As we mentioned last week, Joe Kelly and Allen Craig learned they had been traded before the St. Louis Cardinals informed them. While it was initially reported that Kelly found out he was dealt to the Boston Red Sox thanks to a television report, the actual story is even more entertaining.
Kelly told Rob Harms of the Boston Globe that he read on Twitter that his team was getting John Lackey. Little did he know it was no longer his team. Kelly recalled chatting with AJ Pierzynski about it.
“Hey, it looks like the Cardinals are going to get Lackey,” Kelly told Pierzynski upon reading a tweet.
“Oh yeah?” Pierzynski said. “How do you know?”
“I’ve got a source on Twitter,” Kelly said.
“Yeah, ’cause everything on Twitter’s true,” Pierzynski responded.
“All right, just wait,” Kelly said.
They waited.
“Fifteen minutes later,” Kelly said Saturday at Fenway Park, after the Sox added him to the active roster, “Lackey was traded.”
But Kelly didn’t know which Cardinals players were involved in the deal.
“I just kept looking, looking, and I was like, ‘Man, I wonder who it could be?’ ” Kelly said. “Then I saw it pop up: [Allen] Craig and Kelly for Lackey.”
Kelly then got a call from his agent and saw the report on MLB Network — all before he was called into a meeting with manager Mike Matheny and GM John Mozeliak to get the official news. Welcome to 2014.
