland GM Billy Beane declined the GM position in Boston, keeping the game's best front office intact.

What went wrong?
Terrence Long and Ramon Hernandez were nothing short of catastrophic offensively, combining for nearly 1,100 plate appearances of .237/.311/.368 ball. That's not good. To put that in perspective, the two of them got on base via hit or walk 326 times and made 755 outs at the plate. Across the bay, Barry Bonds reached base via hit or walk 21 more times than Long and Hernandez combined, while consuming only 254 outs at the plate - 501 fewer than Long and Hernandez. That's over 18 full games worth of extra outs.

In retrospect, the critical decisions were:
1. Letting Jason Giambi go. The local media was up in arms about the loss of Giambi to free agency, and even worse, to the New York Yankees. The reported sticking point was portrayed as a no-trade clause the A's were not willing to give Jason in return for the hometown discount, so Giambi turned down an alleged 6-year, $91-million deal for the pinstripes. In reality, the A's dodged a bullet, but fans didn't want to hear it. Most of the activity on the phone between general managers this offseason has been driven by bad contracts, with clubs trying desperately to get rid of players that shouldn't have been signed to long-term deals in the first place. Giambi, 31 at the start of last season, was a risk to become one of those contracts, and even if he played well, the A's couldn't realistically afford to pay a 1B/DH that much money, especially considering how many replacement options are usually available.

2. The theft of Ray Durham. On July 25, the A's fleeced the Chicago White Sox, acquiring Durham for minor league Jon Adkins. Durham's a middle infielder who hits for average and power, and has great plate discipline and speed. Jon Adkins has a live arm, but a completely uninspiring record when it comes to actually pitching, posting mediocre strikeout rates throughout his minor league career, and sporting an ERA in excess of 6 at Triple-A Sacramento at the time of the trade, with a tidy 139 hits allowed in 97 innings.

To even up the deal, the White Sox threw in some cash.

3. Drafting college pitchers. Everyone knows the A's lean heavily on their rotation. And over the last several years, the A's have a pretty good script for strengthening it -- draft college pitchers with polish, move them through the minors quickly, and put them in the rotation. The result is arguably the best 1-2-3 group of starters in baseball, with more talent on the way from the minors. While other teams continue to throw their picks and money away on high school pitchers early, the A's increase their return and mitigate their risks by heavily drafting college pitchers instead. Why? To start, they've already pitched at least a couple of extra years out of high school without getting hurt, and they've been in a less taxing social environment during their late teens. There are other good reasons too, but those are a good start.

Looking ahead to 2003
Three key questions
1. Whither Miguel? It's Tejada's walk year, and some are already drawing parallels to Jason Giambi's final year. There's nebulous discussions about Tejada's possible departure being a "distraction" for the club entering the 2003 season. Don't believe the hype. The A's went through the same thing with Giambi, and the same scenario is likely to play out in 2003 with Tejada. Barring an irresistible offer, the A's will keep Tejada and try to bring home a championship, Tejada will leave after the 2003 season, and he'll be adequately replaced, possibly by Bobby Crosby, who'll start the season at Sacramento, or 2B Mark Ellis.

	Terrence Long Center fielder Oakland Athletics Profile
	2002 SEASON STATISTICS GM AB R HR RBI AVG 162 587 71 16 67 .240

2. Long and Hernandez. The A's can carry two empty bats, but they'd rather not. Both are young enough to rebound, and in fact are still right in the early prime of their careers. But the performance trend for each has been very dispiriting to say the least, and if they're not performing well by June, each will likely lose their starting job. Long's moving to LF, where the A's have amply demonstrated they're willing to take a defensive hit to get a real bat in the lineup, and Beane favorite Mark Johnson's been brought in as a lefty catcher. If Long and Hernandez don't produce, they both could be watching a lot of Billy McMillon and Mark Johnson.

3. Ownership stability. The A's are owned by Ken Hofmann and Steve Schott, and for the last several years, there have been a myriad of rumors about an "imminent" sale of all or part of the club, usually combined with a rumor of a new home, be it Las Vegas, Santa Clara County, or a new ballpark in downtown Oakland. The situation is complicated, because a change in ownership could trigger an exodus from the A's incredibly talented front office. If there is an ownership transfer, there is a strong possibility of a franchise relocation, largely because of the skewed territorial rights in the Bay Area -- the Giants have rights to five Bay Area counties, the A's only two.

