First up today is this hilarious post from my colleague Mark Smith at The Platoon Advantage in which he populates a baseball ark with the best two players from each team. The Chosen A's are Jemile Weeks and Brandon McCarthy, which is tough to argue with. I might go with Brett Anderson over McCarthy, since surely Tim Tebow (who is involved -- go see) can figure out a way to heal Anderson's elbow, but just in case there's Twitter in the repopulated earth, McCarthy is a good choice.

The Boston Herald says that the Red Sox are off of Francisco Cordero, which would be good news if it's true for a potential Andrew Bailey trade. Link via Aaron Gleeman.

Ronit Shah thinks that Gio Gonzalez to the Nats would result in Anthony Rendon coming back to Oakland (as a PTBNL).

(All of this might be rendered irrelevant if Keith Law's report (is it a report? Or is it an opinion on a rumor?) is accurate.)

Gio to Nats for Cole, Norris, Peacock, and Milone. Love this for Oakland.

— keithlaw (@keithlaw) December 22, 2011

This Joe Pawlikowski three-way proposal involving the Phillies for Gio Gonzalez is also now outdated, but I like it mainly because, as Dave Brown tweeted (but I can't find it now), every Gio trade should involve the Phillies or White Sox.)

There will obviously be more about Gio Gonzalez when the news of his trade to the Nationals firms up a bit and there are actually some links to round up about it. I'm sure there'll be at least as much to pass along as there was for the Trevor Cahill trade.