Posted By Jeff Fletcher on November 12, 2010 5:24 pm

My story at FanHouse today takes a look at what the A’s have done this week, including the waiver acquisition of Edwin Encarnacion, and looks at how their offseason plans are shaping up, in the big picture.

The headline on my story (“Aggressive A’s Following Giants Blueprint”) seems to imply that Billy Beane watched the Giants and then decided, “Boy, if we could just score a few more runs, with our pitching, we could be as good as them!” Really, it’s sort of silly to imply that the A’s got any ideas from the Giants, and nowhere does my story do that. I simply say that the A’s are trying to do what the Giants did, not that it was an original idea.

If you have good pitching, and you can improve your offense, you will be better.

Revolutionary thinking it isn’t.

If anything, the old A’s, who were pigeonholed into the whole Moneyball thing, really did the same thing. What made those A’s of 2000-2003 so good? A few guys named Hudson-Mulder-Zito. They were the heart and soul of that team. The A’s happened to have a some legit everyday players (Miguel Tejada and Eric Chavez, and Jason Giambi for part of that), but otherwise they were a bunch of cast-offs and misfits, too. Really, what’s the difference between Scott Hatteberg and Aubrey Huff?

I don’t want to get carried away here, because they weren’t that similar. Point is, the driving force behind the success of both teams was a core of awesome young starting pitchers.

Now that the A’s are trying to replicate that, with Trevor Cahill, Brett Anderson, Gio Gonzalez and Dallas Braden, you can say they are following the Giants blueprint, or you can say they are following their own blueprint, circa 2000.

Whatever, they do need to beef up their offense.

Encarnacion is one relatively decent piece. He hit 21 homers last year, in just 96 games, which is more than anyone on the A’s managed to hit in a full season. Right now it looks like Encarnacion is their default DH, with Kevin Kouzmanoff playing third. They’ll continue shopping the free agent market, hoping to create a problem for themselves of having too many hitters.

Here’s the list of sluggers the A’s may pursue: Adam Dunn, Paul Konerko, Lance Berkman, Huff, Carlos Pena, Jim Thome, Hideki Matsui, Pat Burrell, Magglio Ordonez.

If they get any of those guys — and I think they will — I don’t see them having a real problem with making the lineup work. If they get a DH, they just have to trade Kouzmanoff. (Or, if they get a player before Dec. 2, they can non-tender Kouzmanoff.) Encarnacion would then play third. That’s bad for the defense, but the A’s are so strong everywhere else that if they have to eat it at one position in the interest of better offense, I think they’ll do it. (If there was one thing the Giants did show, it’s that you can live with a bad defensive player or two.)

The A’s still have money to shop for a guy from that list, and I don’t believe the Encarnacion acquisition is going to change anything. Now they just have a little more leverage with agents, because they aren’t so desperate for any hitter.

Now, who from that list would you like?

It’s obvious that Dunn would be the first choice, but he’s going to be the most expensive, too. I’m also not sure he wants to be a DH. If he said he’d play for the A’s, but only if he could play first base, I’ll say goodbye to Barton.

My second choice would be Konerko. He’s still a major impact bat and by all accounts a swell guy.

After that, I’d go…

3. Huff
4. Pena
5. Thome
6. Matsui
7. Berkman
8. Burrell
9. Ordonez

Oh, there’s also Manny Ramirez, but I don’t believe the A’s are interested in that particular headache.