T10YL - 2014 MLB Trade Deadline, Part 5
We finally get to Lester-for-Cespedes.
The Names: Chicago Cubs receive: Victor Caratini. Atlanta Braves receive: Emilio Bonifacio, James Russell.
The Team Context: The Braves were still chasing after a playoff spot, finding themselves .001 percentage back of the second Wild Card spot on July 31. The Cubs, as we’ve previously discussed, were spending one last year building for the future before it arrived on their shores.
Notably, the Cubs had already traded away most of their valuable deadline pieces. That was okay for the Braves, who weren’t going to be shopping at the top of the market anyways.
The Player Context: To the extent this trade had a headliner, it was Emilio Bonifacio. Bonifacio burst onto the scene as a 24-year-old Florida Marlin, though he was already a journeyman on his third MLB club by then. Bonifacio had a few decent seasons in Miami while playing a utility role, but was traded to Toronto after the 2012 season as part of the Marlins’ broader firesale. Toronto traded him to the Royals midway through the 2013 season and the Royals released him in February. The Cubs snapped up Bonifacio on a minor league contract and he had assuredly outplayed that status as a season-long member of their MLB roster. Sure, he wasn’t that good for the Cubs, but nobody was really expecting him to be good.
Bonifacio was joined by Texas native James Russell. James was drafted by the Mariners twice; first in the 37th round of 2004 out of Heritage High School and then in the 17th round of 2005 out of cheerleading powerhouse Navarro College. The Cubs only drafted Russell once (in the 14th round of 2007, from the University of Texas), but that was enough to sign him. Russell debuted for the Cubs in 2010 and had worked diligently as an unexciting middle reliever, notable primarily for his left-handedness.
Neither of these two players were deadline superstars, which is why Chicago was giving up one prospect in exchange for both of them. Victor Caratini wasn’t even the best catching prospect in the Braves’ system, an honor which belonged to Christian Bethancourt. Caratini was the Braves’ 2nd-round pick in 2013 out of Miami-Dade College, where he caught and occasionally played corner infield. His minor league career was off to an encouraging start, but it was too soon for Atlanta fans to have built up too much attachment.
The Trade: There were 162 comments on the Atlanta Braves subreddit reacting to this ultimately pointless trade. The top comment is just a link to this picture:
Nobody was that excited by these player acquisitions, but they were on Reddit to react to their team’s trade deadline move. They were going to react to whatever came across the newswire, actual newsworthiness be damned.
Since the players heading to Atlanta were reported prior to the player heading to Chicago, some of the time was spent speculating as to who the sacrificial prospect would be. Reddit user vslyke was lukewarm on the trade and prepared to reject potential offers. While other fans feared whether Tommy La Stella may be headed to Chicago, he shot it down with the arguably hyperbolic evaluation “that would be the worst trade ever.” When news broke that it would be a “minor-league catcher” headed to Chicago, he affirmed that the catcher in question was “surely not” Christian Bethancourt, who “would bring back more than that.” He left eight comments in this thread, none of which are positive on the acquisition of the two players but all of which seem to predate the confirmation that Caratini was the inclusion.
This is basically illustrative of the broader reaction to this deal. The move of two uninspiring players to Atlanta sparked concern that a top prospect would go to Chicago. When the actual prospect ended up being somebody other than the worst-case scenario, reactions settled into the spectrum of neutral. This would probably not matter much in the long run.
The Results: We can most quickly verify that the Braves lost this one by the fact that both Russell and Bonifacio signed with the Chicago Cubs during the 2015 season. Actually, that’s the most comprehensive way to quickly verify it, but it would be faster to say that the Braves collapsed down the stretch to finish 79-83, making this deadline purchase feel both misguided and insufficient. Russell pitched quite well in Atlanta and Bonifacio hit quite poorly, but both guys did so exclusively in the second half of a losing season. Bonifacio became a free agent at season’s end and Russell was released at the end of Spring Training 2015, hopping right back into the Cubs’ bullpen.
When Victor Caratini debuted for the Cubs in 2017, that was probably sufficient to win them the trade. He cemented the victory by sticking around for a few seasons, typically working as a backup catcher on competitive Chicago teams. He was traded to Chicago along with Yu Darvish after the 2020 season.
The Aftermath: Victor Caratini is the second player we’ve discussed from the 2014 trade deadline who is having his best MLB season in 2024. Caratini was traded from San Diego to Milwaukee ahead of the 2022 season, but signed with the Houston Astros on a two-year contract for $12 million this offseason. Among catchers with at least 150 plate appearances, Caratini is the third-best hitter in MLB (with a wRC+ of 128 that leaves him tied with William Contreras). He just turned 31 on Saturday.
