Pressing Questions: The Oakland A’s

In terms of fantasy talent, the A's are the "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" analogy. If you and your friends decided to eliminate Oakland from the player pool for your '12 fantasy draft, more than likely you'd hardly notice that anything had changed. In early drafts charted on MockDraftCentral, there are no A's players being taken on average among the top 150 picks, and only two players (CoCo Crisp and Jemile Weeks) that land among the top 200. While the Angels and Rangers have put forth their best Yankees/Red Sox impersonation this offseason, spending major bucks on Albert Pujols, C.J. Wilson and Yu Darvish, the A's have begun a full-blown rebuilding process with a heavy emphasis on post-hype sleepers. The A's figure to clock in with a '12 payroll of around $40 million, which will be less than half of the payroll of any other team in the AL West and roughly one-fourth of the Angels' e...