In today's Hot Links post we referred to an article in which Jeff Luhnow used the 2014 A's as a cautionary tale:
We saw Oakland trade away pretty good players last year to win a division and they ended up getting eliminated in the wild-card game.
Yeah...that's right. The A's traded:
*Billy McKinney, Dan Straily, and Addison Russell to the Cubs for Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel on July 5, a day in which they had a 3.5-game lead in the division. On July 31 the A's traded Yoenis Cespedes and a Comp B pick to the Red Sox for Jonny Gomes and Jon Lester.