Apparently Adam Rosales is wearing Bobby Crosby’s old #7, and he looks a lot like the now Pirates shortstop.

This is not a compliment, nor is it funny!

“Oh my gosh, it’s unbelievable,” said second baseman Mark Ellis, who played alongside Crosby for his entire time with Oakland and counts Crosby among his best friend. “The first day I saw Adam, when I saw him swing the bat, it’s exactly alike, and the way he walks, everything. Then I saw him in uniform, and with the number and the socks up … it’s the same.”

Eric Chavez, who also played with Crosby from 2003 to 2009, did a double take, too.

“Totally,” Chavez said. “It’s so funny. We were laughing because he looks just like Bobby out there.”

OK, maybe it’s a little funny. But if Rosales starts swinging and missing at sliders away…

Sorry, man. Sorry I didn’t announce it when  you joined the team and didn’t update my third base options post.

I was glad when the A’s traded for you and look forward to you manning the hot corner this year. I hope you get more time there in 2010 than Jake Fox.

Also I should apologize to you, Ben Sheets. I think you being an A is AWESOME.

Third base wasn’t supposed to be this big of a hole. I mean, this was the position of the guy we actually signed. And he’s a Gold Glover!

But alas, it is The Big Hole, even with Eric Chavez still employed as an Oakland Athletic. And it’s still The Big Hole, even with top prospect Brett Wallace waiting in the wings, because, in a perfect world, he spends a good chunk of 2010 in AAA for more seasoning – defensively as much as offensively.

Adam Kennedy was an impostor as a stopgap. He was a second baseman who had a hot couple of months, and the A’s put him at third base and hoped no one noticed. Signing him to return is OK with me – just not as the team’s third baseman.

Names like Chone Figgins, Troy Glaus, and Adrian Beltre have been thrown around a lot by A’s fans, but with Billy Beane’s announcement last week that the team will not likely go after free agents and and will commit to youth, this seems unlikely. (And no, I’m not buying that these comments were part of a Billy Beane psych-out.)

And then over the weekend, the A’s signed former Angels top prospect Dallas McPherson to a minor-league deal. These are the kind of moves we’re going to see from the A’s this offseason – low-risk, low-cost moves that may or may not work. There is just less chance of looking like a failure at the end with moves like these than with moves like Billy was making a year ago at this time.

If McPherson works out as a year, or even half-year, stopgap at third, great. If he doesn’t, then we didn’t lose anything.

And as long as Brett Wallace can stick at third, we may not be talking about The Big Hole much longer this decade.

Overt the last five seasons, the A’s have ranked near the bottom of the league in slugging percentage.

2009: Last in the AL, 25th in MLB with a .397 slugging percentage.
2008: Dead last in all of MLB with a .369 slugging percentage.
2007: 11th in the AL, 23rd in MLB with a .407 slugging percentage.
2006: 13th in the AL, 27th in MLB with a .412 slugging percentage.
2005: Tied for 10th in the AL, 22nd in MLB with a .407 slugging percentage.

You have to go back to 2004 to find the A’s ranking in the middle of the pack in power numbers, when the team had healthy Eric Chavez and Jermaine Dye, Eric Byrnes at his peak, Bobby Crosby in his Rookie of the Year campaign, and Erubiel “Holy Grail” Durazo slugging at .573 in the DH position.

What’s been wrong lately? It isn’t that we haven’t had power players. In 2005, Nick Swisher hit 21 home runs as a rookie, and he only put up bigger numbers until Billy shipped him to Chicago. In 2006, we had the Big Hurt, Frank Thomas, in an MVP-caliber season (.270/.381/.585). And two of the last five seasons were winning seasons – including the most successful season of the decade!

But then you look at the stadium. No one hits in Oakland. Or at least, everyone hits better before they come to Oakland or after they leave Oakland. Look at Jermaine Dye helping the White Sox win the World Series in 2005, and the Rockies’ Carlos Gonzalez making A’s fans kick themselves, or want to kick Billy Beane for that Matt Holliday trade. Oh yeah, and that guy too.

The problem, it appears to me, is not developing power players in one of the worst hitting ballparks in the majors. Oh sure, we can sign a Frank Thomas and catch lightening in a bottle on a one-year deal. But look at the guys we brought in in 2009 to power up this team. It didn’t work, and it hasn’t really worked since we developed those guys ourselves – like Miguel Tejada and once-upon-a-time Eric Chavez – and kept them for a number of years.

It’s easy to get excited about the big bats in the minors, like the monster Chris Carter, Grant Desme, and Corey Brown. But what will they translate too on the “big stage” in Oakland?

Cater is currently playing winter ball in Mexico while Desme is taking his hacks in the Arizona Fall League. Both are putting up impressive home run numbers, as well as unimpressive high numbers of strikeouts. They’re both going to need to adjust to higher levels of pitching and are in the right places to work on it this winter.

We’ve done it before – can we do it again?

Go A’s…

Everyone who lived in the Bay Area on this date remembers where they were at 5:04 p.m.

I was a 12-year-old in Castro Valley, sitting on my bed with the TV on, ready to watch Game 3 of the World Series. And then it hit. And in the aftermath of the quake, over the course of hours and days, baseball didn’t seem so important.

The 1989 championship is, to date, the only Oakland A’s world championship of my lifetime. And, like me, I can bet many of those A’s fans born from the mid1970s on do not remember much about the actual games. Sure, I remember Dennis Eckersley covering first on the final out in Game 4. But I couldn’t tell you about specific plays of any other games. I don’t know who hit home runs, or how many bases Rickey Henderson stole. All I know is there was a World Series in which my team won… but the Nimitz Freeway collapsed, buildings burned down, people died… what baseball game?

And then the series resumed on October 27, but there are still no baseball memories. Recovery efforts extended into the following weeks, months, and years, as the A’s were upset in the 1990 World Series and then declined into the forgettable mid- and late-90s.

So today I’m watching some YouTube clips, thinking back on the day everyone forgot about the A’s. As the Bay Area came together and recovered in the years following the quake, here’s hoping the A’s can do the same. Let’s not wait another 20 years. Go A’s…