Emilio Bonifacio signed with the Chicago White Sox for the 2015 season and was cut in August after posting numbers so bad that it’s impossible for me to pick just one. He had 82 plate appearances with 27 strikeouts and 2 walks. He had 13 hits (11 singles and two doubles). Once a prolific base stealer, Bonifacio did manage to swipe one bag, but he got caught four times. He got caught stealing FOUR TIMES while only getting on base fifteen times! And he made $3 million for this mathematically astonishing performance.
Bonifacio’s contract with the Cubs in 2015 was a minor league contract and he never returned to the majors with either Chicago team. His next three contracts were with the Braves, who played him in 62 games across 2016 and 2017 while seemingly releasing him whenever they felt the urge. Bonifacio’s last MLB game in front of fans was in 2017, but he re-emerged to play three games for the 2020 Washington Nationals. Even though Bonifacio didn’t have any hits in his encore performances, he did walk twice, which was good enough for him to get caught stealing one last time.
I’ll get back to James Russell’s career, but need to get into his family life first. Longtime MLB pitcher Bobby Witt had three daughters (Nikki, Kianna, and Shaley) before giving birth to his son, Bobby Witt Jr. As you might predict for the daughters and sisters of MLB players, though perhaps not with such uniformity, all three of the Witt daughters are married to a former big leaguer. Nikki is married to James Russell, which is why we’re detailing the family tree here. Kianna is married to Zach Neal, another reliever who had cups of coffee with the Dodgers and A’s. Shaley is married to Cody Thomas, who had 78 plate appearances for the A’s in 2022-23.
This family dynamic has been fascinating for me ever since I discovered it. Bobby Witt Jr. is one of the game’s brightest stars, currently leading MLB with a .349 batting average a couple of months after his 24th birthday. He signed the largest contract in Kansas City Royals history this offseason. His brother-in-law James is 38, his brother-in-law Zach is 35, his brother-in-law Cody is 29, all three of them are professional baseball players, all three of them were so incredibly good at baseball that they got to play in multiple MLB seasons, but none of them know what it feels like to dominate the major leagues like Bobby Witt Jr. does. What do you think their Thanksgiving table discussions are like?
James Russell’s final MLB season came for the Phillies in 2016. By April of 2017, Russell was playing for the American Association’s Texas AirHogs and by July, he was playing in Mexico for Leones de Yucatan. Russell briefly returned to the Tigers’ system in 2018 for his last stint of affiliated baseball, but finished the year out on an Atlantic League champion Sugar Land Skeeters. 2019 brought Russell back to Mexico, playing for Toros de Tijuana that season and Algodoneros de Union Laguna in 2021. In 2022, Russell began working as a pitching instructor for TPA Baseball in Texas. His bio on the TPA website says that he played in the MLB with the Cubs “from 2010-2015,” only noting the interruption to that tenure with an afterthought “Also spent time in MLB with Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies.”
The Names: Minnesota Twins receive: Tommy Milone. Oakland Athletics receive: Sam Fuld.
The Team Context: The A’s were a championship contender that was buying a lot of pitchers, as we’ve discussed previously and are about to discuss again. This trade is basically counterballast to their broader deadline trend.
The Player Context: Samuel Babson Fuld was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy who went on to major in economics and get a master’s in statistics at Stanford University, though he continued to spend summers at Cape Cod. Fuld is the only person to hit these life milestones who doesn’t currently work as a venture capitalist, and that’s only because he was very good at playing the outfield. Fuld was mostly known for his lengthy and well-cited Wikipedia page during his playing days, and now that I’ve made my stupid venture capitalist joke I’d like to send you there for all further Sam Fuld background.
Fuld had been non-tendered before the 2014 season and signed with the A’s on a minor league deal. He made the opening day roster, but was designated for assignment seven games into his season when Craig Gentry returned from injury. The Twins claimed Fuld off waivers and it didn’t take long for him to engage in his favorite on-field activity (running into an outfield wall at high speed while chasing down a fly ball). Unfortunately, there are dangers inherent to running into walls at high speed, and Fuld ended up missing a month of the season after suffering a concussion. He seemed to be fully recovered, though, with a red-hot .476 on-base percentage in 86 plate appearances in July.
