For a while in the immediate aftermath of the St. Louis Cardinals' failure to sign Albert Pujols I was all the way on the Yoenis Cespedes bandwagon—we didn't know much about him, so he had no easily discernible cap on his upside, and the Cardinals are, for all their farm system improvements, still lacking in potential stars in the batting order. When the Cardinals chose to rebuild with aging stars on short-term contracts instead, I mostly let it go; the Oakland Athletics, however, never stopped pursuing Cespedes, which is why baseball's cheapest team now controls Cuba's top prospect for the next four years at $9 million per.
↵Cespedes actually projects pretty well, so that's not the issue. It's an odd move primarily because the Athletics are making it—in the last few years Billy Beane has appeared to be in a permanent rebuild loop, trading players who are nearly developed for prospects that he'll trade for more prospects when they're nearly developed. Combined with the Athletics' continued attempts to move out of Oakland, it seemed like they were running on a skeleton staff until their future became clearer.
↵Now they'll be running on a skeleton staff and Yoenis Cespedes!
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