Good morning and welcome to episode 505 of Effectively Wild, the Daily Podcast in

Trading Cesspitus, trading for John Lester, for two months of Lester, they traded eight months

of Cesspitus and they also got Johnny Gohms and then they made a separate trade in which

they sent Tommy Malone who had asked for a trade to the twins for Sam Fald who was an

athletic earlier this year and then was DFA because they didn't have a spot firm at the

time and now they do so they'll be cobbling together left field production like they do

in a lot of positions. They traded the closest thing they had to an archetypical slugger,

a middle of the order bat guy who's been hitting number three for them for the last six weeks

or so they traded that guy for Lester and they'll replace Cesspitus with I suppose some

combination of Gohms and Stephen Vote and Fald and Josh Reddick and who knows what else

all of the typical Oakland spare parts that fit together in a way that makes them more

useful than they would be on their own. So they get I don't know what percent of Cesspitus

they get out of those guys but probably a pretty high percent and of course they get Lester who

now gives them what was clearly the best rotation in baseball for a period of several hours. Maybe

it's still is but it's a rotation that gives you the impression that Billy Bean is doing all he

can not to leave anything to chance this time. Yeah I have to admit I'm not smitten with this. I

don't have an issue with it. It's just that like I don't know as you know I always try to avoid

getting too hung up on the particular way that a good team is built. I don't particularly care if

a team is great offensively or great with pitching or balanced or anything of the sort and it seems

to me that the reaction to this whole thing is mainly focused on the idea that you need good pitching

especially in the postseason and that's why this is such a great move. And I mean it's

not all that it's partly that Lester is probably better than Cesspitus but I mean it seems to me

...