First of all, shame on those trying to dash the Christmas dream of fitting an A’s shaped foot into a coveted Japanese slipper. The odds may be long, but no one saw coming a 20-game winning streak in 2002 or the successful luring of Yoenis Cespedes in 2012. “The unlikely” is baseball’s only certainty and anyway, there are Venn diagrams you can draw, based on rumblings of Shohei Ohtani’s priorities, in which the A’s end up alone in the middle.
Want a team that employs the DH? You’re down to 15 teams. Want a team on the West Coast?