Now that Frank Thomas is out of the picture, the A’s need a DH again. It’s no surprise that Barry Bonds would be a good fit–after all, the A’s need to find somebody to replace Thomas’s production, and there aren’t many options out there to do that.
Billy Beane has been chatting with Bonds’s agent, so it would appear that the A’s have no objection to taking on Bonds’s baggage. Certainly they managed just fine with their share of "problem" guys last year. As Lew Wolff points out in the linked article, though, Bonds may out of the A’s price range, especially if the Padres make Barry a top target.
By Jeff Sackmann