It has not been No. 1. That position has been reserved, probably permanently, for the New York Yankees, but it has been second most every year,

Can anyone find a quote from Luccino that does not mention the Yankees? He seems to work it in there no matter what the topic.

Oh come on. It's a payroll and spending question. Pointing out that no matter how much sports writers or fans complain, that the team will not out-spend the Yankees is a pertinent point (and would be the elephant in the room if it went unmentioned). And yes, I have seen plenty of interviews where he didn't discuss the Yankees. Like when they were discussing the collapse of the team in September, or Theo leaving.

I'm more interested in the idea that the Sox will "eclipse" the CBT again. If they're going to be over, why are they giving away a starting SS for nothing and why haven't they added another SP? The moves have saved a minor amount of money, and if the goal isn't to get under that limit, why nickel and dime starting positions?

OCD SS: I think they are resigned to the fact that they will end up over the tax threshold in 2012, or that they are likely to be over the number. Remember, it's not like they pay a flat number after they exceed the cap - they pay a "tax" on each dollar above the threshold, so dumping Scutaro is, for them, more than saving his salary - it's saving his salary X the cap penalty. They're going to be over...the question is not if Marco was worth $6m. It's whether he was worth $6m plus the tax. When you do the math like that, you see that it was a more significant salary dump, and an easier position to justify.

They traded Scutaro because they don't think he can play SS anymore. I really think its that simple. They figured they could get something decent for him, so they picked up his option.

They figured they could get something decent for him, so they picked up his option.

Bad gamble then, if the upside is Mortensen and the downside is getting stuck with him.

But they got nothing whatsoever for him, let along something decent. I have a really hard time believing that the Red Sox were trying to trade Scutaro for three months and the best they could do was a guy who can't get minor league hitters out. The terrible return makes me think that the club was forced into a trade by the Crawford injury, the possible need for another arm, and the payroll limit.

that the team will not out-spend the Yankees is a pertinent point (and would be the elephant in the room if it went unmentioned)

No, it's not. I don't think anyone in the know about these things would seriously propose that the Sox must actually outspend the Yankees in order to compete. Spending enough money to put a competitive team on the field is a completely different standard than leading the world in payroll.

If you take the clause about the Yankees completely out of Luccino's statement above, it doesn't change his point in any way. It doesn't weaken his argument in any way. He would just have blown through a sentence about payroll without whining about the Yankees, which seems to be his genetic predisposition. "We're in the top three of payroll every year" would have sufficed.

They traded Scutaro because they don't think he can play SS anymore.

Then either our defense projections are way wrong (entirely possible) or Scutaro has declined massively in two years (less likely). Though he did turn 35.

What's amazing to me is that Scutaro's career high in OPS+ was...2011???? WHAT??? It actually beat the year that got him the starting gig in Boston in the first place.

LARRY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then either our defense projections are way wrong (entirely possible) or Scutaro has declined massively in two years (less likely). Though he did turn 35.

His defense DID decline massively in two years. He had major shoulder and neck issues and his throwing hasn't been the same. His throwing arm is no longer acceptable for a starting SS.

I'm with Darren. The Sox decided they didn't want to pay $6M for a guy who can't make throws from the hole at SS. Why does no one who pans the trade acknowledge the fact that the only team that was willing to pay for Scutaro was a team that wanted to play him at second base rather than SS? It's pretty clear that no one in baseball thinks he can handle being a shortstop anymore.

The Red Sox traded a redundant second baseman to save some cash, and people are acting like they dumped Nomar in his prime.

Then either our defense projections are way wrong (entirely possible) or Scutaro has declined massively in two years (less likely). Though he did turn 35.

Project this:


Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 2/11/2012.

And note that his 2011 numbers were in limited playing time.

To be fair, any contending team who dumps their SS from the previous season with no evident successor by Valentine's Day would be subject to a fair bit of second-guessing.

