Laureano was traded one up for Brandon Bailey, a guy with less than 10 innings. At the time of the trade they were both minor leaguers. Chapman and Olson were both first round picks.

The others were acquired as part of rebuilding trade packages.

Montas - for Rich Hill and Josh Reddick

Manaea - for Zobrist

Bassitt - with Marcus Semien, return for trading Samardzija.

A’s have generally gotten great returns on these kinds of trades. Would not surprise me if they lose for a year or two, but then use the new players to build another playoff run while the Angels are still trying to figure out how to get Ohtani and Trout to the playoffs.

Granted the financial effects of covid are still very much being felt but under current rules every team gets $210 M plus half their locally-generated revenues. Cot's puts their ML payroll at $84 M, total payroll at $100 M. That's a max of 40% of their revenue. Most of the guys mentioned in the excerpt are due big raises so that payroll will go up substantially over the next two years if they don't deal some guys but still those will be trades of desire, not necessity.

They have only $14 M guaranteed for next year -- $7 to Andrus (Rangers pay $7) and $7 to Piscotty.

Tony Kemp has spent parts of 6 seasons in the majors and is 29 yo -- he still has 2 arb years left.

under current rules every team gets $210 M plus half their locally-generated revenues. Cot's puts their ML payroll at $84 M, total payroll at $100 M.

Well sure, but I'm sure the cleaners and food service people need to get paid. Oh, and the executives; they may be taking a small portion of that $100+ million they are banking.

Time to change course.
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All three of those players come with two years of control. Manaea, who has been mostly effective this year, has one more.

Call me old-fashioned, but these 2 things don't match.

Except for a very few series/games which bring up the average, the A's attendance has been terrible this season. They are AVERAGING 8,615/game, and that's propped up by a few series such as the A's/Giants and the A's/Yankees where they had attendance in the range of 30,000. Much of the time, especially midweek, attendance has been 5k or less - even last Sunday, battling still for the playoffs, attendance was < 7k. Much as I lament the fact, the A's have hardly ever drawn well (either in attendance or broadcast ratings) in Oakland, such that over the years they have never even managed to find a good radio broadcast partner. I am not quite sure the reasons. It's not really the stadium, the stadium is nice enough and easy to get to, closer to much of the Bay Area population than either Candlestick was or China Basin is. I don't think it's marketing - the A's have featured some pretty good commercials/promotions over the years. It's not quite history - the A's have now been in the Bay Area for more than 50 years, and the Bay Area has a large population of folks who were born somewhere else and therefore were not born as Giants fans. Historically, the only time the A's really drew well (the Haas years of the late 80's and 90's) was when the Giant's attendance/ratings was in the tank. I think it may be that the Bay Area is really a single-MLB-team market, in the same way that it has become a single-NFL-team market. Truthfully, the Bay Area has a hard time even supporting local college sports - there may just be too many things to do and the audience too fragmented and "busy with other things" for pro- or major-college-sports teams to really capture the attention (and attendance) of the general population like they can in, say, Chicago.

Anyone want to make a counter-argument?

If you were to locate the teams to optimize for maximum attendance you wouldn’t put teams in SF and Oakland. That leaves a large portion of the market underserved.

Well sure, but I'm sure the cleaners and food service people need to get paid. Oh, and the executives; they may be taking a small portion of that $100+ million they are banking.

I already accounted for that and rather generously I thought. They get $210 M plus half their local revenue. Forbes puts revenue at $104 M NET (i.e. after revenue sharing and debt servicing). So it's $310 M in total revenue. They use $100 M of that to cover the full 40-man costs. They could spend another $100 M into everything else (it's nowhere near that) and still clear $100 M. Per Forbes, franchise value is 5 times what they paid back in 2006 and it's not because they're squeaking by on pennies.

You also realize I assume that concession workers are not paid by the team. Teams get paid by vendors for the concession, the vending companies make money by charging $8 for a crappy beer then paying their part-time, no benefits circus workers minimum wage.

Pretty much everybody's attendance is in the toilet this year -- there's a pandemic, stadiums didn't get back to 100% until mid-season, nobody was pre-purchasing tickets in that environment so most of it is still game-day sales. Among states with AL teams, Texas opened up first and those teams lead the attendance rankings. For whatever reason, the NL seems to be kicking the AL's butt in attendance. The NL has 5 of the top 7, the AL 4 of the bottom 5. Median NL team is the Giants at nearly 20,000 per; median AL team is the Royals at just over 14,000.

Concessions vary

So there’s no new stadium

Not in Oakland, anyway...

So will the Dodgers, Angels, Yankees and Red Sox hold a draft among themselves to see which team gets which player, or will they compete with one another for these players?