There's a sense of change in the direction of the Tim Hudson airing of laundry.

Previously, Tim Hudson has been held aloft like a crystal chalis.

Now, the Georgia Grinder's 'faults' are slowly being mentioned here and there. A photo caption of Tim Hudson on Yahoo! Sports shows "Hudson's ERA rose to 3.53 in 2004."

WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN!
Granted, photo captions aren't exactly the definitive place to grab MLB news and rumors. But, things that are subtle are hard to point out if you don't have a keen eye...or a paranoid sense of disenfranchisement.

Billy Beane acheived what he set out to do at the Winter Meetings: develop dialogues with teams on their best prospects and will make them available.

The A's were helped along by the New York Yankees and Arizona Diamondbacks who grossly overpaid for Jared Wright and Russ Ortiz, respectively. Omar Minya (the worst executive in all of professional sports?) added to the mix by bending the entire New York Mets organization for Pedro Martinez.

With Tim Hudson 'available', why would teams actively spend capital on lesser pitchers or extreme amounts on a high-risk venture?

Look beyond the, "becuase they are stupid" answers.

Okay, I can't really look beyond them either.

By creating an evaporating and expensive market on right-handed starters MLB helped the A's continue to discuss options and market Tim Hudson at a level that was probably unthinkable when he was on the DL earlier this year.

How does MLB start to knock away at Hudson's value? Start attacking his morals, work-ethic and personality. Start making up ridiculousness out of statistical information. Bring injury and medical history to the forefront.

This is what you are going to be seeing over the next fortnight right into the free agency period. Teams aren't going to be willing to negotiate with a sloppy starter when Tim Hudson can be had for the right price/cost.

Billy Beane has mentioned that the players involved in the trade discussions have changed. Billy isn't being coy. The A's are indeed going to unload Scott Hatteberg and possibly Ricardo Rincon to free up $4 Million over the next several weeks.

Hatteberg is no longer capable of playing in more than 140 games a season without suffering lapses in his approach at the plate or in the field. Hatteberg has been walking wounded the last two seasons. Some players can get away with not being 100% and are still capable of performing. Scott Hattberg is not.

Rincon is a basket case that gets treated with kid gloves by Ken Macha and the media. With John Rheinecker and now Tyler Johnson in the mix, why pay $1.85 million for a single LOOGY when you can pay $800,000 for TWO? Anybody will tell you, two loogies are better than one.

Scott Hatteberg is now the only player on the A's 40 Man Roster born prior to 1970. He will be 35 in the 2005 season. Unless he is on a BALCO diet, he is going to continue to regress in his power numbers and be a 'secondary purpose player'. With Erubiel Durazo primed for a multi-year deal similar to what Hatteberg has now and Dan Johnson awaiting a shot to challenge Nick Swisher for American League Rookie of the Year and a guy like Matt Watson lingering in AAAA limbo - all signs point to a discharge of Scott Hatteberg.



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