Scutaro projects as an average offensive player. We're not saying he projects as worse than average, right? Second base is a more difficult than average position. So you have a league average offensive player with the glove to handle an up-the-middle position. That's the worst-case scenario on Scutaro that's been laid out.

An average hitter who can play 2B is worth more than $6M. The return was very low, even if you think he's nothing but a second baseman at this point.

And, it happened right after Crawford was reported out for the spring, and a couple days later the club spent half the money saved on a new 4th OF and Crawford replacement. The narrative of an unplanned rush trade to free up payroll fits the facts quite a bit better.

The Sox decided they didn't want to pay $6M for a guy who can't make throws from the hole at SS.

Well, by exercising the option on Scutaro they, in fact, decided they were willing to take on that risk. A simpler solution, had it been their plan all along not to have Scutaro, not to pay him $6m, and to get effectively nothing in return, would have been to decline the option. It would've cost them $1.5m in a buyout, or Scutaro could have exercised his $3m option. But it never came to that.

I suppose it's possible - and I've even suggested the possibility elsewere - that as the offseason evolved Scutaro's defense became less acceptable because of other happenings (Crawford's injury, picking up some groundball-happy pitchers) and they punted*. It's also possible that they're over budget. It's also possible that they had exercised the option with the intent all along of finding someone else to take the contract. Of these, I find the latter the least plausible by far.

* Not to be confused with Punto'ed, although one could argue the concept is similar.

The narrative of an unplanned rush trade to free up payroll fits the facts quite a bit better.

But what's the rush? It's not like the $6m to Scutaro was due that week. At this point in the year it's just a number on a page.

According to the Denver Post, the Rockies had targeted Scutaro for 2B at the start of the offseason, that they "aggressively pursued Scutaro for weeks", and that the deal went through once the Rockies "were able to work through some financial issues" in order to take on the contract.

The narrative of a rush trade fits well if we assume that Cherington would not be allowed to go over a threshold at any point, even if they would end up under the threshold when it mattered. This narrative assumes that the business of the Boston Red Sox is being managed by people who can't comprehend how to run a business, people who think A must happen before B and that it's unpossible for B to happen first.

The narrative of a rush trade fits well because we were suddenly hit with the surprise news of a trade... that apparently had been in the works for weeks.

The narrative of a rush trade fits well only if sensible activities beyond our vision didn't actually happen. It fits only if we believe in the irrationality of all parties involved - except us, the least informed.

Unplanned? Possibly. (And I don't mean that to sound dismissive. As I indicated in #13, at one point in the offseason they took action to retain Scutaro at $6m, so the fact that they reversed this decision within a couple of months does make it seem unplanned.) Rush? I doubt this. But the whole narrative hinges on it being a rush. The rush is what "explains" the irrational behavior of the trade. But then you need more irrational behavior to justify the rush in the first place. It seems like a house of sports-talk-radio cards to me.

TVerik, from where I sit, the person who seems the most sensitive to the Yankees leading the world in payroll is you. I really don't have a problem with everyone else in baseball pointing out that the Yankees have needed to outspend everyone in baseball by a healthy margin to maintain their success.

As to Scutaro, I can buy that the Sox don't think that he'll be able to play SS, but I'm a bit more skeptical of Punto/ Avilles matching his production. It seems to me that you need to be both pretty pessimistic about Scutaro and pretty optimistic about P/A for that to come close. While I do concede that the we're not talking about a huge swing (probably a 1-2 win difference), given the competition in the AL East, that swing looks like it's going to be significant.

Remember, it's not like they pay a flat number after they exceed the cap - they pay a "tax" on each dollar above the threshold, so dumping Scutaro is, for them, more than saving his salary - it's saving his salary X the cap penalty. They're going to be over...the question is not if Marco was worth $6m. It's whether he was worth $6m plus the tax. When you do the math like that, you see that it was a more significant salary dump, and an easier position to justify.

