by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

OAKLAND–On Friday November 28, the day after Thanksgiving and commonly known as Black Friday, A’s General Manager and co-owner Trader Billy Beane struck again. He traded the biggest star he had left, to the Toronto Blue Jays, All Star Josh Donaldson, for a bevy of players.

The Oakland Athletics won the 2012 and 2013 American League Western Division, but this year after trading his clean-up hitter Yoenis Céspedes to the Boston Red Sox for the great Jon Lester, the team finished in second place and was eliminated in a one-game playoff against Kansas City, who eventually won the American League pennant.

On July 31(trade deadline)the Athletics traded Yoenis Céspedes to Boston for left handed pitcher Jon Lester. On November 28, the team traded All Star third baseman Josh Donaldson to the Toronto Blue Jays for infielder Brett Lawrie, shortstop Franklin Barreto, pitchers Kendal Graveman and Sean Nolin.

Donaldson who received the call by General Manager Billy Beane said he was “shocked”. “It doesn’t make sense to me,” outfielder Josh Reddick said. “We traded our best player the past two years.” It seems like we’re going into a rebuilding drive. Brett Lawrie is the only player that is coming from Toronto among those traded to Oakland that has experience at the major league level, he is a solid fielder, a very intense player that can play third base, but also is very injury prone. On the positive side for the A’s, Lawrie is also 4 years younger than Donaldson. Barreto is a long way from making it to the major leagues and the other two pitchers are also prospects not close to the majors.

Josh Donaldson, who originally began as a catcher, has been a solid third baseman for the Oakland Athletics, specially becoming well known across the country during the past two seasons. This year Donaldson hit 29 home runs and drove in 98 runs, in 2013 he had an even better year finishing with a .301 average and was part of the solid one-two punch in the A’s in the A’s lineup hitting ahead of Céspedes. José Bautista the Blue Jay slugger is one of the happiest people after learning of this deal. Josh Donaldson’s swing is almost a replica of that of Bautista, and they are very good friends.

With this trade the Toronto Blue Jays got even stronger in the Eastern Division, where the Red Sox are re-loading for 2015. The A’s system of moving bodies around continues. It was quite interesting during the media conference call with Billy Beane, one reporter asked the A’s General Manager, about the A’s having the money but not spending it. Beane dismissed the question by tweeting saying it was the first he’d even heard of it, so it had no bearing on the deal. According to Forbes(the people that know about money) and at the beginning of the 2014 baseball season, the Giants’ primary owner, Charles Johnson, is baseball’s richest owner. Forbes estimates his worth at $7.5 billion.

The A’s? Their operating income was $27.4 million, seventh highest in the majors. The magazine said the A’s “play in one of the most antiquated ballparks in baseball and are profitable only because of the league’s revenue-sharing system.” The attendance for the A’s last season was over two million, for the first time since 2005, when they became the first Bay Area major league team to go over 2 million.

So the Athletics Carousel continues, like the famous entertainer used to say “around and around it goes, where does it stops? nobody knows”. An old time A’s fan told me right after the deal: “man, it is tough to buy any new jerseys of A’s players, they are here rented no more than three years”. I told him, we will always have Coco. (Coco Crisp). Coco is the older statesman of the Oakland Athletics.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for A’s baseball and does News and Commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com