With the news that the A's have signed Bartolo Colon, David Wishinsky takes a look at whether the A's really have rotation depth such that Colon wasn't needed. Letting Jarrod Parker and Brad Peacock hang back for a while may well be a good thing, and signing Colon is a step in that direction.

The deal is apparently for about $2 million, which is small change even for the A's.

I have yet to see any indication of who will get bumped from the A's currently full 40-man roster. I could see Adrian Cardenas being the odd man out with little regard for whether some other team claims him. What's even the deal with him these days? Can he hit? Is he an infielder? Does position flexibility with no power and no patience at a minimum salary actually provide value to a team?

The bottom tier of pitchers (Andrew Carignan, Neil Wagner, Sean Doolittle, Jordan Norberto) could also be vulnerable, but for some of those guys, at least, there's a vision of how they might fit onto a major-league roster as halfway-decent contributors. I'm not sure that's true of Cardenas.

Here's Christina Kahrl's take on the deal at the mothership, in which she refers to Colon as "well-insulated."

Travis Reitsma takes a look at The Score and notes that the PITCHf/x data isn't as dire as the ERA split for Colon's "late-year collapse." Beware of selective endpoints, of course.

In ex-A's news, congratulations to Gio Gonzalez on his 42 million guaranteed dollars over the next five years. The initial term of the contract will take him, I believe, one year past his free agency date, and Washington holds two team options on top of that. Assuming all goes well for Gio (i.e. assuming it ends up making sense for Washington to pick up the options), he won't be a free agent until he's headed into his age-33 season, at which point hopefully he can pick up one more sizable three-year deal before heading into the twilight.

And hey, don't forget, that'll be after 2015, so maybe he can come back to Oakland for that three-year deal.

In other ex-A's news, Kevin Kouzmanoff has a minor-league deal with the Royals. He's still only 30. Remember the .276 TAv with San Diego in 2007?

Finally, Phil Rogers is doing power rankings in 30 essays from worst to first. Sadface, because the A's are the first team in the queue. Included in the column, which doesn't really contain much of substance for A's fans, but might serve as a general introduction for a random White Sox fan who doesn't really care about Oakland, is

Melvin is a major upgrade in the dugout, probably the best manager they've had since Tony La Russa

which is a completely scandalous assertion for us Ken Macha fans.