Madden: D-Backs-A’s pitching megadeal works for both teams

In between delusional champagne toasts to Norma Zimmer…Madden finds time to spit out another column.

These are giddy times in Arizona and Oakland, where, with the youth-filled Diamondbacks and Athletics, it’s baseball as it oughta be - and the respective GMs, Josh Byrnes and Billy Beane, are justifiably patting each other on the back for their blockbuster winter deal that already has had significant impact for both clubs.

Let’s, for a moment, revisit that Dec. 14 trade in which Beane reluctantly determined his small-market A’s needed of yet another major rebuilding job and opened up bids for his No. 1 pitcher, 27-year-old Dan Haren. Naturally, a lot of clubs called, but, in Byrnes, Beane knew he had the perfect trading partner - not just because the two were friends, but because Byrnes understood what Beane had to get for his best player. Even more importantly, Byrnes, like nobody else, also had the surplus of quality prospects to get it done.

“Josh recognized the fact that, in Haren, you had an All-Star starter with a good contract (signed through 2010 at approximately $5.5 mil per year),” Beane said by phone from Oakland the other day. “We both knew what Haren’s value was and Josh didn’t hesitate to give me what he knew I had to have back.”