With all due respect to Sunday's 9-4 win over Detroit, this has been in many ways a far worse year for the A's than even 2008, a year so bad that Lew Wolff leaned on Billy Beane to sign a few players who people outside the Baseball America subscription list actually recognized. Everything the A's have tried has run the gamut from lame to disastrous to coroner-bait.

Matt Holliday didn't become Frank Thomas and was traded so that he might cure the St. Louis Cardinals. Huston Street was part of the big offseason deal to get Holliday and is now one of the three best closers in the National League. Orlando Cabrera was a bargain signing who proved the adage "You get what you pay for," and is now in Minnesota.

Eric Chavez's Give Health a Try campaign failed within a month. Justin Duchscherer, the putative staff ace at one time, lost the entire year and now is being treated for clinical depression. The young starting staff, save Brett Anderson, has not inspired, the lineup - save Adam Kennedy and Kurt Suzuki - has been drab, and closer Andrew Bailey is third in wins.

Oh, and attendance is down another 12 percent off last year's plummeting total, the Fremont stadium died the death it deserved, and the San Jose plan is relying on public money at a time when there is no such thing.

In other words, Giambi just might have positioned himself to become the first Comeback Player of the Year to come back in the same year. If nothing else, he's no longer under the grisly thunderhead that is A's '09, and even if he has to kill a week in Colorado Springs, there are worse things. Just ask him.

E-mail Ray Ratto at rratto@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle