Posted By Jeff Fletcher on July 21, 2010 1:07 pm

Today I’ve had a couple debates with my fellow media members about what the A’s need to do to get over the hump. It’s a pretty tough spot they’re in, because they really seem to be pretty far away from having the starting lineup of a contender. However, they’ve got a really good young pitching staff.

So I’ve been mulling over a few different paths the A’s could take to fix their lineup. I think there are pretty much three ways to do it, although it’s possible they’d do a combination of the three.

• Trade away some of the pitching surplus to get a hitter or two. This is highly risky, because you can never have too much pitching, as they say. If you have young, affordable, pitching, that’s like gold. Thing is, the A’s seem to have been able to develop some young pitchers lately, but they haven’t been able to develop any hitters, so maybe they have to bite the bullet. I’m talking about trading a guy like Vin Mazzaro for the equivalent offensive player. Someone like Ike Davis.
• Go shopping over the winter. The A’s have a ridiculously cheap roster for next season, right now. They’ve got $8 million committed. Guys like Jack Cust, Kevin Kouzmanoff and Conor Jackson will each be due arbitration salaries of $4 million to $6 million. If Mark Ellis’ option is picked up, he’d make $6 million. Otherwise, everyone is cheap. So the A’s could theoretically spend $20 million or so on free agents and still have a payroll of about what this year’s is. The list of free agent bats will include Adam Dunn, Paul Konerko, David Ortiz (maybe, he has an option), Derrek Lee, Carlos Pena, Alex Gonzalez, Jorge Cantu, Brandon Inge, Ty Wigginton, Carl Crawford, Magglio Ordonez and Jayson Werth. (That’s not the whole list, just the guys who would conceivably be significant upgrades to the offense.)
• Just keep running prospects through. The A’s could trade Ben Sheets, Craig Breslow and Michael Wuertz and try to get some more prospects. They won’t get blue-chippers for any of the guys on their roster, but the more players they get, the more chance they have of uncovering someone else’s diamond in the rough. They can keep hoping that guys a few of the guys in their system — Chris Carter, Michael Taylor, Jemile Weeks, Adrian Cardenas, etc. — will get to the big leagues and really have an impact. Over the past five years the only guy the A’s have developed who would be a starter on a good team is Kurt Suzuki.

Frankly, I don’t think any of those would work all that well. The problem with the first one is that they’d be giving up pitching, which is generally not a good thing. The problem with the second is that they may not be able to convince a legit free agent to come to Oakland without overpaying, and most free agents tend to be a bad deal because you’re paying for what they’ve already done at a time when their production is due to go down. The problem with the third one is that the A’s have been doing it and it hasn’t worked.

So, my answer is I have no answers. What do you think?