Billy Beane has done it again. Frank Thomas has cleared waivers and will rejoin his old team, the Oakland A’s, for mere pennies:

The deal came together in a matter of hours Wednesday after Thomas cleared waivers…Oakland will be on the hook only for about $337,000 — a prorated share of the $390,000 league minimum — so this move was a bargain for general manager Billy Beane and a club looking to boost its power numbers.

Thomas will still get nearly $8 million this year from the Blue Jays.

This changes the picture a bit more in the AL West. A few renegade baseball watchers and some smart computers were already picking them as surprise division winners, but the addition of Frank Thomas makes them visibly more dangerous.

Billy Beane just continues to look even more like a crazy wizard genius with each move he makes. If he takes this team to the postseason after dumping both his best pitcher and his best hitter while getting another team to pay millions of dollars for his cleanup hitter…[whistles slowly]…damn. What do you think will happen?

Today, Athletics Nation constructs “a parallel universe where everything is about the same as this one, except Rich Harden’s body actually holds up, and when you put two socks into the dryer you get two back.”

The blog imagines a scenario where the A’s compete in the AL West and are buyers at the trade deadline instead of sellers.

Sounds crazy, right?

Yeah, I thought so, too. But then U.S.S. Mariner comes along and runs a bunch of computer simulations and determines that the 2008 Oakland Athletics are the favorites to win the AL West.

From U.S.S. Mariner:

The division favorite was not the Angels but the torn-down Athletics, 47% to 42%, and Texas won the division almost as often as the M’s. The A’s-Angels thing is as much a shock as anything. General analyst-on-TV-or-radio seems to be that it’s all about the M’s-Angels, but Oakland fields the best pitching/defense combination in the AL and their offense is decent too.

Of course, preseason computer projections take for granted that a team’s players will be healthy. And the A’s have been anything but in recent years. We’re talking about guys like Rich Harden, Eric Chavez and Bobby Crosby. If all three of them stay healthy it will be a miracle.

Still, let’s take a moment and contemplate the A’s. This team, which finished ten games below .500 last season and traded its best pitcher and star CF in the offseason, is a favorite — if only in the world of computer projections.

That’s just a little bit amazing, isn’t it?

I think we can all agree that if the A’s find a way to win the division this season, Billy Beane will need to be bumped to the top of this list. And he’ll probably need some kind of new title. “General manager” just won’t cut it any more. I’m thinking something with a little more flair. Maybe “jedi talent assessor” or “master of player acquisition.”

And if the A’s tank this season and finish in last place … well, that’ll just prove once and for all that you can’t trust a computer.

This is one in a series of posts in which we break down each team’s wily offseason maneuvers and tragic offseason blunders.

Coming into the 2007-2008 offseason, Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane faced a problem.

The 2007 season had proved beyond all doubt that the A’s needed to rebuild. Beane had effectively decided bet the farm for the next several years on longterm contracts to 3B Eric Chavez and SS Bobby Crosby, but that was not working out due to both players’ injury woes (not that Beane should have necessarily bet the farm on fading pitchers like Barry Zito or Mark Mulder instead!).

Clearly the A’s as currently constituted had no chance to contend, but the question was, how could rebuild when there was nothing to rebuild with? Although the A’s farm system was not exactly barren, it was definitely no longer producing superstars the way it had been in the late 90’s, and outside of the occasional Travis Buck, was having difficulty producing even serviceable major leaguers of late.

Meanwhile the traditional avenues of rebuilding, via trade or free agency, were growing increasingly constricted. The combination of spiraling player salaries and baseball being flush with cash from better marketing and the cash cow that is MLB Advanced Media meant that teams were increasingly using their newfound cash to sign all the hot young players (and plenty of mediocre ones as well) out of their arbitration years, and in more and more cases, even several of their first few free agent years.

The words “cost certainty” were on everyone’s lips. Nobody wanted to trade away young talent, because young players provide more cost certainty, but at the same time, no good free agents were hitting the market, because all the good young players were being signed until they were well into their decline years.

Basically, baseball fans were getting what they had always claimed they always wanted. Far less player movement between teams, even poorer teams locking up their hot young stars, and more stable team rosters to root for from year to year.