And this is why it's actually confusing. Even at a 40% Tax rate, the Sox are haggling over less than $2M on a $180M+ payroll. If Scutaro wasn't just a salary dump they probably could've got a better prospect back by eating some of his salary, but the reports were that the deal with Rockies went down because they would take his entire contract. My view of the team is that they would always try to add talent in such a deal, so the fact that they went for the dump was a bit disconcerting.

TVerik, from where I sit, the person who seems the most sensitive to the Yankees leading the world in payroll is you. I really don't have a problem with everyone else in baseball pointing out that the Yankees have needed to outspend everyone in baseball by a healthy margin to maintain their success.

I have no problem with you pointing at the spending, but, to be fair, if you're going to link it to performance, you should not that not only have they outspent everyone else, they've outperformed everyone else by a fair margin.

Best record in MLB, 14 out of 15 playoff appearances (with the 2nd best team in their division) and 5 WS.

It's not like they're outspending everyone just to match the Twins success level.

They figured they could get something decent for him, so they picked up his option.

Bad gamble then, if the upside is Mortensen and the downside is getting stuck with him.

The upside was better than Mortensen, potentially. They didn't know the exact trade market for Scutaro at the time. In retrospect, picking up the option worked out fine because they didn't get burned in any way. If they decline the option, they pay $1.5 million for nothing. They ended up saving the $1.5 million and getting a guy who was a chance (albeit small) of helping with their pitching depth.

Its really very simple. Scutaro cannot play SS anymore. He was not going to be the starting SS for the Red Sox in 2012, and there wasnt exactly an opening at 2B. So they traded him for whatever they could get. $6.5M + tax was way too much to pay for a marginal upgrade on Nick Punto as a backup infielder.

The only questionable decision involved was the original decision to pick up his option. I tend to think they overestimated their ability to get something of value in a trade. That they could only get Mortensen back despite a hell of a lot of bad middle infielders starting across the majors suggests that I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

Oh, and any talk about the Red Sox being "cheap" is asinine. You could argue they've been stupid with their money, but not cheap.

My understanding is that the Rockies were the first team to volunteer to take on all of Scutaro's salary.

Which isn't to say that other teams wouldn't have done the same thing and/or given a better return than Mortensen. But they sure seemed anxious to get rid of his salary.

Scutaro's 2012 salary for luxury tax purposes is $7.67M. At a 40% rate the tax bill would have been a little over $3M, meaning he would have cost the Sox more than $9M. That's not a terrible deal, but it's probably about the break even point for how he projected. He wasn't dragging them down, but he wasn't providing positive value either, especially not with the relatively small drop off to Punto/Aviles. Not exercising the option didn't make sense, since they'd have been on the hook for $1.5M and gotten nothing. With his ability to play SS every day in serious question, a trade made the most sense. The Rockies, with most of the offseason completed, were the only team to have offered to take on his whole salary. Maybe they could have waited and gotten a better deal -- or maybe Colorado would have moved on and found a different second baseman.

In the end, I don't think it's going to make a big difference one way or the other. Scutaro's Value Over Replacement Puntaviles, is small, if it exists at all, and the money saved isn't a big deal to a team with Boston's revenues. The 2012 season will rise or fall on how well and how often the core of Pedroia/Gonzalez/Ellsbury/Lester/Beckett/Buchholz/Bard plays.

Hate to be "that guy" and interject this little tidbit, fanning the flames of some "sports-talk" radio-type banter, but if they planned on trading Scutaro....why move Lowrie too? Why not KEEP Lowrie, the SS making league min?

Because Lowrie is not that good and can't stay healthy. Jed Lowrie is good at one thing, hittin lefties. His defense is poor, he cant hit righties and he's got no speed.

Alternatively, why not keep Lowrie and Scutaro, get a top pitcher, and ditch Fatso. THERE's the dead weight on the Sox payroll!

Better still, replace Fatso with Manny -- better hitter and $10m cheaper.

Can anyone find a quote from Luccino that does not mention the Yankees? He seems to work it in there no matter what the topic.

Can anyone find a Red Sox thread where TVErik doesn't have one of the first ten comments, usually a querolous question or semi-clever comeback? He seems to work one in no matter what the topic.