Tommy Milone was an archetypal example of Athletics Baseball in this era, particularly with respect to pitchers. Milone debuted for the Nationals in 2011 and was sent to Oakland that offseason as part of the trade package for breakout star Gio Gonzalez, who was set to receive his first pay raise in arbitration. Gonzalez was great in Washington, but Milone immediately stepped into the A’s rotation and made 31 above-average starts on a league-minimum salary. Milone was continuing to pitch well in 2014 even as he failed to earn the complete trust of the front office. With the recent pitching acquisitions by Oakland, he had lost his spot in the starting rotation. The A’s were happy to keep him around, but pitching-starved teams began calling Oakland to see if he could be had.
The Trade: Whispers that teams were interested in trading for him caused Tommy Milone to request a trade from the A’s. It took ten days for his request to be obliged. Minnesota’s trade deadline involved trading two players they had grabbed off the scrap heap (Kendrys Morales and Sam Fuld) back to their most recent teams in exchange for controllable pitchers.
The trade probably made sense for the Athletics, but it was impossible to be skeptical from Minnesota’s end. Tommy Milone was a clearly valuable player who would keep a rotation spot on something like 29 MLB teams in 2014.
The Results: I’d like to give a shout-out to Baseball-Reference for keeping the stats from each of Sam Fuld’s two 2014 Oakland stints on different lines, really impressive attention to detail. Unfortunately, this display clearly reveals that Fuld was much worse on offense after the deadline (when the A’s traded a controllable starting pitcher to acquire him) than he had been at the start of the season (when the A’s cut him from the roster after seven games). He continued with the A’s for 2015 and hit even worse before a rotator cuff injury in 2016 Spring Training ended his playing career.
Tommy Milone was awful to close out the 2014 season, but returned to his usual slightly above-average form in 2015. That was the last time that “above-average” would be Milone’s usual form; he was released after an ineffective 2016 season.
The Aftermath: Milone’s career since 2016 has been dizzying, with games played for seven different franchises but only Seattle keeping him around for more than a dozen appearances. Every season includes at least some MLB playing time through 2023, when he threw nine innings for the Mariners and kept a 2.00 ERA that was unsupported by the six walks and three strikeouts. Milone made his first foray into international baseball in 2024 as he’s pitched for Saraperos de Saltillo. His 5.86 ERA is slightly worse than the team average of 5.12.
Meanwhile, Sam Fuld had a sufficiently finance-and-data background to get hired by an MLB front office, even though he only had baseball experience instead of Wall Street experience. His first job was as “major league player information coordinator” with the Phillies, though he was interviewed for MLB manager positions every offseason after taking the role. He finally earned a promotion after the 2020 season, when he was named general manager of the Phillies (working under President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski). In the decade prior to Fuld’s hiring as general manager, the Phillies were one of the laughingstocks of baseball. Since then, they’ve won a pennant and have the fourth-most regular season wins in the National League.
The Names: Oakland Athletics receive: Jon Lester, Jonny Gomes. Boston Red Sox receive: Yoenis Cespedes, 2015 Competitive Balance Round B pick.
The Team Context: We’ve established the recent histories of the Red Sox and A’s with sufficient repetition at this point, right? These teams each made 47 trades this deadline.
The Player Context: For 86 years, the Boston Red Sox were not in the business of producing “World Series heroes,” but that changed when the 2004 Red Sox broke the curse and won a long-awaited championship. The second championship in 2007 was less-awaited, but only featured three holdovers from the 2004 team’s pitching staff. The clear candidate for Boston World Series Icon was infamous sock-wearer Curt Schilling, but he was already entering into his distasteful post-retirement era. The other two were Mike Timlin (a middle reliever who was 41 years old for the 2007 Series) and Tim Wakefield (who was beloved in Boston, but factually did get blown up in each of the 2004 and 2007 postseasons).
There was only one member of the 2007 World Series team on Boston’s medium-awaited 2013 championship team, but Jon Lester did enough in each of those postseasons to etch himself into Red Sox lore forever. Lester debuted as a 22-year-old in 2006, but was placed on the disabled list in August to investigate why he had a sore back. Lester was eventually diagnosed with large cell lymphoma and spent his first MLB offseason undergoing chemotherapy. He made a full recovery, which cost him the start of his season, and re-debuted for the Red Sox in July of 2007. Lester worked out of the bullpen in the ALCS, but made his first postseason start in Game 4 of the World Series. He threw 5.2 shutout innings, getting the win that clinched Boston’s World Series title.