Can expect to play better
Ted Lilly. Lilly came over from the Yankees in the Carlos Pena deal, and he's a guy that Beane had targeted for some time. Lilly was once considered a top prospect in the Montreal system, and he's always posted K rates and K/BB rates indicative of future success. He's healthy coming into 2003, will have the No. 4 starter job out of the gate, and should be at least an adequate replacement for Cory Lidle, and quite possibly could perform much better than that.

Can expect to play worse
The really unusual thing about the 2002 Athletics was that there really weren't any players that had what you would call a career year, outside of Mabry in a part-time role. Normally, when a team wins 100 games or more, there's at least one or two players that have very big surprise years. The core of the team is either young and moving into their prime years (Chavez, Tejada, the rotation), or in their peak years and returning to full health (Dye). There really aren't any players in the Oakland lineup, rotation, or bullpen who are great candidates for a significant dropoff.

Stats Corner
Miguel Tejada (above) led the A's in runs (108), hits (204), RBI (131), and batting average (.308) and also tied for the lead in home runs (34) in 2002. Mark Mulder was 10-2 with a 3.08 ERA in 16 starts in the second half. Terrence Long batted just .231 with a .281 on-base percentage in 268 at-bats in the second half. Tim Hudson posted a career-best 2.98 ERA while also pitching a career high 238.1 innings.

Projected lineup
2B Mark Ellis
1B Scott Hatteberg
SS Miguel Tejada
DH Erubiel Durazo
RF Jermaine Dye
3B Eric Chavez
LF Terrence Long
CF Chris Singleton
C Mark Johnson/Ramon Hernandez

Rotation
Barry Zito
Tim Hudson
Mark Mulder
Ted Lilly
Aaron Harang

Closer
Keith Foulke

A closer look
How do the A's manage to keep costs under control while fielding a team that makes the postseason on a regular basis? The short answer is that they're the best club in baseball at picking up cheaply available talent.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the bullpen. The A's understand the concept of statistical scouting. Instead of overreliance on subjective scouting reports, the A's front office knows the value that minor league statistics have in forecasting future performance. So they take some of these relatively simple statistical tools, and identify players with performance records that really stand out and bode well for future performances, even if the scouting reports on these guys don't jump off the page.

As a result, Beane, DePodesta, Forst et al. have been able to get guys that are effective major league relievers, and pay them very close to the league minimum. While other clubs are paying the likes of Todd VanPoppel and Mike Fetters millions of dollars, the A's are filling out the back of the bullpen with really good pitchers for very little cash.

Here's an example of this strategy that's worked out very well - A's reliever Chad Bradford's stat line before the A's acquired him, along with three candidates for this year's pitching staff, acquired either through this year's Rule 5 draft, or from an increasingly compliant Kenny Williams and the White Sox:

Player	IP	H	BB	K	ERA	K/9	K/BB
Chad Bradford (2000, AAA)	53.2	38	12	42	1.51	7.04	3.50
Buddy Hernandez (AA)	59	36	23	81	1.22	12.36	3.52
Mike Neu (AA/AAA)	67.1	57	27	85	2.94	11.36	3.15
Joe Valentine	59.1	36	30	63	1.97	9.56	2.10

What do these guys have in common? Strikeouts. Bradford's already shown he can get guys out in the majors on a regular basis, and he augments his better-than-average strikeout rate with a groundball/flyball ratio in excess of 3. Hernandez, Neu, and Valentine all strike out more than a batter per inning, and have demonstrated control varying from great (Hernandez and Neu) to acceptable (Valentine.)

Why were these guys available? All of them have some sort of significant shortcoming, at least according to the scouting reports, and most other teams pay more attention to scouting reports than the A's do. Hernandez and Neu are both short, topping out at 5-foot-9. Neu doesn't throw hard, and Valentine's stuff is considered "average" by scouts. Two things scouts don't like in a pitcher are average stuff and a lack of height.

Performance records are a better tool for forecasting future performance than scouting reports, and the A's know it. Scouting is, by it's nature, indirect -- evaluation of the raw components of performance, rather than actual performance. The A's reduce their dependency on scouting by searching in the statistics for all the things that augur future success.

In the case of pitchers, that's largely a high K/9 and K/BB rate, and a low number of home runs allowed. It's unlikely that all three of Hernandez, Neu, and Valentine will make the A's roster, but at least one probably will, and A's GM Billy Beane should be able to work a deal to keep the other Rule 5 guy and stash him at Sacramento for depth -- another key to success on a tight budget.

You can check out more work from the team of writers of the Baseball Prospectus (tm) at their web site at baseballprospectus.com. Gary Huckabay can be reached at ghuckabay@baseballprospectus.com.