Suppose we had made that trade, that step toward salvation, that bottle of snake oil.
Say we had done the deed, sealed the deal, mortgaged the future. Say Brandon Wood and Erik Aybar were on a plane to the minor league teams of Washington or Baltimore. Suppose Ervin Santana was sampling his first Philly Cheesesteak.
Suppose Tejada had been protecting Vlad in the lineup today. Or that Soriano was ahead of him, sitting on the definitive fastball we all know is on its way.
What would it have meant? We would have lost Monday without Santana. Maybe the score would have been 8-4 instead of 3-1, but stop me if I try to convince you Kevin Gregg would of course have thrown 8 innings of 1-run ball. That Soriano would have driven in two runs this afternoon with nobody on base ahead of him...
Don't blame the two losses in this series on not making any trades. And don't discount the fact that the teammates have played together for a while now on digging out those two runs on Tuesday night. A trade may have disrupted the nuances to which season-long teammates react. Get it?
One month ago we were 7.5 games back. Today we are 1.5 games back. Oakland took two of three from us and their fans have been celebrating a World Series victory all afternoon and evening. This is not the best Angels team in recent memory, but as-is, it is good enough to take this division. A trade would not have vastly improved this bunch and could have altered it in the negative radically.