By 2013, Lester was several seasons into his transition from “inspiring comeback story” to “indispensable heart of the rotation.” He was a reliable 200-inning workhorse and regular member of the All-Star team who rarely missed a start across the next few regular seasons. In the 2013 postseason, Lester started Game 1 of all three series the Red Sox played in and Game 5 of each of the ALCS and World Series. He was totally dominant and improved as the stakes grew higher, reducing his 2.35 ALDS ERA to 2.31 in the ALCS and 0.59 in two excellent World Series starts of 7.2 innings a piece. Among pitchers, there was perhaps nobody more synonymous with this new-and-triumphant era of Red Sox baseball than Jon Lester (we have to limit it to pitchers to ignore three-time champion and 2013 World Series MVP David Ortiz).
Lester was set to be a free agent after the 2014 season, but was radiating in post-championship glow when he told reporters that he’d happily offer the Red Sox a hometown discount in January. “I understand you’re going to take a discount to stay. Do I want to do that? Absolutely,” Lester said in a show of candor that must have driven his agents crazy. In February, Lester told reporters that the team had yet to initiate extension talks but that he’d be willing to negotiate through the season if needed. The two sides began meeting in March and, while the mood remained optimistic, a “significant gap” persisted between Lester and Boston. The Red Sox set an Opening Day deadline for resolution of extension talks, Lester lobbed one more softball when he said he’d probably accept a 6-year, $144 million extension like the one Max Scherzer had just reportedly declined, but the two sides tabled discussions just before the start of the season.
Jonny Gomes’ first name is Jonathan, which you likely assumed. But his full name is Jonathan Johnson Gomes, potentially creating ambiguity about whether he goes by his first name (using a nickname for Jonathan) or his middle name (using a nickname for Johnson). Jonny’s lack of an “h” in the short-form gives us a clue; it’s much more rare than “Johnny,” with the no-h pioneered in baseball history by Gomes and only followed by Jonnys Venters and DeLuca. In the case of Jonny Gomes, the missing h suggests that he identifies as a Jonathan (which has no “h” in its “Jon” portion) rather than as a Johnson. Come to think of it, why does “John” tend to pick up an h when it’s being shortened from Jonathan? Nobody spells it “Johnathan” except for this guy, and it’s not like there’s any ambiguity in how to pronounce “Jon” when we talk about Jon Lester.
Gomes was an in-shape power hitter who became a certified personal trainer in the rookie leagues after the Tampa Bay Devil Rays drafted him in 2001. On December 23, 2002, Gomes “thought he had indigestion.” His symptoms got worse until 6 PM on Christmas Eve, when he planned to take some cold medicine and sleep. While he was getting ready to do that, he stopped breathing and passed out, which officially merited examination in a hospital. In a fluke occurrence, the newly-minted personal trainer and professional athlete’s clogged artery had caused a heart attack 27 hours ago and required an immediate angioplasty. “The doctor didn’t say I might have died, he said I would have died,” Gomes recalled about the incident in 2005.
By the time of that interview, Gomes was on his way to an excellent MLB season that saw him finish 3rd in Rookie of the Year voting behind old friend Huston Street and Robinson Cano. Like most guys who start their MLB careers in Tampa Bay, Gomes ended up as something of a journeyman whose defensive limitations counteracted the value provided by his thumping bat. The Petaluma native was also a known quantity to the A’s, who signed him to be their designated hitter and occasional left fielder in 2012 and reaped a league-adjusted OPS that was 42% better than average. Gomes signed a 2-year, $10 million deal in Boston after that season, won a World Series in his first year, and was now positioned to finish out that contract elsewhere.
Yoenis Cespedes spent the first eight or so years of his professional career playing in his native Cuba. In his final season there, he and Jose Abreu simultaneously set a new league record with 33 home runs before Cespedes defected to begin his career stateside. Cespedes was “arguably the best all-around player to come out of Cuba in a generation” and burst his way into the American baseball consciousness with a legendary 20-minute workout video that is heralded more as remarkable cinema than an effective piece of promotion for a baseball player. The video includes a non sequitur shout-out to former NFL running back Ahman Green and concludes with a 40-second clip of Cespedes roasting an entire pig on a spit at what seems to be a family cookout, a scene that has inspired more than its fair share of baseball writers.
