The Oakland A's were going to make a trade this week. They play in a stadium that turns into a toilet when it rains and generate less revenue than a team in Cleveland and still will head into the All-Star break as the very best team in baseball, and that is not something they take for granted. No matter how well they're built, in the era of $200 million payrolls, another team can always buy the talent the A's scrimp and scrap to generate.

So every little upgrade they've made – every signing of a player whose blemish they saw as an opportunity to extract value and every trade that worked in their favor – was for this moment, the sort they're not supposed to even consider. The beauty of the A's always has been that they consider everything. It's what makes them so good.

They considered, for example, David Price. Once they steeled themselves to trading Addison Russell, the precocious 20-year-old who was going to be their shortstop for the next seven years starting in 2015, the A's knew anyone was in play, including Price. They talked with the Rays. Permutations of a deal went back and forth. It never materialized.

And all the while, the A's were doing the same thing with the Chicago Cubs. This wasn't Plan B as much as Co-Plan A, because getting Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel to fortify their rotation offered them the sort of starting pitching depth they actively work to acquire along with the one-two punch of postseason-ready arms to deal with the bats galore ready to shatter the glass slipper.

View photos Jason Hammel went 7-5 with a 2.98 ERA for the Cubs this season. (Getty Images) More

This one did materialize. It started last month when they chatted about Samardzija, picked up Monday when they re-engaged, expanded Wednesday when Hammel and Russell joined the discussions, came together Friday morning and was announced Friday night: Samardzija and Hammel to the A's, Russell, outfield prospect Billy McKinney, starter Dan Straily and a player to be named later to the Cubs, and the fortunes of two franchises altered in a trade that will be discussed for years.

The Cubs add another high-potential position player to a group teeming with them. In addition to should-be All-Star first baseman Anthony Rizzo and could-be All-Star shortstop Starlin Castro at the major league level, the Cubs now have the best hitter in the minor leagues in third baseman Kris Bryant (hitting .357/.452/.720 with 29 home runs in 85 games between Double-A and Triple-A), shortstop Javier Baez, center fielder Albert Almora, right fielder Jorge Soler, do-everything Arismendy Alcantara and Russell. As one executive Friday night put it: "That's six of the top 20, maybe 25 hitters in the minor leagues."

Now would be the time to remember that the Cubs' Six Sigma are just prospects, which is to say they are unrefined and highly volatile. The chance that all six pan out as impact players is nil. The likelihood that five do is slim. It's just the nature of prospecting.

Still, Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer and the rest of the Cubs' front office are doing exactly what they must to combat the constraints of an ownership group hamstringing their ability to spend. This is how you build a ballclub on a skinflint payroll: develop and sell high. All 29 other teams, including the A's, watched Hammel sit as a free agent for nearly three months. He signed Jan. 31 for $6 million. The deal had next to no downside for the Cubs. One-year deals are fantastic value plays, particularly with the qualifying-offer system that ties draft picks to high-achieving impending free agents. And considering the ascent of Jake Arrieta over the past month – something the Cubs believe is very, very real – the blow to their pitching staff wasn't quite as massive as it might've been otherwise.

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