Trade Deadline Wrap-up
So the trade deadline has come and gone and the Red Sox have made two deals. One sent Pineiro to the Cardinals for a PTBNL. Good luck to him--he hardly got a chance in Boston.
The other trade, obviously, was the big one. The Red Sox getting Eric Gagne was a good move, but I wouldn’t call it a steal. Kason Gabbard is no Barry Zito, but he’s not filler either. He’s a guy who has been a decent to pretty good in the past 2 years after a few years of injury problems. He’ll be a nice addition to Texas’s rotation if he stays healthy. David Murphy I don’t see as being much. He’s 25 and just getting along in AAA. He might be a passable 4th OF, but there are tons of those around. Engel Beltre, I know little about except that the Sox paid $500K to sign him last year and he’s 17.
Essentially, the Sox gave up a similar amount of talent that they expect to get if they offer Gagne arbitration at the end of the year and someone else signs him. Texas, then, didn’t gain much in talent but managed to shed a good amount of salary while getting players that are closer to helping in the majors. A pretty fair deal for both sides.
The deal that didn’t happen is the one that was the most puzzling from the beginning. Jermaine Dye as a 4th OF, at the cost of Wily Mo plus some decent, young pitcher? That doesn’t seem to improve the team all that much, especially if the pitcher was Delcarmen. In the end, it didn’t happen, which may well be for the best.
(Side note on the Yanks deal: once again, they’ve made out very well at the deadline. A 25-year-old 3B who is a pretty good hitter is far better than a mediocre, overworked reliever. Too bad the Dodgers and Astros didn’t realize that Wheeler/Betemit made more sense for both of them.)
Darren
Posted: July 31, 2007 at 11:03 PM |
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Edit: Curse you Kenny Williams for wanting Wily Mo+ another shiny young pitcher for Jermaine Dye. You sent Iguchi away for nothing..
But who goes if they sign Kielty? The next bullpen guy off the bottom, or Wily Mo? I assume Hinske sticks, because he's lefty power off the bench and because he's the sole backup on both infield corners. I'd prefer to see the bullpen arm ditched and Wily Mo kept. There's no reason, especially since Okajima is no LOOGY, that they can't go with a 6-man pen. That would allow them to carry 14 position players through the August dog days.
I assume Hinske sticks, because he's lefty power off the bench and because he's the sole backup on both infield corners.
Would we get draft pick if we offer him arbitration and he walks at the end of the season?
murphy pisses me off. why didn't he do what i wanted him to do? and engel (really?) beltre is as likely to be adrian beltre as jeff bagwell at this point, i'd have to imagine. so, again, eh.
the dye move made no sense for the sox, and it's hard to believe it was real. i can see the chisox seizing the opportunity with a media generated rumor to up his trade value and try to get something in return from someone for him. but really, what teams in contention really needed a corner outfielder? and of those, which ones made a good fit with the chisox?
i blame chb for the rumor. i can already sense that he smells blood in the water with drew and is awaiting an epic collapse by the sox to lay the blame at drew's feet. "if only we'd had dye!" he'll wail.
see it in your mind: 2001. daubach, troy o'leary, dante bichette, calvin pickering, izzy alcantara, morgan burkhart, hillenbrand, hatteberg. we cornered the market in that particular commodity. do we really want to start stockpiling again?
No. The two times the Yankees got it down to this level and I started to worry a little, it was quickly back up to 9 or more. One thing that's easy to forget when a team starts to lose a chunk off a big lead is that it can just as quickly head in the positive direction again.
Well, if his projected range was genuinely somewhere between Adrian Beltre and Jeff Bagwell, I'd have to say this was a bad deal. Somehow, I think there's probably a little greater variance in his projection than that.
The Gagne deal is of course good. Agree that the compensation picks will probably be worth about what the Sox gave up, so all Gagne really cost is cash.
The Dye stuff made sense so long as the only real asset the Sox gave up was Pena. Dye is substantially better vs LHP than Pena or Drew and they would've gotten picks for him.
I'm usually against deadline deals, but when all you're giving up is spare parts and C+ prospects it's hard to turn them down.
if he turns out to be only somewhere in between those two, i'll still take this deal. he's at least 4 years out from the majors now, is not on anyone's major prospect list, and is probably a high-risk, high-reward player. is it too harsh to say that it seems like those kinds of players are a dime-a-dozen in latin america? and for the record, he's very raw: http://www.soxprospects.com/players/beltre-engel.htm
42 k's in 121 AB! in the GCL! 3 doubles, 3 triples, 5 homers. good power potential, but raw. may be a wily mo type. can play center in a pinch, good arm, but not top flight defense.
The "Is Gagne going to be a Type A?" question isn't one that I think anyone's come up with a good answer to yet.
Rankings are based on two years (he pitched two innings last year), beginning this year it's down to the top 20% are Type A, and he's going to be a setup man mostly, so only sporadic save opps the rest of the way - meaning he can't pump a high-save year to help counteract missing virtually all of last year. It's a question that might not be settled until the rankings come out.
Of course, even a Type B still returns a pick.
I honestly don't know what happened there. Most sources are quite clear that it's based on two years.
Theo was pretty explicit at the press conference in saying that he'd be a type A.
Why, just last week someone said about him: the obvious conclusion is that he's a fringy guy who strung together a few good starts. Maybe he'll actually be better than that, but I see no reason to think it's likely. You two should talk.
If he's a Type B, I'd think so. I'm not familiar with where they draw the lines these days, but I doubt he'd even be a Type B.
No love for Rico Brogna (2000)?
Seriously, depth at certain positions is valuable not only in case something goes wrong for your team, but in trade if something goes wrong with another team. But too much depth, though, hurts your team by restricting your roster and doesn't get much in trade value because you're more desperate to free up roster space than other teams are to do business with you. Everything in moderation.
Depends on how you look at it. Had they signed him in the prior offseason, they'd still get the draft picks, and would still have Gabbard, etc.
I think this goes well with what Darren and I were dickering about before the season. IIRC, Darren had said he'd rather sign Gagne and take his chances because the upside was so worth it than to devote money to... well, I don't remember if the alternative was bullpen depth or bench depth. Whatever the case, I'd suggested that the level of risk around Gagne's recovery is precisely the sort of thing you don't want to devote a lot of guaranteed money to. In the end, Boston let Texas take the risk; and once Gagne demonstrated he bounced back from his injury to be an effective reliever, they picked him (and the draft picks) up in trade for roughly a prorated share of his FA cost, plus the players.
I still don't know if the difference - Pineiro/Romero performance and $, three players traded, four months without Gagne - is the proper "cost" for letting Texas take the risk on Gagne; I suppose it depends on the likelihood of Gagne's bounceback, and we don't know that. Well, I don't know that.
If a tree falls in the forest...
VI,
Thanks for pointing out my self-contradiction.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
I am large, I contain multitudes.
Also, I'm a doofus.
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