Vida Blue pitched for the great Oakland teams of the early 1970s. He threw a no-hitter in ‘70 against the Twins, won an MVP and Cy Young in ‘71, and was a member of the World Series winning teams in ‘72, ‘73, and ‘74. Also, as you can see here, for a time he rocked his first name on his jersey.
Just before the 1978 season, Vida Blue was traded for 8 players and cash as part of the fire sale going on in Oakland (more on that here). This might be the widest and shallowest tree we’ve featured before here. Just look how many of the players were released or left via waivers/purchases.
Here’s an updated version of the Holliday tree that shows where people have gone to since the last one, as well as including the other people traded.
Earlier today I posted a three-way trade and a teaser about today’s tree. Can you see what I’m getting at?
Nick Swisher was drafted by the A’s in 2002 as compensation for losing Johnny Damon to the Red Sox. Years later, they would be teammates as Yankees. I haven’t cross-checked the database at all to see if this is a unique case. I only noticed it because the lightbulb went off in my head when I entered in the data. One big shiny Internet to anyone who can come up with another example.
Also, de los Santos spent 2010 at AA in the Oakland organization. John Sickles rates him as the A’s #5 prospect coming into this spring.
Way back in November, we posted three trees together - Johnny Damon, Jermaine Dye, and Carlos Beltran - the Royals outfield that could have been. This is the three-way trade from involving Johnny Damon. Next we’ll examine things from the A’s point-of-view to show something very interesting I found finishing our draft database. What might that be? Stay tuned to find out.
In the spirit of the season, I have mapped out the two Matt Holliday trades. The first one is the trade that saw him head to Oakland from Colorado.
Notice this tree is upside down. Instead of starting with Holliday and filling down to see what the Rockies got in return, I started with Holliday at the end and went up. This is everyone that had to be a part of Oakland system at one point or another to eventually get Holliday to the A’s.
Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson has been traded four times in his career. The first time he was traded, he was sent from Oakland to the New York Yankees in 1984. Five years later, he was traded back - in essence, Rickey was traded for himself.
In 1993, the A’s again traded Rickey Henderson, this time to the defending World Series Champion Toronto Blue Jays.
