MLB Trade Deadline Retrospective: Royals Land Ben Zobrist
By Jason Burke
A year ago today, the Kansas City Royals added a key piece to their championship run at the MLB trade deadline when they acquired Ben Zobrist from the Oakland Athletics.
Before the 2015 season, the A’s added Ben Zobrist and Yunel Escobar in a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays. Four days later they would ship off Escobar to Washington for reliver Tyler Clippard, whom they would send off to the Mets a day before shipping Zobrist to Kansas City.
If that isn’t the most A’s intro ever, then I don’t know what is. They added three players, and within months (or days), they were gone.
The A’s were hit hard with injuries early in the 2015 season, losing their closer from the previous season in Sean Doolittle for what turned out to be nearly the entire season, and even Zobrist missed about a month. The A’s never got off the mat, and were forced to become sellers at the MLB trade deadline, and Zobrist was one of their most prized possessions that became readily available.
Oakland sent Zobrist to the Royals for a tall Samoan lefty named Sean Manaea.
Next: The Zobrist Slide