Thursday, July 31, 2008

Manny Gets His Way, Sails Off to LA-LA Land


Hitting savant and malcontent Manny Ramirez was sent out of Boston to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a three-way deal that included the Pittsburgh Pirates right before the trading deadline.

The Red Sox may have rushed this deal because they gave up a Hall of Fame hitter in Manny, along with a hard-throwing young Reliever in Craig Hansen and solid Outfield prospect Brandon Moss all for Pittsburgh Pirate Outfielder Jason Bay. Plus the Red Sox will be paying $7 million to the Dodgers to cover the remainder of Ramirez' 2008 salary!

Unlike Pittsburgh's deal with the Yankees last week, it appears the Pirates got the best of Sox GM Theo Epstein this week. While Jason Bay is an All-Star Outfielder, he will be 30 soon and as an NL hitter, it remains to be seen if he can protect David Ortiz in the line-up against stronger AL pitching. Also, the Red Sox still never got the bullpen help they so desperately needed. Meanwhile, Yankees GM Brian Cashman only gave up 4 prospects (and not Ian Kennedy) who were a few years away from the Majors to the Pirates for left-handed Relief specialist Damaso Marte and OF Xavier Nady, who has similar stats to Jason Bay.

Sure Jason Bay is a lot cheaper (he only makes $6-8 million) but this is Boston, so it shouldn't be about the money. Besides Bay's agent is Scott Boras, so he'll look to double that money when he is a free agent after next year. Nor is 'addition by subtraction' a good excuse for this deal because we're only talking about putting up with Manny for 2 more months and the Red Sox with their inconsistent pitching and slumping bats were barely on track to make the play-offs with Manny but now their chances are worse without him.

In short, the Pirates gained 2 good players and 2 prospects and the Dodgers gained a happy Hall of Fame hitter for 2 months in a contract year to bolster their play-off chances (plus 2 first round draft choices should Manny not sign in LA). All so the Red Sox could lose their headache and PR nightmare for 2 months. So if the Sox were really willing to give away this much to get rid of Manny, then why the heck couldn't this deal have been made for Mark Teixeira?!?

2 comments:

Greg said...

I agree, the fact that this all came together so quickly certainly hurt the Sox and appears curious, at best. My only belief is that Manny's upset Henry and Werner so much this past week, that they were the ones who got in Theo's ear and said, "Enough's enough."

I posted a few similar thoughts on my blog too.

Anonymous said...

Good summary.. I agree.