Small business Saturday.

I’m the guy who sends acronymed emails out that basically play telephone with stacks of rumored trades that are never going to happen, and who occasionally subjects you guys to worthless crystal ball exercises, so I hope you won’t take this the wrong way.

I am thankful I’m not an Oakland A’s fan.

I’ve said before that if Oakland were in the National League, or maybe even in the AL Central, I’d like that franchise a lot. The ability to compete without typical resources in a business that big is pretty impressive. My second-favorite team for a good while has been Tampa Bay. The A’s would be right there, if divisional assignment didn’t force me to hate them so much.

And, yes, I’m on record as caring exponentially more about team than about player. I’m more interested in a May 20 game result than in All-Star team or MVP or Hall of Fame votes.

But man.

Though I’ve bagged on Josh Donaldson a lot, I will say this (and already have): I’d take him on my team in a second. I’m a sucker for baseball players who do damage at the plate, play elite defense, and play with an edge. Donaldson checks all three boxes. He’s a great baseball player.

The job of a front office is to win, to build a window and keep it open, to recognize when the window is shutting and aim resources toward the next one. If you’re responsible for the roster, you can’t get too attached to players, can’t let nostalgia dictate player personnel decisions.

But at the same time, this isn’t Rotisserie League baseball, and I like it that way.

If Oakland and its hallowed General Manager had won more than one playoff series in his 17 years on the job, if they didn’t have a winless record in seven winner-takes-all playoff games in that span, if they weren’t 1-13 when they had a chance to advance in the post-season, then I’d probably be hesitant enough to say these things that I’d just go ahead and send out another TROT COFFEY this morning. I wouldn’t be thinking about degrees of sports stability and identity and about some level of continuity and about how Billy Butler must have felt when he heard the news that the team that just gave him a three-year, win-now contract traded Donaldson (and his four years of remaining, affordable control) a handful of days later, for players who give his new team a different chance to win now, and not a better one.

I’m very happy Donaldson is out of the division. I’d be sick about it if the A’s were my team.

I recognize that this goes against the way I’m generally wired as a baseball fan, but I’m not sure how enthusiastic I’d be if I were holiday-shopping this morning for a hometown jersey to give my kid and came to the conclusion that safest bet against obsolescence, given how my team does business, would be to get one that said “Beane” on the back.