Canha, who hit .303/.384/.505 for Triple-A New Orleans in 2014, must either stay with the A’s (or a team that the A’s trade him to) all season or be offered back to the Marlins for $25,000. The positions that Canha can play already are pretty crowded – Stephen Vogt can play both spots, while Oakland has Sam Fuld and Craig Gentry part of the picture in left field, and a DH/first base mix that includes Billy Butler, Ike Davis, John Jaso, and Nate Freiman.

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Jaso and Vogt also can catch, and the A’s added Josh Phegley in the Jeff Samardzija trade. Did that necessarily make Norris expendable? No, but it’s entirely possible that Oakland figured he was at the top of his trade value, so why not go ahead and jump on the market now? That’s what Beane does best. You thought he was done with the teardown before building back up? Well, ask Norris about that as he heads to Southern California.

One of the fun things about it is that Beane tends to strike without much notice. The trade rumor market is not flooded with the name of one of baseball’s most active teams.

There was one rumor on Wednesday, about the A’s being one of the teams interested in Asdrubal Cabrera, reported by Jon Heyman of CBS Sports.

Later on Wednesday, A’s beat writer Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle downplayed the connection between Oakland and Cabrera.

This gets to the question of why there is so little talk surrounding the A’s and trades. It really does not come as a shock that the A’s “target very specific guys.” Obviously, they jumped all over Billy Butler, a head-scratcher for many observers, but a move made with such conviction and speed, it had to be because he fit what Oakland wanted to do, at a price that worked for the low-budget club.

Butler was Beane’s big buy of the early offseason. The big sells were Josh Donaldson to the Blue Jays and Jeff Samardzija to the White Sox. The reason to trade a player to a certain team is to get the best deal, but it’s a side benefit to the A’s that their trade partners were teams who did not make the playoffs in 2014 but have serious aspirations of doing so in 2015.

How? By making two big trades early in the offseason, Beane effectively walked into a cafeteria, gave handfuls of melting bonbons to a couple of kids, then yelled “FOOD FIGHT!” and walked out. That he picked a couple of kids who would normally sit out of such a fray meant that the ensuing chaos would be that much greater. Other teams have had to react to Chicago and Toronto making bold moves to improve themselves. Meanwhile, the Padres are doing the same, and the Dodgers — under the direction of Beane’s former lieutenant Farhan Zaidi — are doing all kinds of business.

By starting the chaos and pointing it in a certain direction, Beane positioned the A’s to be able to slide in and pick up the scraps. When all of the moving and shaking is done, there will be useful players who no longer fit with their teams, or free agents who simply have been forgotten about and wind up looking for work at a discount. Maybe he’s not one of the guys the A’s specifically target, but is it that out of the realm of possibility to imagine Oakland taking a chance on Brian Wilson at a discount with the Dodgers paying the designated-for-assignment reliever not to play for them? Wilson had 54 strikeouts in 48 1/3 innings this year, and the .336 BABIP against him was uncharacteristically high. It would be a low-risk, high-reward move to give him a shot.

The A’s have a good bullpen, so they do not necessarily need Wilson, but there will be plenty more players like him on the market between now and the start of spring training. The players on the roster now project to about a $70 million payroll, depending how arbitration cases work out. With some players from positions with a surplus sure to leave, there will be room for Beane to add in the areas where the A’s need help. Just don’t expect him to make moves when everyone else is, because he’s already a step ahead.