Weird & Wild: Trades, Ejections, New Rules, and the Strange But True Red Sox

Baseball gave fans a wild ride this month, filled with strange trades, unusual ejections, and rules that are hard to explain. A manager got thrown out of a game during a rain delay. Two batting champions both went 0-for-6 in the same game on the same team. And the Boston Red Sox kept doing things that left everyone shaking their heads in disbelief.

The trade deadline had some truly odd moments. The Los Angeles Angels traded for two players — and both of them were named Angel. The Philadelphia Phillies added Luis Arraez, a three-time batting champion, to a lineup that already had two-time champ Trea Turner. Having two multi-time batting champions on the same team is incredibly rare in baseball history.

The Los Angeles Dodgers already had Blake Snell, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, on their staff. Then they traded for Tarik Skubal, who also won the award twice. The Cy Young Award goes to the best pitcher in each league each year. Only two other teams had ever done something similar in the same season.

The Houston Astros traded for Daulton Varsho while the Blue Jays were already visiting Houston. Varsho only had to walk across the field to join his new team. But the rules say players get $1,750 in moving expenses no matter where they are. That worked out to about $15,000 per mile for a very short stroll.

Ejections — when players or managers get kicked out of games — have been dropping in recent years. Robot umpires, called Automated Ball-Strike systems, now call balls and strikes, so fewer arguments happen. Last year, there were 77 ball-and-strike ejections through August 11. This year, there were only 10.

Pittsburgh Pirates manager Don Kelly leads all of baseball with six ejections this season. His most creative came on August 2, when he got thrown out during a rain delay. The game was never officially stopped, but the grounds crew spent 25 minutes fixing the soggy field. Kelly had some very loud questions about that decision.

Texas Rangers manager Skip Schumaker earned the best ejection story of the month. He was arguing with an umpire in Houston when 'God Bless America' started playing. He paused his argument to show respect for the song, then picked right back up where he left off. The umpire sent him to the clubhouse shortly after. Schumaker later said, 'I'm a true patriot.'

The Blue Jays and Red Sox spent 17 minutes one night trying to figure out the 'Fourth Out Rule.' The strange part is that there are only three outs in an inning. The rule covers a very rare situation, but it still made everyone's head spin. It is exactly the kind of rule that makes baseball fans both laugh and groan.

Some of the month's weirdest moments happened right on the field. The St. Louis Cardinals blew a six-run lead at Yankee Stadium — and still won the game by six runs. That had never happened before at any version of Yankee Stadium. Toronto Blue Jays reliever Lazaro Estrada earned his first career win, save, and loss all in the same three-game series, which almost no pitcher in history has ever done.

No team this season has been stranger than the Boston Red Sox. In July, they were 11 games below .500. Then they went on winning streaks of 15 and nine games in just 30 games — something no team had ever done before. They won 16 straight games against first-place teams, only to lose a series to the last-place Oakland A's. The Red Sox prove that in baseball, almost nothing makes sense — and that is what makes the sport so exciting.