Magnum Opus

I cannot believe that it has finally happened after five years. FIVE YEARS! There a lots of great memories with Manny. He was one of the 25, as our SOSH brethren like to say. He had some amazing moments both in the regular season and in the postseason. And he provided some real comic relief at times.

With Manny forcing the Red Sox hand, it’s amazing that they were able to pull off the deal that they pulled off. They got a player who is, when you figure in defense and durability, arguably better than Manny, and who is signed through next year at a reasonable price. The cost of this upgrade was adding in Moss and Hansen, who are not among the Red Sox 10 best young players and don’t seem to have much of a future with the team.

Here’s a quick and dirty comparison of Manny and Bay, assuming they will be full-time leftfielders, by Adjusted Batting Runs and UZR (for Manny I assume -15/150 games because that seems to be what people think he is after adjusting for Fenway; ):

Manny
Year: BtRuns, UZR estimate --> total
2006: 49.4, -13 --> 36.4
2007: 20.9, -13.3 --> 6.6
2008: 22.2, -10 --> 12.2
Total: 55.2

Jay Ray Bay
Year: BtRuns, UZR --> total
2006: 36.4, 3 --> 39.4
2007: -5.0, 4 --> -1.1
2008: 21.2, 2 (estimate) --> 23.2
Total: 61.5

Bay’s better in two of three years, in the most recent year, and total. If you attribute his 07 struggles to a knee problem that’s cleared up, it’s not even close.

It’s not the kind of a move that can stop a bullet mid-air, but I think I would have considered making it even without the craziness surrounding Manny these past couple months. At worst, it’s a very nice salvage job.

[Edit: The calculations above do not include Bay’s time in CF because he hasn’t played CF since 2005. But when he did play there, he was brutally awful, putting up -24/150 in limited time.]