Of course, every fan loves a stable roster when your team is great, but the problem comes in when your team sucks, because if players don’t move around as much, and are all locked in for years to come, then you are going to have a pretty sucky team for years on end.

This was precisely the problem that Billy Beane faced. He had cost certainty up the wazoo, but his team was sucky, and wasn’t going to get any better by signing whatever odd Kyle Lohses or Aaron Rowands might hit the constricted market, even if he had the money for that, which he didn’t.

So Billy Beane did what he always does - he bucked the system, found what people were overvaluing, and gave them what they wanted, for something he valued more. And in this case, when everyone was scrambling to find more cost certainty, Billy Beane decided to trade away cost certainty for something he needed more - boatloads of uncertain prospects from which he could sift tomorrow’s stars.

And I’m not talking about the weak cost certainty for a Dontrelle Willis or a Miguel Cabrerra - guys with just one or two arbitration years left and not signed to a contract. I’m talking about massive amounts of cost certainty - Dan Haren was signed for the next three years at an average of a paltry $5.25 million per. OBP machine Nick Swisher was signed for the next five years.

Most teams would never trade away players with contracts like that, even if they were in the most rebuildingest rebuilding mode in the history of rebuilding. Sure, they would gladly trade away overpriced big-name stars, fading “experienced veterans,” and talented players in the last year of their contracts. But trade away two outstanding young players just entering the prime of their careers and by some stroke of fate signed for the next several years to rock-bottom, bargain-basement contracts? Why would you ever want to do that?

But what Beane realized was that what good was keeping guys like Haren and Swisher around for, if you weren’t ever going to win while they were there? Sure, from some sort of “objective” perspective, their contracts look like absolute bargains, but if you are going to be losing anyway, what is the point of paying Dan Haren $5 million when you could instead be paying a prospect the major league minimum? Especially when people will give you all sorts of prospects for him? Prospects who might actually help you get back on a winning track, by rebuilding your team at a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to rebuild?

So that’s what Billy Beane did. And I will be the first to admit that I criticized him in this space for making the Haren trade at the time, because I figured he maybe could have gotten even more. But that may have been a hasty reaction. In hindsight, when we consider what the Twins are reportedly set to get for trading the best pitcher on the planet to the Mets, Beane looks like he made out like a bandit by comparison. The Twins got four middling prospects, while the A’s got six respectable prospects. You think the Twins would have rather got what the A’s got for Santana? In a cold second they would have. The A’s traded away the lesser player, but got significantly more in return. That’s what trading away cost certainty can get you.

Check back in 2010 to see if it all works out.

Offseason Grade: B+

For boldness, and a little rashness, and Beane doing everything he possibly could to get the A’s back on a winning track in a ridiculously thin market. Probably nothing could have gotten the A’s an “A” grade this time around, because they were pretty much doomed from the start to not field a winning team in 08, no matter what moves they made.

Acquisitions: Prospects Brett Anderson, Dana Eveland, Greg Smith, Chris Carter, Aaron Cunningham, and Carlos Gonzalez (for Dan Haren); Gio Gonzalez, Fautino De Los Santos and Ryan Sweeney (for Nick Swisher); Kristian Bell and Graham Godfrey (for Marco Scutaro); Joey Devine (for Mark Kotsay); Emil Brown

Losses: Dan Haren, Nick Swisher, Mark Kotsay, Marco Scutaro, Mike Piazza, Shannon Stewart

Projected Lineup, Starters, and Closer:

LF Travis Buck - .288/.377/.474
2B Mark Ellis - .276/.336 /.441, 19 HR
DH Jack Cust - .256/.408/.504, 26 HR
1B Derrick Barton - .347/.429/.639, 18 MLB games
3B Eric Chavez - .240/.306/.446, 15 HR
SS Bobby Crosby - .226/.278/.341, 10 SB
CF Chris Denorfia - .283/.356/.368
C Kurt Suzuki - .249/.327/.408, 7 HR in 63 games
RF Emil Brown - .257/.300/.347

RHP Joe Blanton - 14-10, 3.95
LHP Rich Harden - 1-2, 2.45
RHP Chad Gaudin - 11-13, 4.42
LHP Lenny DiNardo - 8-10, 4.11
RHP Justin Duchscherer - 3-3, 4.96

CL Huston Street - 16 SV, 2.88

- Hot Offseason Action Index -

Josh Byrnes of the Diamondbacks is quickly establishing his credentials as the best general manager in the game today. Has this guy made a bad move yet since he took over as D-Backs GM after the 2005 season?

