Sacrificing for Now and How It Can All Go Wrong

Sacrificing for Now and How It Can All Go Wrong

 

The date was July 31^st, or as most of us sports fans know it, Trade Deadline Day. The names Jon Lester and David Price were bandied about as potential players who could be on the move, so when they were traded it wasn’t really a huge surprise. The surprise was the teams they were traded to. Early on in the day Lester was traded from Boston to Oakland in a stunning move by Billy Beane. If his trade earlier in the month for Jason Hammel and Jeff Samardzija was seen as an all-in type deal, what the hell could this be described as? The A’s immediately became the favorites to reach the World Series and were the talk of baseball. This did not sit well with Dave Dombrowski and the Detroit Tigers as they themselves had an ace up their sleeve, quite literally, trading for David Price of Tampa Bay and giving their rotation the last three American League Cy Young winners. Things have a funny way of working out though as since that day both teams fell out of first place in their respective divisions and are hanging on to wild card spots. I don’t foresee a scenario where both miss the playoffs entirely but there is enough time left in the season for one of these teams to truly bottom out and realize that they were outdrawn on the river by a team whose hand wasn’t as impressive going in.

Oakland sacrificed offense in order to load the chamber of the gun, knowing that pitching can carry you through the postseason, but what good are those bullets if you don’t get a chance to use them? Bats have gone cold and a lead that they thought they could sustain has turned into a defecit they cannot overcome. Detroit had the starting pitching to compete and win a pennant, what they didn’t have was a functional bullpen. Any team that is able to keep a game close against the Tigers has to like their chances come the later innings. So what does the team do? Not nearly enough to fix its biggest weakness and is now involved in a dogfight with the hungry Kansas City Royals for the AL Central crown.

When these trades were made there was back and forth over both teams doing it because of the other. Oakland was tired of losing to Detroit and not being able to overcome that Tigers mountain and Detroit in retaliation for Oakland emptying their barrels and going full speed ahead on 2014. Fans dreamed of these teams and great pitching staffs facing off in the ALCS with a chance to reach the World Series on the line. The storyline wrote itself, it couldn’t get any better. Billy Beane could finally reach a World Series and he would have to go through his playoff nemesis to do it. That’s the thing though about dreams and wishes, they don’t always come true. The ultimate ALCS battle could now turn into a one and done game with everything on the line, and with the way things are going, the winner will be for naught anyway as the Angels are running a demolition derby through the rest of the American League and look more than primed to reach the Fall Classic once again.

If the matchup happens in the Wild Card Round we can only hope the rotations will work out in such a way that it will be Jon Lester against David Price. Hired gun versus hired gun. Mercenary against mercenary. That’s how it should be. Mortgage your future for present results and it’s only fair.