No one accuses Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane of staying quiet when there’s a deal to be made.

In fact, if there’s one guarantee with Beane, whose career was made into the critically-acclaimed movie “Moneyball,” it’s that he’s not afraid to make the unconventional move. Even if unconventional sometimes equals unpopular.

It’s the timing of the moves, he says — knowing when to go for it, so to speak — that has kept the A’s competitive and led to six postseason appearances in 13 seasons.

Beane was presented with the Andrew “Rub” Foster Award, given to the American League’s top executive, at Saturday night’s Negro Leagues Baseball Museum Legacy Awards.

“The timing of those things is critical,” Beane said. “The thing about being in a small market like here (in Kansas City), I never feel like you should be in between. You should either have something that’s good, or you should be building something that’s good.”

This year, Royals general manager Dayton Moore chose the former when he pulled the trigger on one of the biggest trades of his tenure last month. In a six-player deal, he acquired James Shields and Wade Davis from Tampa Bay in exchange for Wil Myers, the consensus minor league player of the year in 2012, along with Jake Odorizzi, Mike Montgomery and Patrick Leonard.

Unconventional? For the Royals, maybe.

Unpopular? Perhaps in some fans’ circles. But not among general managers, Beane said.

“I have a lot of respect for what they’ve done here,” Beane said. “I think it’s been well-documented how much respect we all have for the young players on the Royals and the job they’ve done. I totally understand why they would make that trade.

“I think everyone assumes the deal has to have a zero-sum quality to it, where I win, you lose. But that’s a case where KC got what they wanted and Tampa did too.”

In addition to Beane, National League executive of the year John Mozeliak of St. Louis, Buck O’Neil Award winner Joe Posnanski and San Diego Padres speedster Everth Cabrera were in attendance for the Legacy Awards, which honored its final class Saturday night in a ceremony Negro Leagues Museum president Bob Kendrick called bittersweet.

In the summer of 2011, Mozeliak swung a deal similar to the one that has highlighted the Royals’ offseason. As part of an eight-player deal, he traded top prospect Colby Rasmus for Edwin Jackson, Octavio Dotel and Marc Rzepczynski, a package that formed three key pieces to their 2011 World Series championship.

“The longer we held on to our player, I felt like our return was going to go down and down,” Mozeliak said. “I saw that as an opportunity to make a deal that could swing the balance of our season, and it did.”