A month ago, the Oakland A's celebrated the best record in baseball and a comfortable AL West lead with a trade that injected Jon Lester into a rotation already bolstered by Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel in previous deals.
Billy Beane was rightly lauded, including here, for packing the rotation for a deep playoff run. And if the price of those deals was a bevy of prospects and Yoenis Cespedes, that seemed like a a good deal.
With the benefit of hindsight, we're now hearing the bleating, as if an outfielder with a .303 on base percentage is indispensable. The A's are 12-16 since jettisoning Cespedes, falling four games out of first. Offense has been the culprit: Oakland has hit .224 and scored just 3.6 runs/game in August. And that has led many to bemoan the trades.
Let's all say it together: correlation is not causation.
The A's aren't scuffling because Yoenis Cespedes moved his 1,300-pound leg press and his out-sized reputation to Beantown. By slipping Stephen Vogt into the lineup at first and sliding Brandon Moss to the outfield, manager Bob Melvin positioned his team to maintain its punch at the plate. At the time of the trade, Vogt was out-hitting Cespedes by batting average, on base and slugging.
But since the moves, the entire A's roster has hit a wall -- and not much else. Moss is batting .178 with no home runs and 35 strikeouts
in August. Derek Norris is batting .188; Coco Crisp, .191; Vogt, .222 and John Jaso, .149. Unless Cespedes is sticking pins in a John Jaso voodoo doll, he's unlikely the cause.
The odds say the A's will right the ship before the playoffs start, because they have too much talent to play this badly for long. Then, to kick off the postseason, they'll put the ball in Jon Lester's left hand. At which point, A's fans will forget about Yoenis Cespedes.
1 comment:
Hasn't happened - they have beaten the odds and are still weak and every A's game I go to I hear someone screaming about Cespedes.
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