Cespedes was sure to command big money on the free agent market, which made it particularly shocking when the miserly Oakland Athletics shelled out $36 million to bring him to town for four years. Cespedes was an immediate hit in MLB, finishing 10th in MVP voting in his age-26 rookie season in 2012. On a team whose stars typically flew under the national radar, Cespedes’ cannon arm and home run power (he won the Home Run Derby in each of 2013 and 2014) made him a presence on the national stage. Locally, he was beloved as one of the heartbeats of a lineup that surged to a surprising division title in 2012 and repeated the feat in 2013. Cespedes, along with Josh Donaldson and Brandon Moss, gained the collective acronym-nickname “Home Run DMC. The preferred nickname might have been “Runs DMC,” depending on the source, but there’s no ambiguity that each of Donaldson, Moss, and Cespedes were seen as irreplaceable.
The Trade: After the 2014 season started, Boston’s offer to extend Lester was reported at 4 years, $70 million. This already seemed like a lowball and only got worse as Lester put up a fantastic start to the 2014 season. The team still hoped to keep Lester in the fold, with GM Ben Cherington denying that the Red Sox had “entertained any thoughts” of trading Lester on June 10 and attempting to restart extension talks on June 29. Lester was uncomfortable with this sudden attempt to hammer out an extension over the summer, telling Jon Heyman that “since day one I was told [not negotiating in season] was the policy. The way I think is pretty black and white. They tell me one thing, and we’re hell-bent on that, [so to change gears] throws me off.”
If we had been strictly chronological, this trade would have come much earlier within the series (and the series would’ve come much sooner as one 30,000 word deluge of content). Lester’s contract status and willingness to talk about it candidly with reporters made him a heavily-coveted trade piece at the deadline. Then, at 6:39 AM Pacific time, reports emerged that the Oakland A’s “appear[ed] to have a deal” for Lester, giving up one of their lineup’s biggest stars in the process. Trade deadline day was officially underway, with what observers called “a straight up video game trade right there.”
While fans of both teams suffered a stomachache at the loss of a favorite player, Red Sox fans were more prepared for Lester’s departure. They saw Oakland as a favorable destination given the financial reality that the A’s would not be a serious bidder for Lester’s services as a free agent, increasing the odds that he would return to the Red Sox in a fairytale reunion. A’s fans could take no such solace and grappled with the reality that this trade increased the urgency for the team to win in 2014. “You really can’t ever get attached to a player as an A’s fan. Kind of sucks,” said Reddit user acerv. “I guess it’s a feeling that can be remedied by a World Series win so how about we do that.”
When the Athletics’ marketing team planned their promotional calendar for 2014, they probably thought Yoenis Cespedes was a safe bet to still be on their team after the trade deadline. It was a really reasonable calculation by the marketing team. We can’t blame them for the fact that Jon Lester made his Oakland debut on a day where the team distributed 10,000 “La Potencia” t-shirts commemorating Cespedes to Oakland fans. That hilarious coincidence is nobody’s fault.
There was also a 2015 Competitive Balance Round B pick going from Oakland to Boston, the grittier details of which we can refer out to an earlier post. Based on the recently completed 2015 Competitive Balance Lottery, this pick would arrive at the end of the second round, after the Reds and before the Mariners. More on that later.
The Results: I guess we should probably just finish the draft pick coverage now and then return to the exciting baseball players. If you look at the 2nd round of the 2015 draft, you’ll see that the competitive balance picks (starting at 71) jump from the Reds to the Mariners. The pick that was traded to the Red Sox is nowhere to be found, making it the first trade asset to completely disappear in the history of Trades Ten Years Later.
To use baseball’s terminology, the pick was actually “surrendered,” though typically the verb “surrender” implies the existence of an object to whom one “surrenders.” The cause for surrender was one of a pair of ill-advised signings in Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, both of whom had received a qualifying offer after the 2014 season. As you’ll recall from our discussion of Kendrys Morales (or next post’s discussion of Stephen Drew), free agents who decline the qualifying offer and sign with a new team cost that team a first-round draft pick. However, if the team that’s signing a big-money free agent was so bad the prior season that they’re picking in the top 10 of the upcoming draft, they surrender their next-highest draft pick instead.
The two qualifying signees resulted in the surrender of Boston’s own second-round pick as well as the Competitive Balance Round B pick. However, it also resulted in the creation of two new draft assets out of thin air. Because the San Francisco Giants lost a qualified free agent to the Red Sox in Sandoval, they received a pick in the compensation round (which comes after the first round but before Competitive Balance Round A). Because the Los Angeles Dodgers lost a qualified free agent to the Red Sox in Ramirez, they also received a pick in the compensation round.
