Billy Beane traded a player voted MVP the next season: Josh Donaldson.

It's official.  Billy Beane is a general manager who traded a player who then was voted league MVP for his new team the very next season.  There was another: Parke Carroll, GM of the Kansas City Athletics.  Who would have guessed that a GM would be so dumb a mere 55 years later?  And for the same team.

Should Oakland have fired the manager and kept its best player, Josh Donaldson? Tuesday, December 2, 2014

So why would Oakland general manager Billy Beane trade his best player, third baseman Josh Donaldson?  To plan for the future?  We've had a few days to consider the trading of Donaldson.  There has been speculation but the best that Beane gets is that he should be trusted.

Beane may be a bit too full of himself and fears that if he doesn't continually draw attention with moves like this the movie Moneyball will somehow retroactively replace actor Brad Pitt playing Beane with a less substantive actor...

This reminds me of the Yankees trading Rickey Henderson: June 21, 1989: traded by the New York Yankees to the Oakland Athletics for Greg Cadaret, Eric Plunk and Luis Polonia.

The lesson I learned: never trade a somebody for a bunch of nobodies.  Josh Donaldson was somebody in Oakland.  And who was the manager and who will remember the manager's name in two years?  Billy Beane, I guess.
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Josh Donaldson:
November 28, 2014: Traded by the Oakland Athletics to the Toronto Blue Jays for Franklin Barreto (minors), Kendall Graveman, Brett Lawrie and Sean Nolin.

Anatomy of a trade: Roger Maris: KC Athletics to NY Yankees. Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Roger Maris:
December 11, 1959: Traded by the Kansas City Athletics with Joe DeMaestri and Kent Hadley to the New York Yankees for Hank Bauer, Don Larsen, Norm Siebern and Marv Throneberry...

In his first two seasons with the Yankees Roger Maris was voted AL MVP and he hit 100 HR (39+61)
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A couple of days ago Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson was announced as the American Conference MVP, beating out Mike Trout who has finished 2,2,1,2 in his four big league seasons.

KC GM Parke Carroll died Feb. 4, 1961 so he was spared seeing Maris break the single season home run record in 1961 and be voted league MVP again.  We'll have to wait to see if Beane's ex-player wins a second consecutive MVP award.