Oakland A's GM Billy Beane has already proved to us that he is all in this season, but he still found a way to double down at the trade deadline this week. Just like he did with the Jeff Samardzija trade when the A's were not really rumored to be in the running until Samardzija actually landed in Oakland, Billy scored another star pitcher in Jon Lester. This was a blockbuster, a rental, and not as popular a trade as the Samardzija trade was with the A's fans. I like both the trades and give Billy full marks as always. A's have been good in the past and Billy has gotten a lot of accolades, but they have always been a cute story and a surprising underdog. Never have they been the front-runner and a favorite to win it all and thats exactly what they are now, thanks to Billy's aggressive pursuit of star pitching. This is a different reality for the A's and I love it as an A's fan. It's not that A's have not had star pitching in the past - who can forget Tim Hudson-Mark Mulder-Barry Zito, but they have not had trues aces since the big-3 were broken up. Even the 2006 ALCS team that lost to Detroit and a young Justin Verlander had Zito and Haren and good pitching like any other A's team, but Hudson and Mulder had already left town. Billy has finally decided he needs star pitching to win it all. Playoffs may be a crapshoot, but your odds go way up if you have Lester and Samardzija.
So why are the A's fans not unanimously excited about this trade? The reason is mostly emotional. Fans are a lot more opinionated and disappointed when big league stars are traded away as opposed to prospects even if that prospect is a stud like Addison Russell. In addition to that, all A's fans, including yours truly, love Yoenis Cespedes and thats who Billy gave up to get Lester. Cespedes is one of our own. He was the first, head-scratching, pleasantly surprising, power move by the new Billy we are seeing these days. Billy signed Cespedes for quite some money by A's standards and even outbid some big market teams for the little known Cuban transplant. Aside from being a rare, free market success story for the A's, Cespedes was good and has been the A's only highlight-reel talent. Whether it's winning the home run derby or doing well in the playoffs or throwing out unsuspecting Angels hitters at the home plate, Cespedes always had a flair for the dramatic and we loved and trusted him. But at the end of the day, he is a .256 hitter and a suspect outfielder, albeit with a hose for an arm. Also, the A's have lately been a light hitting team with good young pitching. But this year, they are leading the league on offense. So Billy is saying we should be able to lose Cespedes and still be offensively as good or even better than the last two years. And their pitching is going to be way better. Last but not the least, both Cespedes and Lester are going to be expensive free agents at the end of the season that Billy can't afford to sign anyways and if you look at them as mere rentals for the rest of this season, you have to like Lester over Cespedes. I wish Cespedes good luck and I will definitely miss him.
If A's fans put their emotional attachment to Cespedes aside and look at this rationally, they will agree with Billy. Sure, his hitting will be missed - especially considering he was the only consistent hitter the last two playoffs, but there is enough flexibility in this lineup to compensate for that and a pitching lineup of Lester, Samardzija, Gray, and Kazmir is priceless. As scary as it is to have the Angles and their 155 million-dollar payroll breathing down their necks for the division, the real thorn in the A's side has been the Detroit Tigers and their 162 million-dollar payroll. Billy has been doing a tremendous job of handling them both with a 83 million-dollar payroll, but he needs to beat the stellar pitching and MVP hitting of the Detroit Tigers in the playoffs and thats what his pitching pursuits this year is all about. Unfortunately, the biggest downer of the trade deadline for the A's came a few hours after they acquired Lester when Dave Dombrowski and the Tigers responded and stole David Price from Tampa Bay. It's a all-out arms race and that made the trade deadline fascinating and exciting. I do think both Lester and Price are a little over-rated and not quite in the class of Kershaw or King Felix, but then again, who is! These were still good trades and great arms to add to those two teams. I can't wait for a playoff matchup between Lester-Gray-Kazmir-Samardzija versus Scherzer-Price-Verlander-Sanchez. I might still have to agree with the talking heads on TV and give a slight edge to the Tigers with their last three Cy Young winners and playoff experience, not to speak of Miggy Cabrera and that lineup.
But first things first for the the Oakland Athletics. They are going to have to fight the Angels and their lineup all season long for the division, though the Angels pitching is a little suspect. These two teams have the two best records in all of baseball and how much more exciting can the rest of the season get for the A's. I wish them the best of luck! Nobody said winning the World Series is going to be a walk in the park. On a different note, the NFL pre-season will be off and running this weekend with the hall of game, but I wanted to give a special shout out to the MLB hall of famers inducted last weekend. It was a historically stellar class and congrats to all of the inductees. It included 300-game winners Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, slugger Frank Thomas and managers Joe Torre, Bobby Cox and Oakland's own Tony La Russa. Baseball historians are saying this was probably the third best HOF class ever. We should definitely take a moment to appreciate these dudes we all saw perform in the recent past. Professor Maddux was the first baseball star I liked and my three-sport triumvirate when I started watching American professional sports back in the day were Dan Marino, Kevin Johnson, and Greg Maddux. KJ was the only one of those three that I had a team association with. The other two were from teams I didn't care about. Coincidentally, all three are considered under-performers as far as winning championships go. That probably says something about me and my values as well. But thats neither here nor there. The talent of those three was undeniable and congrats again to Professor Maddux on a hall of fame career.
