Sometimes it’s hard to praise the enemy, but what Ben Cherington did this weekend might live on to be one of the greatest trades in baseball history. In case you haven’t heard yet, the Red Sox GM found a team to trade , , , and . Not only did he lose a huge chunk of future commitments, but he also received a few high upside prospects from the Dodgers.
Jim Davis/Globe Staff
After an offseason where Cherington did little to improve his team, many fans viewed Theo Epstein’s replacement as too docile for a large market like Boston. In retrospect, it’s hard to blame the GM for the actions he made in the fall, as his hands were largely tied by payroll and ownership. What was even worse was that his new adopted team was less than what was promised.
Gonzalez, Beckett, Crawford, and Punto all had their own reasons to fall from favor over the last couple of years. Beckett had his beer and chicken, Crawford had his injuries, Nick Punto was beyond awful, and Gonzalez .
Of the four, the only desirable contract was that of Adrian Gonzalez, who despite a slightly off season in 2012, has proven that he can hit in the big ballparks of the NL West. Then there were two terrible contracts, that of Crawford, who faced a rough season in 2011, and has dealt with numerous injuries this year, including season ending Tommy John surgery last Thursday. He and Gonzalez each have more than $100 million in commitments left until 2017 and 2018 respectively, and Josh Beckett has over $30 million owed until 2014. To take on this amount of money, the Dodgers need Beckett to succeed in their pitcher friendly ballpark, and for Crawford to seamlessly return to his 2010 form.
From a Yankee perspective, the Dodgers have just unlocked the chains holding back the Red Sox for several years to come. While the Red Sox do lose a top first baseman, they have freed themselves of two terrible contracts. Not only can the organization now reinvest this money into free agents like and , but they don’t have the team chemistry issues that haunted the clubhouse. Oh, and somehow Cherington was able to get prospects out of all this. Amongst and , Boston also received , an OF/1B that projects to be at least a 4th outfielder, along with pitchers and Allen Webster, who respectively placed #90 in 2011 and #95 in 2012 on the Baseball America Top 100 Prospects.
If the Red Sox wisely reinvest the $260 million they’ve saved in this trade, and find any luck with the prospects they received, the organization could be looking to compete as soon as next year. With a free agent next year, this will be a completely different organization with only one real bad contract, . I don’t know how Ben Cherinton did it, but he pulled off a heist, curing nearly every disease he inherited.
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3 Responses to Ben Cherington Is A Man Amongst Boys
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TIQ IQ
“If the Red Sox wisely reinvest the $260 million they’ve saved in this trade”
Not to mention how hard it is to actually wisely invest that amount of money (unless you’re buying 3 Mike Trouts and 4 Felix Hernandez’s), we have no reason to believe Ben & Co. actually have the ability to wisely spend money. All they have proven so far is that they make horrible trades and are good at finding suckers to take bad contracts.
This is also not to mention that the time to build your team around FA’s has long past. The FA market is getting more and more horrible as time goes on. Now, if Ben and Co. can make some wise trades, pick up unwanted contracts (like Cliff Lee, or someone) for nothing, and also having an inordinate amount of prospect success (without trading the good ones away), okay, I can get behind that this trade was more good than bad for the Red Sox.
But if even one of those things doesn’t happen, all Ben and Co. have done is make it even more certain that the Red Sox will not be competing any time in the near future. Which is a shame for now-talent guys like Pedroia and Lester, who may not be around for the next Red Sox playoff team, but is a boon for the rest of the AL East.
Invest in Zack Greinke and Josh Hamilton? Please do. Can you imagine those two delicate psyches in the cauldron that is Boston?
This is a trade that Boston had to do and in getting some real prospects and only sending $12 million, Cherington extracted more than what we might think market value should be. That said, he’s going to be challenged to replace Gonzales’ bat in the lineup. This might be the worst free agent class ever if you don’t like the riskiness (and who does) of Hamilton and Greinke. I’d imagine that was at least part of the Dodger’s thinking. I think Ned Colletti is a bad GM but I don’t think this trade is nearly as bad for them as most are making it out to be.