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MESA, Ariz. -- "We're still wearing name tags," cracked Grady Fuson during an MLB Radio segment. The former scouting director turned special assistant to GM Billy Beane -- with a sidelight as the man most maligned by "Moneyball" the movie -- could afford to find it funny. After a winter judged busy even by Beane's standards, the A's have 16 guys who weren't in the organization a year ago on their 40-man roster, eight of them pitchers. Those eight new hurlers will help the A's deal with a basic logistical challenge reflected in three numbers: nine, 162 and six. Beyond skill, baseball is a feat of logistics across time, and those three numbers are increments of time the game can be measured by on the mound. Nine innings, 162 games and the six years that any player is under club control. Every team has to watch those three clocks with every pitcher, but the budget-conscious A's need to keep an even closer eye on the third. And because of this past winter's moves, the A's may be better set up to cover themselves across all three, now and into the future.  The morning after they'd lost the American League wild-card game on Sept. 30, 2014, the A's front office had a problem to fix, again: The team needed pitching, especially starting pitching. It had been true since the A's learned that they'd lose both Jarrod Parker and A.J. Griffin to Tommy John surgery last March. And the farm system didn't have anyone ready to step in, not in 2014, not for 2015.
"You never go into a trade saying 'We need to get this position,' you don't want to limit yourself that way," assistant GM David Forst said, looking back on their offseason mission. "That said, starting pitching was a huge focus as soon as we finished the season. So October 1st, we were looking for starting pitching. If we were going to make trades, starting pitching -- whether right-handed or left-handed, guys who throw hard or not -- that was a priority for us." One winter's flurry of deals later, they'd added what they needed, getting Chris Bassitt from the White Sox, Jesse Hahn from the Padres, and Kendall Graveman and Sean Nolin from the Blue Jays. All four have already had their first cups of coffee in the majors, more than that if you're talking about Hahn after his 12-start spin with the Padres last year. All four should pitch for Oakland at some point this season. All four are under club control for the next six years, meaning the A's added 24 pitcher seasons at below-market pricing. "Every guy that we trade for, the line is, do we think this guy could make 34 starts, and we work our way back from that," Forst observed. "Hahn's still a couple of years off surgery [a 2010 Tommy John operation that kept him out of games until 2012], he's never thrown 200 innings, so you can't expect that of him. This is only Graveman's second full year [since being drafted in the eighth round in the 2013 draft], so you don't necessarily want to put that workload on him. But if you can get 20 starts out of A.J. and Jarrod, somewhere, somehow it adds up to 162 starts. But the baseline for each guy you trade for is this guy is in the rotation for a full season, and let's go from there." While the newcomers had gotten relatively little pub in their previous organizations, the A's think they have answers where before they had questions, for 2015 and beyond. Hahn should be in the Opening Day rotation. Bassitt, Graveman and Nolin instantly became top 10 prospects in the organization, as rated by Baseball America. "We didn't necessarily want to diversify by getting different kinds of guys," Forst said. "The fact is, Bassitt, Graveman, Hahn, Nolin, these guys they are all different in terms of repertoire, but they have all had tremendous amount of success in the minor leagues, and to varying levels have translated that to the big leagues. Jesse pitched really well in 75 innings in San Diego last year. We saw Bassitt up close and personal when he pitched against us in September, and what he's capable of." And all four from the A's winter quartet can start, creating a nice problem once you add them to the mix. It makes for an A's rotation packed with moving parts, with seven options to pick three starters from behind Sonny Gray and Scott Kazmir. They know they'll get Parker and Griffin back at some point, and they can reasonably guess someone else is going to break down at some point during the season. They know, going in, that the rotation they have in September will not be the rotation they start off with in April. But now they have both the depth and flexibility to handle it, whereas last year they needed to reach outside the organization to patch up the staff in-season, trading for Jon Lester and Jeff Samardzija. If needed, the A's can also rely on something some statheads say is an extinct player type -- the swingman, a guy who can bounce between the bullpen and the rotation on an as-needed basis. Last year, the A's had the benefit of employing not just one but two of them in Jesse Chavez and Drew Pomeranz. "Jesse stepped up in a big way," Forst said. "We weren't sure at this time last year that Drew would be a starter, but he did a nice job until he took himself out of the rotation [breaking his hand punching a chair in June]." Before becoming big factors for the A's, Chavez and Pomeranz came to Oakland without much big league success to brag about. Pomeranz had a 5.20 ERA working in pitchers' hell with the Rockies, but he was a former first-round pick with the Indians who had electric stuff from the left side. Chavez was a right-handed journeyman who had washed through five organizations, getting opportunities because of a fastball that usually sat in the mid-90s. With the A's, Chavez started mixing in a cutter, throwing more sinkers, and swapped a curve for his slider, developing the spread to become a guy who could get through lineups a couple of times. Between them, Chavez and Pomeranz gave the A's 31 starts last season with a 3.19 ERA, plus another 21 games out of the pen with a 2.68 ERA. Everyone, inside the game and out, sees the obvious value that sort of flexibility provides and how it eases the logistical burden of managing a pitching staff, both for the man in the dugout and the players on the team. "It is incredibly valuable," Forst said. "Because otherwise you are making roster moves to fill that, so if you need a spot start you're optioning someone and then they have to stay down for 10 days and you're disrupting everybody else's gig." So why don't we see more teams with more swingmen? Between the success the San Francisco Giants had last year with Yusmeiro Petit en route to a World Series title, and the A's with Chavez and Pomeranz, why aren't more teams trying to find or develop their own guys like that? "You have to have the right guy," Forst observed. "There aren't a lot of guys who physically or mentally can do it. It's a hard role, if you haven't been used in 10 days, to be able to go out there and throw strikes and be able to give a team 75 to 80 pitches after that. You see less and less of it because there are fewer guys who can do it. We've talked a lot internally about how going back and forth between starting and relieving is one of the things that leads to injuries." Which leaves the A's in good shape to adapt in-season, and in better shape than ever to stock their staff from within down the stretch in 2015 and beyond. "Roster flexibility and positional flexibility have been huge for us the last three years," Forst said. "Both Jesse and Drew can start or relieve, and Bassitt, Graveman, Hahn and Nolin have options and can be stretched out at Triple-A. We're not going to get through the season with five starters and we don't know exactly when Jarrod and A.J. are going to come back. But all of those guys have a chance to pitch here or be the next guy up to come from [Triple-A] Nashville. That flexibility, having those choices and options, is critical when you're managing the 25-man roster on a day-to-day basis." So the A's are heading toward Opening Day knowing that the five guys they go north with won't be their final answer, and don't need to be as they tailor their staff to answer their needs across 162 games. They might find a reason to keep a retreaded Barry Zito. They'll see what Parker and Griffin can do, and when. They'll see who gives them the best chance at contending in the AL West, in April and at every point in the season. And consistent with the A's way, they'll adapt and transmogrify in-season, all season, for this and every season, knowing that they're better set with players they'll control for years to come. Christina Kahrl writes about MLB for ESPN.com. You can follow her on Twitter.
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