I feel like the evaluation of the Scutaro trade has moved from "if Scutaro can't play defense and if every other club in baseball knows that, then this trade makes sense" to "Scutaro can't play the field and every other club in baseball does know that, so it was a good trade." The former is plausible, the latter is assuming lots of facts not in evidence. Scutaro's UZR in 2011 was league average, and his TZ numbers before 2011 were cromulent. The "Scutaro can't field" argument is dependent on a single season of a single defensive stat and some amateur evaluations. It's certainly possible that Scutaro can't field, but I don't see why anyone should be certain of that, and why it's unreasonable to evaluate the trade based on Scutaro's actual projections.

I also have a lot of trouble reconciling the Red Sox use of Aviles and Scutaro in 2011 with this evaluation. If Aviles is good enough to be 1/3 of a starting shortstop, and Scutaro is so bad he shouldn't be starting at shortstop, why did Aviles, in his two months with the club, only play shortstop when Scutaro was injured in late August?

I don't think the Scutaro trade killed the offseason, but it seems there are a lot of assumptions you have to make in order to fit the trade into a narrative where the Sox as an organization have a clear plan for the offseason laid out in November and executed through to spring. I think something weird is going on with the Sox payroll and budget, possibly having to do with factionalism and poor communication among ownership and baseball operations.

To add to the Aviles point, if the plan was always to trade Scutaro, that means the plan was always to have Little Nicky Punto as the primary shortstop and Mike Aviles or Jed Lowrie as his caddy. Punto's been solid in part-time roles, but I'm skeptical he's going to translate as an everyday player - through his career, for the most part, the more he plays, the worse he plays. And Aviles, as I said, was treated as clearly inferior to Scutaro last year, but now he's a platoon regular?

It's certainly possible, again, that this is a good idea and it's possible that it was the plan all along. It doesn't look like a good idea, by the numbers, and there's little evidence in reporting that this was the plan all along.

I feel like the evaluation of the Scutaro trade has moved from "if Scutaro can't play defense and if every other club in baseball knows that, then this trade makes sense" to "Scutaro can't play the field and every other club in baseball does know that, so it was a good trade."

The notion that they picked up his option with the full intent of finding someeone else to take on the contract so they could save the $1.5 million buyout... To me it's a reach. If they intended not to play him because he's that bad, then picking up the option - taking the risk that they couldn't find a buyer and would have to pay him $6m to be a PH - is not worth it.

I suppose if they'd assumed Ortiz would decline arbitration, an alternate plan of using the DH spot to rotate Youkilis and Scutaro through would've been possible - but only if Scutaro's option were picked up. Once Ortiz accepted arb, Scutaro became redundant. To me that's one of the few cases where picking up Scutaro's option was part of the offseason strategy, as was trading him away: if he were a contingency plan. Otherwise, picking up the option and trading him away suggests a change in plan.

The notion that they picked up his option with the full intent of finding someeone else to take on the contract so they could save the $1.5 million buyout... To me it's a reach. If they intended not to play him because he's that bad, then picking up the option - taking the risk that they couldn't find a buyer and would have to pay him $6m to be a PH - is not worth it.

The risk was only having a $4.5 million infielder that you (apparently) didn't want to start, because the other $1.5 million would have been paid either way. So I think picking up the option was a no-brainer.
I understand all of the SS moves individually, but I just am not happy that it seemingly ended with Punto/Aviles/Iglesias.

I think something weird is going on with the Sox payroll and budget, possibly having to do with factionalism and poor communication among ownership and baseball operations.

Hmmm. I tend to assume that while Boston makes mistakes, like any org, that they know what they are doing and work well as a group--that is LL's history, mostly, in spite of his bluster.

With Scutaro moving to the NL West, I will see him more this year, and will be paying attention to his D.

