Red Sox - Acquired Donnelly, Signed Romero, Mirabelli

Boston Red Sox - Acquired P Brendan Donnelly from the Los Angeles Angels for P Phil Seibel; signed P J.C. Romero and C Doug Mirabelli to 1-year contracts.

Donnelly’s still under team control for 2007, so it’s not costing the Red Sox a whole lot.  Donnelly isn’t as dominating a reliever as he was when he first came up, but he’s decent and the Red Sox didn’t have any plans for Phil Seibel.  Seibel, along with the recently signed Darren Oliver, is there to add lefthanded bullpen depth to the Angels, something they didn’t have a week ago.

Romero, on the other hand, is looking kind of used up and I think there’s a good chance that the Red Sox are the team to acquire him a year too late, not let him go a year too early.  The Twins were smart not to keep Romero after that big strikeout drop from 2004-to-2005.  Mirabelli was a disaster in 2006, both on the field (193/261/342) and off, with the Red Sox giving the Padres Cla Meredith, who ended up being one of the best relievers in baseball in 2006, and Josh Bard, who suddenly decided to start htiting, in return for getting Mirabelli back.  It’s nice Tim Wakefield got his personal catcher back, but if the Red Sox have to do so much to get Mirabelli not to mention having him backing up the increasingly fragile Varitek, Wakefield should do a lot better than 7-11, 4.63 in return.

2007 ZiPS Projections 
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Player      W   L   G  GS   IP    H   ER  HR  BB  SO   ERA
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Donnelly    4   4  58   0   58   59   28   7  22  48  4.34

Romero      4   3  69   1   61   58   30   5  33  52  4.43 

Seibel      4   4  20  12   69   71   35  13  20  50  4.57
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Player        AB   R    H  2B 3B  HR RBI  BB  SO  SB    BA   OBP   SLG 
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Mirabelli    159  15   34   8  0   6  23  16  81   0  .214  .304  .377
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