red sox alert

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by dalakhani

If we are looking at this season, which you seem to only want to look at, nady/damon are just as good if not better. They both hit for higher average with higher obp and are every bit as average in the field. In case you havent heard, Bay doesnt have an arm either.

He has a cannon compared to Damon who basically underhands it back in. I will remember all the adoration for Nady when he turns back into a pumkin. Bay is a better player than either of these guys too.

[Cannon Shell]

From Baseball prospectus

"Sent LF-R Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers; sent OF-L Brandon Moss and RHP Craig Hansen to the Pirates; acquired OF-R Jason Bay from the Pirates. [7/31]


However much this wound up being a hail mary or an anticlimax, for the Red Sox, it's a straightforward good move. As improbable as it may or may not be that Bay outproduces Ramirez for the balance of the year—as he has already this season, with an EqA of .319 to Manny's .306—and as much chemistry gets either washed out or restocked or put in the right beakers or whatever metaphor you can torture on behalf of clubhouse amity, this can be seen as a straightforward case of addition by addition. Bay's six and a half years younger and as productive right now, as PECOTA's MORP projections for both men reflect, and in the immediate future there's every reason to expect Bay to be worth what you'd wind up paying and fulfill what you need from a mid-lineup bopper in left; Manny, not so much. As great as Manny's past was, does anyone think he's going to slug .600 again? Because if he doesn't do that, you've got a player doing a lot of the same things Bay does, only with considerably more drama and expense, and with considerably worse defense, however much Red Sox Nation might have been inclined to trot out the standard "but he plays the Wall well" defense that has been a prop for bad-fielding Red Sox left fielders for decades.

That last element matters that much more with David Ortiz back from the DL, because whatever the personality issues in play, the Sox can no longer hide Manny's being Manny in left once their starting DH was back in the lineup. Add in the open question of how enthusiastically Manny would be Manny with a glove on one hand, and you can understand how Theo Epstein and company decided it would be best to just get the entire mess out of their hair with a certain celerity. If not with an assist from the Marlins to swap out Jason Bay, then enlist the Dodgers, but for any god's sake, just get it done already.

The financial benefits of the exchange cannot be understated. Bay's already locked in at $7.5 million for 2009, and will even then be a year short of eligibility as a free agent, meaning that the Sox have him under control in his age-30 and age-31 seasons, at which point they can probably afford to let him go wherever he wishes. Although they're paying Manny to be a Dodger for the remainder of 2008, that's a commitment already made, so in terms of expense, they're only taking on the balance of Bay's salary this season, and against that they're no longer in the position of having to decide whether or not to pick up Ramirez's $20 million options in each of the next two seasons. In terms of what they save, even if the Sox are out roughly $2 million still owed to Bay this year, add that to Bay's salary and they're realizing a savings of at least $10 million for 2009, and perhaps that much again if Bay only costs them roughly that much because of arbitration in 2010. That's a lot of money saved, and add in the $17 million coming off the books because of the expiration of the deals with Curt Schilling and Jason Varitek, and I think it's safe to say that not only did the Sox make a move that doesn't affect their status as players in the playoff picture this year, this trade helps make them even bigger players in this winter's free agency market. This could prove especially important because, whoever else is available, if Yu Darvish gets posted, the more money you have to bring to that auction, the better.

So, in short, Theo Epstein and company did it. The "prospects" they surrendered were filler players in danger of being crowded out of the 40-man, and Manny was the thorn in the franchise's side who'd long since become infectious. As this proposition goes—lancing that wound, saving perhaps more than $20 million over the next two years, not hurting the lineup now while almost certainly helping it in the next season or two to come—taken together the benefits of the trade provide a range of outcomes to keep everyone happy: fans, statheads, bean-counters, and even player-development types worried about the Rule 5 draft. Consider this nothing short of a brilliant achievement, and the product of an inspired effort."