The Sox decided they didn't want to pay $6M for a guy who can't make throws from the hole at SS. Why does no one who pans the trade acknowledge the fact that the only team that was willing to pay for Scutaro was a team that wanted to play him at second base rather than SS? It's pretty clear that no one in baseball thinks he can handle being a shortstop anymore.

It's not clear that the Rockies thought Scutaro can't handle SS, much less every other team in baseball. It seems clear that no one else wanted to take Scutaro at his salary at that point in the offseason, but a lot of teams either 1) don't think Scutaro is a $6M improvement on their current SS or 2) aren't looking to spend $6M on a SS.

Its really very simple. Scutaro cannot play SS anymore. He was not going to be the starting SS for the Red Sox in 2012, and there wasnt exactly an opening at 2B.

If the Sox knew that Scutaro can't play SS, why did they play him there every day down the stretch ahead of Lowrie/Aviles?

If the Sox knew that Scutaro can't play SS, why did they play him there every day down the stretch ahead of Lowrie/Aviles?

Lowrie and Aviles were playing 3b because Youkilis was injured. On some days they did choose Scutaro to start over Lowrie ... but they have also traded Lowrie away so I think that is consistent.

I'm with MCoA on this one at this point. The sequence of events is just confusing. The one thing I'm wondering is if the Sox have seen something from Iglesias this off-season that makes them confident that he will be a contributor sooner than later on this team. If Iglesias could hit the ground running by say June 1 as a .250/.290/.350 hitter with GG level defense he would probably be an upgrade over what Scutaro would provide.

Personally I don't think he can hit that well yet (if ever) but I find myself wondering if that's the X factor here. The trade itself just seems odd.

Incidentally, did Theo make the call on Scutaro? Is all of this possibly just a function of one GM valuing a player differently from another GM?

I've also been wondering if Iglesias is going to get much more playing time than anticipated.

I've also been wondering if Iglesias is going to get much more playing time than anticipated.

Me too. To me, it would be one thing if Iglesias was displacing Scutaro at SS with Scutaro still on the team, because most people would ignore defense and just howl that Scutaro's bat was better, so why isn't he starting, etc., etc.

With Aviles/Punto as the SS tandem--neither of which is likely to go .300/.350 or anything like that (nor dazzle you with the glove)--it becomes far easier to install a GG-caliber SS with Belanger-like hitting ability, because there's not a huge perceived offensive drop-off.

I wouldn't at all be surprised to see Iglesias get 80 games at SS in 2012, when all is said and done.

I also never thought Scoots was Lugo-esque in his defense.

Lowrie and Aviles were playing 3b because Youkilis was injured. On some days they did choose Scutaro to start over Lowrie ... but they have also traded Lowrie away so I think that is consistent.

When Lowrie was playing 3B, why didn't they play Aviles at SS? Or vice versa?

Youkilis started 9 games at 3B in September. Of those, Scutaro started 7 at SS and Lowrie started twice at SS. Aviles didn't start in any of those 9 games.

When Lowrie was playing 3B, why didn't they play Aviles at SS? Or vice versa?

Fair question. I have no answer. Maybe Bobby V would have plugged in Aviles...

It's entirely possible that Theo and/or Francona had a higher opinion of Scutaro's defense than Cherington and Valentine do. It's not like we're talking about the same people making the decision to play Scutaro in September as the people deciding to trade him now. It seems likely that the new regime is more bullish on Aviles' ability to play

And Scutaro was one of the few players who was actually hitting well in September, so it would've been harder to justify benching him at the time, even if they weren't in love with his defense. And Francona has always been a manager with loyalty towards his guys, so it's not surprising to see him favor the status quo, especially during a time when the team was in a full-on collapse. Hell, during the collapse he even started playing JD Drew, who hadn't hit anything all year and who hadn't even faced live pitching in months!

Incidentally, did Theo make the call on Scutaro? Is all of this possibly just a function of one GM valuing a player differently from another GM?

The Scutaro option was picked up after Epstein was gone.

The Scutaro option was picked up after Epstein was gone.

Thanks, I couldn't remember the timeline.