The interesting thing that Eric Patterson provides is another base-stealing threat. This isn't a trait classically associated with the A's, but they've been running a lot lately (12th in baseball overall, and second only to the Runnin' Angels in the month of July). Matt Holliday is actually a pretty good base-stealer himself, with 12 this year and 78 in his career, at an 80% success rate. But he's a once-every-ten-games kind of guy (791 career games played), while Patterson in his minor league career has stolen 166 bases, also at an 80% clip, and takes a bag every three games or so. He is, in other words, more of a traditional burner than Holliday. (While Holliday's superior power accounts for some of the gap because of opportunity to steal, it should be noted that Patterson sports a career minor-league slugging percentage of .482, so he's no pure singles hitter himself.)