If you pay attention, a scam was perpetrated on the other 27 teams. In exchange for their free agent acquisitions, the Red Sox surrendered picks that would have slotted at 47 and 72. In exchange for their free agent losses, the Giants received pick 31 and the Dodgers received pick 35. Value was created out of thin air, which in a zero-sum game means that it must have been stolen from everybody else. “Draft picks” are really just spots in a line, and the person standing 40th in line would typically consider this “being cut.”
With four paragraphs of discussion of a forfeited compensation pick out of the way, let’s return to one of the most impactful players of the 2014 MLB season. Down the stretch of the regular season, the A’s seemed to have gotten the better end of this one. Lester was even better in Oakland than in Boston, while Cespedes’ numbers took a big step back after the trade. Despite Lester’s individual success, the A’s swooned through September and ended up finishing 10 games back of the Angels in the AL West. Many fans blamed this on the shift in clubhouse vibes resulting from the loss of Yoenis Cespedes. Fortunately, the A’s had traded for a proven playoff ace, and he was ready to go in the winner-take-all AL Wild Card game against the Kansas City Royals.
The A’s staked Lester to a 2-0 lead, which was coughed up in the bottom of the third inning as Kansas City pulled ahead 3-2. The A’s had a huge sixth inning to take back a 7-3 lead, giving Lester more than enough support to snag a win for his new team. But in the eighth, Lester gave up a series of ground ball singles, ending with a pitching line of six earned runs allowed in 7.1 innings even if his defense could’ve helped him out. Lester left after the season’s end and his main legacy in Oakland is as a symbol for what could’ve been.
Johnny Gomes was really bad in Oakland. Woeful. I should’ve dispensed with the compensation pick talk this quickly.
In Boston, Yoenis Cespedes’s performance tailed off as he played out the stretch for a noncompetitive team. He hit four home runs in the month of August and just one in September, keeping an on-base percentage below .300 in each month. Rumors quickly emerged that the Red Sox would consider trading Cespedes before the final year of his contract in 2015 and the news came true before long. In December, he was traded to Detroit as part of a package for Rick Porcello.
The Aftermath: With that in mind, we’ll save the rich subsequent material on Yoenis Cespedes until at least December.
Jon Lester did pursue a reunion in free agency, but not in Boston. Instead, he reunited with former Red Sox architect Theo Epstein, who gave Lester $155 million to join the Chicago Cubs for the next six seasons. Lester’s first season as a Cub was highlighted by a record-setting 0-for-58 stretch to continue what had previously been a limited career as a hitter; he broke the streak when he hit an infield single off former teammate John Lackey. Lester’s second season as a Cub was highlighted by teaming up with Lackey and winning the World Series, breaking a 108-year curse. His performance declined in subsequent years and he was below league-average on an inflated salary in 2019 and 2020, not that any Cubs fan who watched the team win it all in 2016 would care about that whatsoever. Lester’s final MLB season came in 2021, when he signed with the Nationals and was sent to the Cardinals at the deadline.
Jonny Gomes won his next World Series even sooner than Lester did, though he contributed much less to the effort. He signed a $5 million contract with the Braves for the 2015 season and was subsequently traded to the Royals at the August 31 waiver deadline. Gomes played in 12 games for the 2015 Royals and had just five hits, but that was enough for him to receive a World Series ring when the team won a championship without him on the postseason roster. Gomes’ final baseball games that we have records of were played in Japan in 2016, when he slashed .169/.280/.246 for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. In 2022, he was interviewed as part of an article about former big leaguers who played with the social media darling Savannah Bananas and noted that he had “played in Alaska, Mexico, Japan, and this summer in a home-run derby in London,” going on to state “I’m just a baseball rat. Anything baseball, I’m there. I’m fortunate that baseball’s got me pretty close to all 50 states.”
DO NOT trade hitters for pitchers, especially in the down offensive environment of 2014. What were the Oakland A's thinking?
In addition to slapping all of their fans in the face, Oakland got less WAR (due to the negative contribution of Jonny Gomes) out of this trade than Boston did at the end of 2014. Which side was doing the renting again?
I like the baseball minnows, and I want them to succeed, but the ultimate cherry on this cake would've been to see Lester sign back in Boston. Then we all could've laughed really hard at the folly of the Oakland Athletics. I understand that the end for Cespedes in Oakland was coming soon, but this isn't where that card needed played. They could've done it in the offseason, or perhaps rented a player that was not a pitcher. Jon coming up so small in the very game he was rented to pitch emphasizes this point even more.
Good work as always! I just had to get all that off my chest.