I hear Phoenix is lovely in the summertime.

I'm assuming this means the Joe Blanton Trade countdown clock kicks into overdrive. And that the A's are planning on contending again sometime after they're safely ensconced in Fremont.

Guess Rich Harden arrived at this week's organizational meetings, saw his shadow, and immediately splintered into a thousand pieces, prompting Billy Beane to hit the reset button.

Update, Now That I've Put Out a Fire with the Day Job: Someone poked his head into my office a little while back and asked what the A's got in return. I responded with something extremely unprintable and probably very unfair given the haul of top-ranked prospects detailed by Ken in the comments.

Also, I think back to my reaction to the Mark Mulder trade. The wife and I were recreating in Las Vegas, and she needed to check her Web-based e-mail account for some issue or another. So, having left our laptops at home, she put a couple of bucks into one of those pay-as-you-go Internet terminals that happened to be in the Tropicana -- she went about her business quickly and still had a little time left on the browser, so she asked me if I wanted to check anything. Hey, why not look at the sports news, I thought. So I went over to ESPN.com only to find Mark Mulder staring back at me in a Cardinals uniform.

My piercing scream startled many Tropicana patrons, apparently.

Anyhow, I reacted poorly to that trade at the time and things turned out pretty well there. I guess that's the point to this.

Also, Mark Mulder and Dan Haren both started the All-Star Game and got traded away six months later. Just as the prophecy foretold!

Update from Ken:  2007 stats of the arriving players:

Pitchers:
Greg Smith, Age 23, AA;AAA, 9-5, 3.54 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, 96 K, 32 BB, 122 IP
Brett Anderson, Age 19, A;A+, 11-7, 3.07 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, 125 K, 21 BB, 120.1 IP
Dana Eveland, Age 23, A+;AAA;NL, 2-0, 3.38 ERA, 1.46 WHIP, 27 K, 17 BB, 37.2 IP

Hitters:
Aaron Cunningham, Age 21, A+;AA, .308/.375/.509, 493 AB
Carlos Gonzalez, Age 21, AA;AAA, .288/.336/.478, 500 AB
Chris Carter, Age 20, A, .291/.383/.522, 467 AB