Oakland A’s trade Coco Crisp to Indians for LHP Colt Hynes

The Oakland A’s traded outfielder Coco Crisp to the Cleveland Indians on Wednesday. In return, they received 31-year-old LHP Colt Hynes. To take Coco’s spot on the roster, the team promoted 2B Joey Wendle from Triple-A Nashville.

News of Coco’s imminent departure was reported Tuesday, but the deal is now official. The 36-year-old is having a decent season but is clearly past his prime, and he no longer made a lot of sense on a rebuilding A’s team. He instead moves to the first-place Indians, the team with which he made his MLB debut back in 2002. His seven seasons in Oakland made him the club’s longest-tenured player, but now he’ll get a shot to compete in the postseason with Cleveland.

Colt Hynes is what is known as a peppercorn. He’s literally a baseball player, so this is literally a baseball trade, but he serves as organizational filler. He’s a 31-year-old left-handed pitcher with 20 career MLB innings to his name, and the majority of his innings this year came in Double-A. There are stats, but they aren’t important. Getting traded for Coco Crisp will probably go down as the highlight of his career. With all due respect to Colt and his loved ones. This paragraph came off kind of mean.

We’ll have a lot more to say about Coco over the next couple days, so stay tuned. For now, the important thing is the trade is official. Best of luck to Coco in Cleveland. We will always love you. Lean on, brother.