The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

After the Oakland Athletics traded slugger Yoenis Cespedes to the Boston Red Sox in exchange for ace Jon Lester while most ESPN talking heads were lauding the move, I immediately criticized it, as I posted this blog on August 1st - http://thekind-heartedsmartaleck.blogspot.com/2014/08/why-detroits-trade-was-better-than.html. In the writing, I also said that I felt the Detroit Tigers trading Austin Jackson and Drew Smyly for Cy Young award winner David Price would wind up being a better move than Oakland's. On August 1st, the Oakland Athletics had the best record in the Major Leagues at 66-42 (.611). They were a game up on the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the American League West division. The Detroit Tigers, meanwhile, were 59-47 (.557) and four games ahead of Kansas City in the AL Central. Fast-forward two months and Oakland finished 88-74 (.543) and ten games behind the Angels. Detroit finished 90-72 (.556) and a game ahead of Kansas City. The Athletics then lost to the Ro...

I've been fighting a cold the past 2-3 days, so I wanted to get to bed early last night, but couldn't bring myself to do that. The reason? Baseball. It was the final day of the regular season and there were four big games played last night which could have decided the wild card teams from both leagues, as the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays were tied for the final playoff spot in the American League and the Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals were tied for the wild card in the National League. In the first week of September, Boston led Tampa by 9 games and Atlanta led St. Louis by 8.5. For Tampa and St. Louis to tie Boston and Atlanta going into the last day of the regular season was remarkable by itself. What occurred last night was even wilder. St. Louis had no problems with Houston, defeating the hapless Astros 8-0, to put them 0.5 game ahead of Atlanta. The Braves led for most of their game against Philadelphia, up 3-1 until fairly late and 3-2 going to the top of th...