The Red Sox parted with the last of the Killer B’s… but it didn’t have to be this way
One of the last free agents of note this off season signed with a new team last week: Jackie Bradley Jr. signed a two-year, $24 million deal with the Brewers that includes an opt-out after just one season. It might be tough to see how he fits into that outfield, but every little bit helps in what should be a hyper competitive NL Central where it’s likely that only the division winner will make the playoffs. After parting with Mookie Betts last year and Andrew Benintendi earlier this offseason, JBJ’s departure marks the end of Boston’s Killer B era. The Red Sox did not have to go in this direction.
I made my feelings on the Mookie Betts trade very clear when I wrote up the Red Sox team preview for BtBS last year. It was unacceptable. Mookie Betts on a $400+ million contract is just better than Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs, and Connor Wong. There is no trophy for having the most efficient $/WAR team. The object of team building is to win games.
Even if Verdugo, Downs, and Wong exceed their expectations, this trade will go down in baseball infamy. It’s a textbook example of how broken the economics of baseball are nowadays. It set a stage that made this type of thing normal. The recent trades of Francisco Lindor and Nolan Arenado trades now joining it.
JBJ isn’t the elite center fielder he used to be, and he is unlikely to reproduce his 2020 line of .283/.364/.450, but he’d easily be an upgrade in the field over Verdugo, who is likely no better than a 50-grade fielder there. JBJ is likely at least a full grade better than that, though reasonable people can disagree. At the very least he’d provide some much-needed depth to the Red Sox outfield.
Roster Resource currently lists Marwin González as their only bench outfielder, and I definitely would not play him in center. Who knows if Franchy Cordero will be healthy and productive enough to fill in there with any kind of regularity. Hunter Renfroe might be okay to play there on occasion, but he’s played just 15 innings in center in parts of 5 Major League seasons.
Still, why not just bring JBJ back if $24 million was all it was going to cost? His $12 million 2021 salary is just $1 million more than his pre-pandemic 2020 salary! It looks as if the Red Sox at least intend to be competitive this season, yet they have very little position player depth.
The Benintendi trade is the one move which can be argued to be defensible, but even that move could quickly turn sour for the Red Sox. Benintendi appears to be on the decline, and Franchy Cordero might still be able to tap into the potential that scouts have been dreaming on for years now. On the other hand, Cordero has only played in 95 games since his debut in in mid-2017, hitting just .236/.304/.433 in 315 career plate appearances. Put another way, Cordero might have the higher ceiling, but Benintendi has a higher floor.
Even if one wants to make a good faith argument that the Benintendi trade was a good one for the Red Sox, it would’ve been unnecessary to take a chance on Cordero if they had just hung on to Betts. There’s less of a need to gamble on what is essentially scrounging for extra wins when you have a player that you can comfortably rely on to post a 7+ WAR season.
Many have derisively referred to the Red Sox as the Tampa Bay Red Sox, and for good reason. The Benintendi/Cordero trade is precisely the kind of move the Rays would make. It’s their choice — and it’s always a choice — not to spend money. It’s just not good for baseball to have a large market team behave like a small market one.
-Luis Torres
