The A's got a jump, as we know, on the offseason, making a trade for Chris Young's Massive Upside Potential before the offseason had actually even begun, but things have been quiet, if not to say deadly quiet, ever since. The team declined Stephen Drew's option, which I guess is somethin'. They signed Bartolo Colon for another year, which caused so much furor, strum, drang, and rantage on Twitter that I briefly wondered whether people had lost their minds before realizing: it's November. There's nothing! We have to find something to occupy us, or we have to find something to Occupy, but since most of us are on the apathetic side as far as that goes, we end up perusing our DVRs, diving to the dusty corners of filthy MTV pornography, sensationalized "History" Channel nonsense, or, worse, football.

We've got the November Blues, and the only thing that can cure it is Mike Ekstrom, who has 61 innings of major-league ball under his belt, who managed a nifty 1.06 FIP in 2011, except, whoops, it was one game, one inning, whose main defining feature is that he's not very tall for a pitcher, though he's above-average as far as white American males go. And that paragraph about Mike Ekstrom which isn't even a paragraph at all but is mainly just what happens when I get out of the practice of writing and say "Hey, Mike Ekstrom"? That paragraph is all there is to say about Mike Ekstrom.

He throws 92.

(I lied.)

((About the paragraph being all there is, I mean. He really does throw 92. That's not the kind of thing I'd fib about here. I fib a lot, sure. You might even say that I fib liberally. But I wouldn't fib about the velocity of a smallish right-handed reliever who signed a minor-league deal with the A's in the hopes that he can win a AAA championship and/or make a few appearances in the back of the A's bullpen in a forgiving park and hopefully not against Mike Trout.))

(((By the way, "back of the bullpen" -- Matt Kory and I took that for the name of our podcast, but neither of us has conclusively settled whether that means "the best pitchers in the bullpen" or "the worst pitchers in the bullpen." The closer is supposed to be the guy who pitches last, so he's at the back end. On the other hand, shitty players are who get put in the back, right? You wouldn't take Trevor Hoffman and make him stand at the end of the line. He gets first dibs on ... well, everything. I guess it's generally clear in context. Mike Ekstrom at the back of the bullpen is clearly not the same as Mike Adams at the back of the bullpen. To pick two Mikes with vowels for last initials.)))

For what it's worth, I think it's not just vacation time for A's bloggers. It appears to be vacation time for the web team over at the A's official site, too.

You like that? Yeaaaaaah.

Anyway, I don't think the A's have a Jerome Mitchell. This guy seems pretty rad, but he's a polar scientist, not a baseball player. (Don't ask me what a polar scientist is. I'm imagining that he's big and fuzzy and eats seals for breakfast because that's what polar bears do and that's the only other thing I can think of that starts with "polar.")

No, I'm pretty sure that's Jermaine Mitchell. You know Jermaine Mitchell, right? Guy who put up interesting minor-league numbers in 2010-11 but fell off a lot in 2012? Too old to be a prospect? Knee surgery? That guy?

THE GUY LISTED DIRECTLY ABOVE "JEROME MITCHELL" IN THE TRANSACTION REPORT?

Yeah, him. That guy.

(And check out the dates, too.)