Joel Sherman of the New York Post has a great piece today about how the Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopolous was basically better at his job than Brian Cashman was when it came to the A's sending Josh Donaldson to Toronto.
"... Cashman called Oakland general manager Billy Beane to check in on this, and one of Cashman’s best friends in the game assured him Donaldson was going nowhere.
Here comes the except.
Except Alex Anthopoulos just would not stop calling. He wanted Donaldson, wanted him so badly that “no” was not an acceptable answer.
'Alex is and was certainly relentless,' Oakland assistant GM David Forst said by phone. 'That is his personality. But we didn’t trade Josh to make Alex go away.'
In arguably the key moment of the 2015 season — certainly when it comes to shaping the AL East — Anthopoulos’ untiring efforts were rewarded. If he called about Scott Kazmir or Jeff Samardzija or just to gab, he eventually inquired about Donaldson, dropping hints about what he might be willing to surrender to obtain the third baseman.
Eventually — in the A’s way of thinking — he made an offer that could not be refused. An offer so good that Oakland never shopped Donaldson to a single other team. Not the Yankees. Not anybody."
Here's the reality. First off, it's over now, we can't go back and so what does it matter? Secondly, while Cashman appears not aggressive here in his pursuit of Donaldson, let's not forget, the Yankees were doing their best to not part with the kids in our minor league system...something the Yankee fans really, really wanted! It was the off-season and there was much to be said about Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird and Rob Refsnyder.
As you probably remember, the Rockies were very interested in many of our prospect players for Troy Tulowitzki as we reported from my source inside the Rox camp.
Read SOURCE: ROX WANT "A LOT" OF TOP PROSPECTS FOR TULO for a refresher. That article was all about the names they were throwing around. Good nugget on that internal chatter. In the end, trading our kids would have been a deal breaker and nothing happened... rightly so. But now apply it to the Yankees and Josh Donaldson. It's a combination of us being unwilling to give up prospects and Cashman's lack of aggressiveness that was the result of nothing happening. It happened for the Blue Jays however. They landed Donaldson and ironically, Troy Tulowitzki too.
But what does this story do now for us Yankee fans? It annoys us... or, it at least annoys me. Donaldson is tearing it up in Toronto and you gotta wonder if he'd be tearing it up if he was in New York. Then again, if Donaldson was shitting the bed right now and sucking... would this story even come out? Probably not...
We Yankee fans like the hot players... we always covet what the other teams have after the fact and the media knows this. This one we can't do anything about, other than be mad and feel bad about ourselves... DAMN YOU SHERMAN!
Anyway... I just wanted to share it. Good, interesting piece.
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