Athletics Week In Review: One Big Trade, Two Bad Series

This week the A’s dropped two straight series and traded away a fan-favorite the day before his t-shirt promotion. Sounds like a pretty bad week for Athletics fans, right? Well, let’s talk about it, shall we?

Weekly Record: 2-4

Overall Record: 67-43

Angels Record: 66-44, 1 game behind

More from Oakland A's News

• Zach Logue yet another disappointing Oakland A’s trade return
• Luis Barrera heading to familiar foe in Los Angeles Angels
• San Francisco Giants showing Oakland A’s offseason could be worse
• Lucas Luetge what Oakland A’s need in bullpen
• Oakland A’s bring Deolis Guerra back on minor league deal

Big news: A’s Trade Yoenis Cespedes for Jon Lester and Jonny Gomes.

The last day of the trade deadline started with this bombshell. The A’s traded back-to-back Home Run Derby champ, gifted athlete and the most fun player on the team for yet another ace in Jon Lester and our old friend Jonny Gomes. The A’s also traded Tommy Milone to the Twins for Sam Fuld. These trades have been broken down ad infinitum here and everywhere else on the internet, so it’s hard to add anything that hasn’t been said by people smarter and more eloquent than me. I will say this, I loved Cespedes. His athleticisim made him the most fun player to watch on the team for the last three years. He had his warts, warts much easier to acknowledge now, but he was still a great guy to see wearing your favorite team’s colors. He’ll be missed, and Gomes is a slight consolation prize in the fun department as he’s a great clubhouse guy. Jon Lester is fantastic and I think he makes the team better, especially with Fuld’s elite defense.

Houston Astros

Oof. The A’s were a single out from this one being an eventual sweep. The first game featured Jesse Chavez giving up three homers to the Astros as the offense was unable to get more than three runs across against Brett Oberholtzer for the second time in a week. Wednesday’s game was the Dallas Kuechel show, the lefty and his beard only allowed one run over his complete game gem. Jason Hammel continued to look awful in green and gold, giving up six runs in the first and all eight Astros runs in less than five innings.

The lone bright spot was Tuesday’s game. The A’s were down to their last out in the top of the ninth, having only scored a run over seven strong innings from Scott Feldman and a spotless eighth by Josh Fields. When Chad Qualls stepped in to pitch the ninth, up three runs, I felt hope rise in my chest. With one out, Alberto Callaspo hit a pinch-hit single to bring home Derek Norris and Josh Reddick. This was followed by Jaso hitting into a fielder’s choice and a walk to Jed Lowrie, setting up Cespedes to hit a single to tie the game. Moss singled and Donaldson doubled and suddenly the A’s were up 7-4. Doolittle came in and did his thing and the A’s won just like that. It was cool. Which was good because…

Kansas City Royals

After a crazy off day on Thursday that remade the roster, the Royals came to town. On Friday four pitcher shutout by Guthrie and the KC staff wasted a lovely one run start by Sonny Gray. On Saturday the A’s bats got behind Jon Lester’s first start in Oakland wearing his new uniform against former Mariner and Angel, Jason Vargas. This afternoon, Kaz gave up four runs in his start against former Tampa Bay teammate James Shields, who held the A’s to two runs in the rubber match. Even I’m starting to think we should we be worried about the offense.

Link of the Week:

First, go check out Tony Frye’s new weekly A’s Twitter roundup piece, it’s well worth the look. Next, when the A’s traded Yoenis Cespedes to the Red Sox you would’ve been justified assuming that the instances of outfield acrobatics would fall way down, yes? Sam Fuld proved that wrong on Saturday. Not only did he catch a Moustakas fly and throw it home to catch Alex Gordon at the plate, but he did a somersault after the throw. It was glorious, and takes a little bit of the sting out of losing our favorite Cuban.

The Week Ahead

The A’s continue their homestand with three games against a David-Price-free Rays team and four games against Tommy Milone’s new team, the Minnesota Twins. The Angels are just a game behind the A’s right now, which feels pretty lucky after the week the team just had. Let’s hope we can create some breathing room in the week ahead!

Let’s Go Oakland!!