Are A’s prepping for sale? Or freezer?

I believe I know what the Oakland Athletics are planning.

Team executive Billy Beane, who eagerly embraces unique ideas and modern science, will have his top young players cryogenically frozen, like Ted Williams’ head. Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, Jharel Cotton and one or two other young hotshots will be popsicled for four or five years, then thawed out in time for the opening of the A’s new ballpark.

That must be Beane’s plan. He has said he’s gathering up a team-load of hot kids so the roster will bloom when the new ballpark opens.

The problem with that is that five — or six, or seven — years down the road, when that new stadium would be ready, the Chapman/Olson/ Cotton group, if it lives up to potential, will be ready to be paid major money. Olson is 23, Chapman 24, Cotton 25.

If team owner John Fisher won’t pay a major-league payroll now, why would he be so eager to do a monster jackup of the A’s payroll after he spends a billion or so on a new ballpark?

Maybe Fisher would do that if he was a crazy-in-the-coconut baseball fan, willing to go in the red for a few years while the money from all the sellouts at the new park cauterizes the team’s monetary outflow. But Fisher is not. (By the way, I don’t know if

cauterize and monetary outflow are actual financial terms. Money is not my field of expertise, but I do pay attention to the A’s situation.)

So here’s a question: If Fisher were gearing up to sell the team as his $30 millionplus annual revenue-sharing gift peters out over the next three years, wouldn’t a great strategy be to stock the A’s with kids working for minimum wage?

That would give Fisher a plausible excuse for not dipping into his pocket for real salaries, and it would make his team much more attractive to a prospective buyer. Who wants to buy a bad-to-mediocre team with a fat payroll?

So maybe part-owner Beane is prepping the team for sale. Or maybe he’s a cryogenics guy.