New year, new Red Sox?
Nobody really knows…
Now that we’ve officially entered 2024, the Red Sox remain in a state of limbo. What direction is Craig Breslow taking this team? Will he make a few more significant moves to try to contend this year? Or does he have his sights on a longterm build for the future?
The reality is the Red Sox haven’t locked themselves into a defined category this offseason. Are they contending or rebuilding?
Offloading Alex Verdugo and Chris Sale could be seen in either light, perhaps clearing salary to make a bigger move or just restocking the talent pool. Tyler O’Neill could simply be a bargain bin replacement for Verdugo, or he could be a player they believe is entering his prime.
Meanwhile, the addition of Vaughn Grissom was certainly a move made with the future in mind. He’s a 23-year-old with 64 major league games under his belt.
One might reason that if the Sox were truly going for it, they would have traded for a Jonathan India or a Jorge Polanco instead of betting on an unproven, yet promising prospect. Or maybe Breslow sees something in Grissom that indicates he’s on the verge of a breakout season. He is the smartest guy in baseball, after all…
Their next move should give us a definitive answer, though.
If they swing for the fences by signing Blake Snell and/or trading for a big name or two, they’re contending. If they opt to bring in Jordan Montgomery to pair with the newly-signed Lucas Giolito (bleh), they’re pretending. And if they do nothing more this offseason, content to rely on the Greg Weisserts and Cooper Criswells of the world, well… I guess you could say they’re Bloom-ing?
At the end of the day, they’re the Red Sox and they should always be contending. But it would be nice to have a sense of what to expect for the coming year. Right now, things are definitely trending toward more of a pretender/rebuild status.
That is, unless you ask Grissom…
“We’re young and exciting,” Grissom said at his introductory press conference on Friday, which was also his 23rd birthday. “This is a kind of a rebuild it seems like, the way I see people talking about it, but like not really, man. We’ve got a good core. So like all it takes is a little heater and you never know what can happen.”
If a rebuild is going to be the case, here’s hoping the Celtics and Bruins go on those long playoff runs we expect them to and that New England is consumed with “Drake Maye/Caleb Williams/Jayden Daniels mania” … because it’s shaping up to be another long year at Fenway.
Breslow holds his own with Sale trade
It was time for another team to be enamored with the potential of a healthy Chris Sale.
Alex Anthopoulos and the Atlanta Braves took the bait (along with a nice chunk of change from John Henry…). In the process, Breslow may have had his “new sheriff in town” moment by getting the upper hand in negotiations with a veteran GM. While Breslow and the Red Sox may have been eager to offload Sale, the Braves weren’t initially willing to pay a premium for him.
Breslow didn’t budge.
“Vaughn Grissom’s not someone we were comfortable trading and wasn’t easy to do,” Anthopoulos told Chuck and Chernoff on Atlanta’s 680 The Fan. “And look, we tried to (say) ‘Can we give you two players who are not as good or three players who aren’t as good?’ And that clearly wasn’t going to happen.”
To see Breslow hold his own against a well-regarded architect of a recent World Series champion is encouraging, especially after getting a seemingly subpar haul in his first major trade of Alex Verdugo to the Yankees.
Breslow identified the player he wanted and waited Anthopoulos out to get his guy. Perhaps trading Sale was more of a luxury than a necessity this offseason in Breslow’s mind and that made him more willing to sit back. No matter, Breslow didn’t panic and take a lesser offer in his mind. Give him credit for that.
Of course, we’re not talking about Danny Ainge fleecing the Nets for picks that would become Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown here, but a prospect like Grissom is a respectable return for a damaged asset like Sale who could no longer be relied upon.
So what exactly appealed to Anthopoulos about a soon-to-be 35-year-old with lots of wear and tear?
“We knew we had two years of club control on Chris,” he said. “From an ability standpoint … yes, he’s had a bunch of injury stuff, the Tommy John is obviously the main one. Look, a lot of the other stuff is some freak things — a rib, a comebacker with a finger, you know, falling off his bike, and look I get it — it’s happened more than once, and you could say he’s prone to injury. Sure, that’s real. … At some point prior to this little period he’s had, he was a durable guy that was able to post in the Cy Young conversation every single year.”
