Billy Beane’s midseason trade gambits with the A’s, while well-intentioned and bold, have blown up in his face, and the notion that everything could miraculously change if the club gets into the playoffs is more delusion than reality.

There is too little evidence — or perhaps too much — to support a Lazarus-like recovery that puts the A’s back in the World Series mix, even as well as prized acquisitions Jon Lester and Jeff Samardzija have pitched during Oakland’s six-week slide to near oblivion.

Autopsies will abound once it’s over. But from this view, the demise of the A’s has everything to do with the evaporation of esprit de corps that made the team special and dangerous for 2½ years. There was something substantive to Oakland being greater than the sum of its parts, that everybody got along so well, and the Bob Melvin mantra of “play for today” was a genuine rallying cry to their success.

It didn’t turn for the worse with the Yoenis Cespedes trade. In truth, it started to change the day Oakland sent Tommy Milone to the minor leagues July 5. Milone wasn’t so much a casualty of the Samardzija acquisition but the accompanying Jason Hammel move that left no place for him. Manager Melvin confidently predicted Milone was too essential to the mix to be gone for long, but of course, once the pitcher asked to be traded, he was gone forever.

The end result was that a strong clubhouse spirit was shattered. An integral part of the A’s success from the point Melvin took over as manager, Milone was on a 6-0, 2.62 ERA roll over 11 starts when he was tossed aside. Talking to a number of players that day about the logic of the left-hander being shipped out, there was a unanimous sentiment of disgust. The words “stinks” and “unfair” were uttered more than once.

In essence, Milone’s banishment placed a doubt in every player’s mind that, “Hey, that just as easily could be me. What good is ‘play for today’ if I’m gone tomorrow? And who’s really managing this team, anyway, Bo-Mel or Billy?”

Then came the Cespedes trade, which completely blew the doors off the barn. Yes, from a performance standpoint, the A’s have gotten the better of the deal. Lester has been terrific. So has Samardzija. Even Hammel came around after a horrific start. Cespedes, meanwhile, has been decidedly average for the Red Sox. Milone? He’s 0-1 with a 7.40 ERA in Minnesota, and now he’s out with a neck injury. Sam Fuld, who came to Oakland for Milone, has played well.

But the transactions Beane made are less about comparative numbers than the alchemy and sense of trust the A’s lost after he made them. The general manager has never been a big believer in the impact of team chemistry or the smooth hum of internal harmony, once telling a writer, “What you call buzz, I call noise.”

It’s likely Beane won’t ever see light on that, even in the wake of this shocking reversal of fortune. He’ll surely cite injuries, which certainly have been a big part of this slide. He’ll cite, as he already has, that the offense was starting to nose-dive even before the Cespedes deal.

But there’s little question this team’s personality changed with too much personnel shuffling of core players, and whether the A’s want to admit it or not, it’s at the root of this fade. This isn’t the fun-loving, all-for-one club you once knew and admired. They don’t seem to know or like each other a whole lot right now, which is often a byproduct of this kind of losing. Melvin seems at a loss to fix it, perhaps because he lost some credibility with his players in the wake of all the front office machinations.

There are other signs of disharmony, too. When catcher Derek Norris had a visible verbal on-field dispute with pitcher Scott Kazmir this past week that continued in the clubhouse after the game, it was an uncommon sight for this particular team. Kazmir might have then compounded things by calling out the team, even though his own performance of late has hardly been up to his first-half standard. Bottom line, that’s just not how this club has done things.

The A’s have always had a revolving door of players, but at least under Melvin, new players were seamlessly assimilated, and they supported one another. Even an odd duck such as Bartolo Colon could feel as if he was part of a family. But it’s a different feel now. It’s as if new players enter the door as strangers and remain strangers. They all wear the same uniform, but they don’t seem like a team.

Even noted clubhouse catalyst Jonny Gomes can’t seem to make a positive dent in the collective spirit since he’s returned. He brought a huge stuffed bear into the clubhouse last weekend in Seattle, hoping to stir the idea that it’s time to “bear down.” It didn’t catch fire. It seemed forced.

In short, the puzzle pieces that made the A’s the best team in baseball the first four months of the season just don’t seem to fit very well anymore. And that’s become a different kind of pie in the face.

Contact Carl Steward at csteward@bayareanewsgroup.com.