First, he deserves huge credit for putting his faith in his highly talented young prospects last year rather than signing at least a few big-name “experienced veterans” like almost every other GM would have done if handed a similar squad so inexperienced across the board.

This put the D-Backs in a position to win last year, and while it is true that the D-Backs were a “fluke” last year in terms of run differential, it was Byrnes who got them to a place where they could be such a fluke if a few bounces went there way, and this in only his second full season as GM after taking over a team that was one of the worst in baseball only a few years prior.

Now comes the news that Byrnes has just pulled off two stunning trades that markedly and clearly improve his team, acquiring bonified ace Dan Haren from the A’s for six prospects and getting Chris Burke, Chad Qualls, and triple-A starting pitcher Juan Gutierrez from the Astros for closer Jose Valverde.

I am especially shocked by the Dan Haren trade, because it was made with Billy Beane, and normally we are used to seeing Beane be the one fleecing the other team. In Beane’s defense, all six players can be reasonably projected to become major leaguers someday, but all six are grade-B prospects who are projected to be fourth starter or fourth outfielder types.

So while Beane did acquire a significant quantity of talent for his ace, and can be credited with spreading out his risk over 6 prospects rather than getting one mega-prospect who might get hurt or flame out while taking a bunch of flyers on a bunch of grade-C players, I’m just surprised that Beane felt this was the absolute max he could get for Dan Haren.

I mean, this is Dan Haren! The one player I would actually have rather my team traded for more than Johan Santana. Consider that Dan Haren 15-9 with a 3.07 ERA last hear and hurled 222.2 innings. Those are numbers you can put right up there with Santana’s and moving that guy into a much weaker league and a much weaker division is just downright scary.

But most of all, whereas Santana is going to be a free agent, and is due for a ginormous payout, Dan Haren is locked up for the next three full seasons, at the ridiculously reasonable price of just over $5 million per season!

So with Santana attracting big-league names like Jacoby Ellsbury, Jon Lester, Phil Hughes, and Melky Cabrerra as possible return values, it amazes me that in exchange for Dan Haren Billy Beane didn’t even get one name that anyone has ever heard of, and Josh Byrnes didn’t even have to give up one player that had any chance of appearing on the D-Backs’ major league roster next season.

I am almost as impressed by the trade Byrnes pulled off with the Astros, who continue to get themselves torn to shreds by Ed Wade’s overwhelming incompetence. In this case, Byrnes shrewdly leveraged the overvalued stat of the Save to sell Valverde and his 47 saves to Houston for two very useful major league players and a 24-year old pitching prospect already on the verge of contributing in the big leagues.

Burke had a down year last season, but is just hitting his peak years at age 27 and still has the potential to become the player the Astros thought could replace Craig Biggio at second base, and Gutierrez was ranked by Baseball America as the #4 prospect in the Astros system last season, praised for his plus fastball and promising changeup.

But the key to this deal is Qualls. Byrnes is clearly gambling that Qualls is the equal, or near equal of Valverde, only minus the bling of a 40-save season to his name. Qualls has quietly racked up a fine career ERA of 3.39 in 284 major-league innings while pitching half his games in a hitter’s ballpark, and had outstanding strikeout and groundball rates last season, which bodes well for his future.

But even more importantly, Qualls has three years left before free agency to Valverde’s two, so Qualls could make this trade even out all by himself, even if he only provided 70 percent of the value that Valverde does per season over the next three years.

With the Padres and Dodgers treading water and the Giants and Rockies backsliding, I think these trades have to instantly catapult the D-Backs to the status of favorites in the NL West by a large margin. The D-Backs’ pitching was already pretty strong last season, but now they have a second ace to pair with Brandon Webb, giving them a one-two punch similar to the one they had with Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling back when they won it all in 2001.

And with a team full of still developing young players with big upside up and down the lineup, Byrnes appears to be building the Diamondbacks into a perennial powerhouse that will put together strong playoff runs for years to come.