Billy Beane: ‘If we don’t have Jon Lester, I don’t think we make the playoffs’

By Hayden Kane | Oct 2, 2014

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The Oakland Athletics lost a thrilling American League Wild Card showdown to the Kansas City Royals this week. Following a line of thinking that is questionable at best, many people are viewing that disappointing finish as an indictment of the mid-season trade in which they sent Yoenis Cespedes to the Boston Red Sox in exchange for ace starting pitcher Jon Lester.

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From the moment that the Oakland offense started to struggle during the second half of the season, people pointed to the fact that Cespedes was gone as the reason. That seems to give a bit too much credit to a player with a .719 OPS, not to mention the fact that Lester was absolutely outstanding in an Oakland uniform.

Asked if he would have done things differently as far as that trade is concerned, Oakland general manager Billy Beane said no. As passed along by Joe Stiglich of CSN Bay Area:

"A’s general manager Billy Beane said Wednesday he has no regrets whatsoever about pulling the trigger on that deal.“Simply put, if we don’t have Jon Lester, I don’t think we make the playoffs,” Beane said during his end-of-season media address."

The A’s certainly have to take a long, hard look at their season to consider what went wrong and what they can do differently moving forward. To go from the dominant team they were in the first half to a team that lost in the one-game Wild Card round is something that calls for tough conversations.

That said, trading for Lester wasn’t the problem, and that is a narrative that needs to die as something that is just plain silly. There are issues for the A’s, but that isn’t one of them.

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