I completely understand keeping the rebuild in mind, but I am completely against punting for the sake of punting and if this team has shown one thing, it's that they are not even close to being as bad as we expected and would lead the division if not for the 11 BP loses this year. Just saying. You've got to do something.
It's not punting for the sake of punting. It's 'punting' (in reality, it's not that, we're trying to find ways to do it) for the sake of of not reducing your future chances, where the team has more potential, for a year in which we are definitely better than expected but still unlikely to truly contend.
The A's last year were amazing for most of the season and looked like arguably the best team in baseball. And they went for it, and it backfired in a major way. And that was in a year in which they actually had a shot to win it all.
We are still a longshot to make the playoffs, much less win it all. There's too much chance involved in baseball. If we made some moves for RP, there's a decent chance Folty would fall off, or Maybin and Peterson would stop hitting, etc., and we could certainly win even less after the moves. So it's not smart.