Perhaps it is overstating things to say that it is the main reason the Arizona Diamondbacks paid money to the Minnesota Twins on Thursday in exchange for right-handed reliever Matt Bowman, but it’s impossible to draw a connection between the trade and the now-famous bee incident from earlier this week. The Diamondbacks and Dodgers’ game in Arizona on Tuesday was postponed for almost two hours due to a swarm of bees that had gathered at the top of the netting behind home plate. The D-Backs used seven relievers in a 10-inning victory over the Dodgers as a result of Jordan Montgomery being removed from his scheduled start. Montgomery ended up starting on Wednesday and only lasted three innings, further stressing the bullpen. The Diamondbacks then wired money to the Twins on Thursday in order to get Bowman ahead of the waiver wire line. Had Bowman made it to the waiver wire—the procedure that was followed after the Twins released him—he would have been available for selection since he is a veteran who has run out of minor-league options. It doesn’t really matter why Arizona spent a lot of money to acquire Bowman; what matters is that the 32-year-old reliever now provides the worn-out D-Backs bullpen with a 32-year-old arm that was pitching 7.2 innings in Minnesota, giving up just two runs while striking out six and walking four. Can the Twins express their gratitude to the bees for giving them something when they would not have gotten anything else? We might never find out…Was the Diamondbacks’ trade of Matt Bowman to the Twins motivated by the Arizona Bee incident?
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