In a move that we all expected, the A's outrighted Chris Denorfia to Sacramento and freed up another spot on the 40-man roster.

Official Release:

OAKLAND, Calif. -- The Oakland A's outrighted outfielder Chris Denorfia to Triple-A Sacramento, the club announced today.

Denorfia spent most of the 2009 season at Sacramento where he batted .271 with nine home runs and 49 RBI in 107 games. He also went 0 for 2 with a run scored and RBI during a four-game stint with Oakland from June 9 to 17. Denorfia is a .279 career hitter with three home runs and 19 RBI in 100 games with the A's (2008-09) and Cincinnati (2005-06).

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I've been paying close attention to trades for a few years now. And I have to say, rarely if ever have I seen a better match than the Rays and the A's right now. Each team has areas of significant strength and significant weakness. With the exception of outfielders, each team's strength happens to BE the other team's weakness. And both have a number of tradable assets unencumbered by bloated salaries or impending free agency. They really need to get together and make a deal, and I'm here to tell you have.

Warning: This is really long. I tend toward the verbose at the best of times, and the rambling at the worst. If you want the quick and dirty, skip down to the two bolded trade proposals at the bottom of the post.

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I don’t know what the upgrade schedule is for the SB Nation tech crew, but now that they’re done with the minor facelift and the regular season is over, I figure this is a good time to exchange notes about technical fixes and feature requests. I’ve seen occasional comments in other threads over the year, but I’m sure the techs never see them. If we put them all in one place, maybe they will.

Although the two are sometimes connected, I’d rather not let this thread be about the recent update to the look of the site. Perhaps there could be another thread for that. For this one I’m more interested in functionality than appearance.

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I just got through perusing the Bill James 2010 projections that have been posted on the Fangraphs player pages.  Some have suggested that James' projections are fairly optimistic...that may be true generally, but it doesn't seem to be the case with his projections for the 2010 A's position players. Even so, there seems to be a few reasons for optimism next season, if you're a believer in James' method of evaluation. Here are some of the highlights:

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We have seen several of our members throw out their plans for the off season, and now that we are into it, with several moves already made, I thought I would throw my hat into the ring.

The key to entering an off season is simple. You have to ask yourself and answer two key questions: What do I Have and What do I need?

This is also aided by the same parallel questions of your opponents. These questions will allow you to judge how strong you are and how strong you need to be.

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Well, another season has come and gone, without the good guys winning again. Being a numbers-guy, I'd like to take a look at how the teams in MLB performed against their Pythagorean records (in case you don't know what I'm talking about, and haven't backed out of this post, look here). I'm especially interested in who under- and over-performed against their Pythag records, and want to take a stab at figuring out why.

All of the team data in the graphs and tables below came from baseball-reference.com or fangraphs.com.

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Fellow ANers,

The AFL Rising Stars Showcase takes place tonight, and it will be on MLB Network.  Oakland A's prospects Grant Desme and Jemile Weeks are playing in the game.  For those of you like me, this will be the first baseball you have watched in well over a month.  Needless to say, but I am excited and have been eagerly anticipating this game.

I know this is a small post, and could actually be a Fan Shot, but no one ever looks at um anyway and I want to spread the word to as many ANers as possible.

HOPEFULLY SOMEONE HERE WILL PUT UP A GAME THREAD SO WE CAN ALL KICK IT!!

Well AN - here is my first foray into a fan post - spurred on by  67Marquez.  Partially in response to his question - "What are we gonna do now?"  I wondered whether a topical DLD is better than a random one.  I'll leave you to decide, AN.

You could see a movie or just skip to the short version or the 30 Second Bunny Theatre Version.

I know some of you have been neglecting your reading...so here are some suggestions for these long winter months 

• The Big Book of Baseball Brain Teasers

• Generation A's Fans: A Family's Long Love Affair With One of Baseball's Best Team (there is an AN connection with this one!)

• And if you want to wow us all with your Baseball acumen there's always this

If you have been putting off all those Honey - Do - This projects you can get your inspiration here.

You can waste a lot of time over at You Tube and might find gems like the newest version of baseball (Go here if you wanna play) or freaky stunts that also involve the tools of baseball.

But I caution you that with all the time off you might be tempted to get into a little trouble.  Just don't do what they do in Florida (really?) or Minnesota. And here's an after story of what happens when the po-po need some bucks!

So - tell us AN - what WILL you be doing in the off season??  Have fun!

Where is the grass greenest? Staying in the same city, we mean.

A simple question. No simple answer. The frog in my pocket and I are in a speculative mood today.

I wrote about this a while back (other markets, within the Bay Area, and San Jose's actions), it's time to do a Ken Korach style reset on the whole thing.

"We are in the top of the 4th inning, the score is Oakland..."

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AN will have to find another shortstop to covet this offseason and come up with multiple trade scenarios for.

Hardy was dealt to the Twins for Carlos Gomez.  I guess the Brewers will look elsewhere for pitching help, but the Michael Weurtz+ for Hardy deals won't happen now.

I'll put this out there, though:  Would you have traded Rajai Davis for J.J. Hardy?  Davis is probably better than Gomez, but older and doesn't have nearly as favorable of a contract situation.  I would have, without thinking twice about it.

Also, like the Akinori Iwamura to Pittsburgh trade and the Jeremy Hermida to Boston trade, this seems to have happened very quickly (what, it's day 2 of the offseason!) before free agents have filed, nontenders, etc.  Is this a sign of how the offseason is going to look?  There have already been several articles (I'm not linking to Olney's ESPN Insider stuff, sorry) that claim a large number of guys will be nontendered creating a flood of non-superstar type players in the FA market.  It's shaping up to be a strange offseason, huh?