Fan News

The San Francisco Giants just lost Pablo Sandoval, their third baseman and cleanup hitter. So, naturally, they should set their sights on...Jon Lester, starting pitcher.

Seems counterintuitive on its face. Sandoval's departure leaves a panda-sized hole in the San Francisco lineup; shouldn't filling it be priority No. 1?

Sometimes it's best not to spend all of your money in one place. For MLB clubs, sometimes it's best not to spend all of their money in one offseason. 

That's starting to look like the case this year. The winter meetings are still a week away, but already the free-agent market is getting light. 

The Major League Baseball winter meetings are set to kick off in a week, and the Los Angeles Dodgers are likely to be active players in Southern California.

New president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and general manager Farhan Zaidi have already made several minor moves since taking over the front office in October, but there are still question marks facing the team in the midst of a culture shift.

The first month of the 2014-15 MLB offseason is nearly in the books, and it has been as busy a November as any in recent memory.

The position-player market in particular has exploded, as Russell Martin, Hanley Ramirez, Pablo Sandoval, Adam LaRoche, Billy Butler, Michael Cuddyer, Yasmany Tomas and Victor Martinez have all signed new deals in free agency.

Every team in baseball heads into the offseason with a strategy, a game plan of how it is going to attack the open market and look to improve its roster.

For some, it's dealing from a position of strength—say an abundance of young pitching—to secure the impact bat that a team's lineup desperately needs. For others, the strategy is simply to open the team's coffers, buying the best free-agent talent available to plug holes on the roster.

The Oakland Athletics might not be done selling off their most prized assets, as according to Jim Benson of The Pantagraph in Bloomington, Illinois, the A's could be on the verge of sending starting pitcher Jeff

The Oakland Athletics have dealt Josh Donaldson to the Toronto Blue Jays for Brett Lawrie and three players you've never heard of, per the team's Twitter account.

While the rest of Major League Baseball was spending the evening of Black Friday recovering from all the hectic holiday shopping and Thanksgiving leftovers, the Toronto Blue Jays and Oakland Athletics were busy putting the finishing touches on a blockbuster trade.

The Oakland Athletics look to be in the early stages of a rebuild having dealt one of their best players from the last few seasons.

Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal reported that Oakland traded Josh Donaldson to the Toronto Blue Jays for Brett Lawrie and prospects:

The A's later confirmed the move:

Billy Beane didn't have any time on Black Friday to shop or eat leftovers. The Oakland Athletics general manager feverishly worked the phones until he pulled off one of the biggest surprises in the MLB offseason so far.

Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal reported that the A's dealt Josh Donaldson to the Toronto Blue Jays for Brett Lawrie and prospects: