Today the Oakland Athletics won the American League West. There are so many cool things about this, I don’t know where to start. I guess we’ll start at the beginning of the season.
Going into the season, the Texas Rangers have played in back to back World Series, had a $121 million dollar payroll, and are expected to win the division. But then in the Angels went on an offseason spending spree because they were tired of losing to Texas. They came in to the season with a $155 million dollar payroll and ready to finally knock off the Rangers. No one bothered to discuss the Athletics.
The Athletics were thought by the experts to be rebuilding. In the offseason they traded away their top two starting pitchers. And their closer. Basically they traded away everyone good for a bunch of players with very little major league experience. They came into the season with a $49 million dollar payroll – the smallest of all 30 major league teams.
And yet they kept winning games. They are so young they don’t even realize they aren’t supposed to win these games. They finished the season with 5 rookies making up their starting rotation. Somehow they went 94-68, finishing ahead of the Rangers (who they swept 3 straight to end the season) and Angels.
One more amazing thing to leave you with: today is the FIRST day of the entire year that they have been alone in first place. Finally, after 162 games they made it. Good time to end the season.
If you want more cool baseball stuff, check out this old post.