Elephant Rumblings: Deconstructing the Sean Murphy trade

Photo by Duane Burleson/Getty ImagesHappy Wednesday, Athletics Nation!

Welp, the deal is done. Sean Murphy is now an Atlanta Brave, and the A’s received several players in exchange for Murph and pitcher Joel Payamps in a three-way transaction with the Braves and the Milwaukee Brewers. Per Baseball Trade Values, the A’s gave up a lot more than they got in return, and the general mood about the trade here at AN is somewhere between “fair to middling” and “apoplectic.”

And what of baseball’s intelligentsia? We now have postmortems from both Melissa Lockard and Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic.

Lockard refrains from editorializing on the trade’s merits, but notes that “external reviews ... have not…