It’s true that Sale used to eat a lot of innings — from 2012 through 2017 (his first season in Boston), he never pitched fewer than 174 innings and topped 200 innings four times in those six seasons. Then once he hit that infamous 30-year-old wall, he averaged a paltry 75 innings per year in the final four seasons of his Red Sox career.
I’m not saying Sale isn’t still a good pitcher. He is. But he’s like an old classic, fixer-upper car at this point. Not advisable to use as your daily driver, but a potential fun reclamation project if you’ve got the time and money.
That is exactly the situation the Braves are in — they’re a team that can afford to bring in Sale in a low-risk, high-reward scenario. If he works out, great — an already strong rotation gets even stronger. If he doesn’t, well, they weren’t pinning all their hopes on him like the Red Sox have been doing for the last few years.
It’s a win-win, in my book. The win-now Braves part with a non-essential prospect to bring in someone with a higher ceiling over a shorter window, while the Red Sox bring in a player who could finally become their long-sought second baseman of the future (and/or give them insurance at shortstop for Trevor Story).
Trading Yoshi?
Masataka Yoshida’s stay in Boston could wind up being a brief one.
The 30-year-old left-handed hitter is reportedly drawing interest around the league along with Red Sox closer Kenley Jansen, according to The Athletic.
Jansen’s name has been floated a time or two already this offseason, but Yoshida’s entry into the rumor mill is a bit surprising. The Red Sox (the old regime, at least) made a significant commitment to the star Japanese outfielder just one season ago, signing him to a five-year, $90 million deal.
It was a deal at the time that raised eyebrows around the league, with some accusing Bloom of an overpay. In reality, the signing wound up being the best move Bloom made during his mostly uneventful tenure in Boston.
Yoshida’s first season in Boston and the majors was solid — a .289/.338/.445 slash line, 15 homers and 72 RBIs in 140 games. At just thirty years old and with four years left on a deal that pays him an average annual value of $18 million, Yoshida seemed like a good fit for the now and the future.
But Yoshida isn’t untouchable. While he had a good first season, Yoshida’s expected power surge never came to fruition. Defensively, he is a liability in left field and seemed destined to fill the DH spot upon Justin Turner’s departure.
If Breslow planned to include Yoshida in a deal that brought back a significant starter while signing Teoscar Hernandez to slot into right field and fill his vacated spot in the lineup, that would be a move I would consider a net positive.
Again, Yoshida isn’t a generational talent. A nice player, and it’s always nice to have another guy who can hit for average in your lineup. But you can find those guys more easily on the market, such as Hernandez. Pitching is the more important need and thus could make Yoshida expendable.
Gary Sheffield embarrasses himself (again)
Twenty years later, Gary Sheffield is still holding onto some sour grapes about being on the wrong side of the greatest comeback in baseball history. The former Yankees right fielder had a bold assessment of what led to those four magical days in October in an appearance this week on Foul Territory show.
“The bottom line is they got lucky, and that’s what happened,” the now 55-year-old Sheffield said.
Sheffield added that Red Sox players like Kevin Millar were “scared” and blamed his former teammates in the bullpen and then manager Joe Torre for the historic collapse (way to have your teammates’ backs there, Gary…).
Maybe Sheffield should look in the mirror, because if I remember correctly… none of the Yankees’ relievers or coaches went 1 for 17 with six strikeouts in those final four embarrassing games like he did.
I’m not exactly sure what Sheffield had to gain by whining about the ‘04 ALCS now. Then again, this is the same guy who in 2005 swung at a Red Sox fan in right field and needed the entire Yankees bullpen and Fenway Park security team to hold him back from jumping into the stands to fight the guy.
Embarrassing, Gary. Just plain embarrassing.
(For the record, put me down as a yes in the “is Sheffield a Hall of Famer?” debate. One of 28 players in the 500-home run club, a career .292 batting average with nearly 2,700 hits and a batting title to go with five Silver Slugger Awards, nearly 1,700 RBIs, six top-10 MVP finishes, nine All-Star appearances and a World Series title in a 22-year career? Seems like an easy call to me…)