I, for one, will miss Jed Lowrie.

The 15-Day IL
I, for one, will miss Jed Lowrie.

That is just *chef's kiss* fantastic. Lowrie was always my go to when discussing injury prone players. *This* injury is unique, just a one-off thing, so he'll be fine next season...

he made $20 million as a Met for 2019-2020 and went a combined 0-for-7.

to be fair, he also drew a walk - and only 4 of the outs were by strikeout !

I'm always surprised that Lowrie was around. I mentally retired him in 2019.

Come and listen to my story about a man named Jed
Drafted by the Sox and he made a lot of bread,
But he couldn't hit the ball and was sittin' on the bench,
Then he got traded and he smelled that awful stench.

Houston that is, black gold, Texas tea.

Well, the next thing you know ol Jed's an Oakland A,
Made the All-Star team in 2010 (and 8)
His agent said, "Everybody come and place your bets!"
So he signed a ten-mil deal with the hapless New York Mets

Oh-for-seven. Drew a walk, tho.

I remember Lowrie as he was heading up the Red Sox farm system in the mid-2000s, knowing he had a chance of being a real contributor...but also remembering he got lost in the wave of prospects the team had coming up at that time. Today, his progress through the Red Sox system would have been one of the biggest stories in what is a much less impressive farm system, but here were his peers in Boston's farm system at the time he was coming up:

Ahead of him in the system's ranking in 2005 included: Dustin Pedroia, Jon Lester, Jonathan Paplebon, Hanley Ramirez, and Jacoby Ellsbury. He was at the same tier as Clay Buchholz, as well as a bunch of outfielders who ended up having careers, like David Murphy, Brandon Moss, and Josh Reddick.

This, plus the team's ability to spend money on big names to fill holes, plus winning a couple of World Series and almost winning a few more, I believe had the effect of the team undervaluing many prospects. I mean, Lowrie had some pop, and could ably play virtually every position on the diamond, but was part of the compensation to Houston for...Mark Melanson. At that time (late 2000s and early 2010s), there was a sense among the fan base (and I think the organization) that major-league contributing talent just grew on trees like some kind of auto-pilot, free resource.

When I think of Lowrie, that's what I think of - a good player who was a microcosm of the good old days, when my team was a "$100 million player development machine", as Theo Epstein once described Boston's mission. Players like this truly seemed like an endless resource for a dominant team, to the point of taking it for granted. I hope New Englanders were appreciating how special times were in that peak period.

Yeah, then came the fallow years of the early 2010's. Sox Prospects list April 2011:

1 Ryan Kalish
2 Jose Iglesias
3 Anthony Ranaudo
4 Drake Britton
5 Stolmy Pimentel
6 Felix Doubront
7 Oscar Tejeda
8 Yamaico Navarro
9 Lars Anderson
10 Kolbrin Vitek
11 Ryan Lavarnway
12 Josh Reddick
13 Will Middlebrooks
14 Brandon Workman
15 Sean Coyle
16 Garin Cecchini
17 Che-Hsuan Lin
18 Kyle Weiland
19 JC Linares
20 Junichi Tazawa

They got one legitimate star out of all that (Xander was just below #20, showed up later that summer @ 18). 2 other guys became stars for other teams (one being Anthony Rizzo who was #3 on the fall 2010 list before his trade)-and that was pretty much it, aside from 1 still-active utility infielder. Otherwise it was a bunch of busts and flameouts and injury cases.

Thanks for reminding me how happy I was to have Lars and Lavarnway on my DMB roster back in the day.

Wow, a Stolmy Pimental sighting!

Am I the only one who would get Reddick and Lowrie confused?