Okay, I don’t get it. The Red Sox have apparently thrown in the towel and decided to rebuild the team with the third largest payroll in baseball. (Behind the Yankees and Phillies – who also have been slowly tossing in the towel.) In a trade like none I have ever seen (in over 40 years of baseball watching) the Red Sox unloaded three all stars Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and another guy Nick Punto to the LA Dodgers for a poor hitting first baseman: James Loney, a pitcher with a 27.00 ERA in his one start, a double A pitcher and Ivan De Jesus. In other words this was a massive salary dump by Red Sox, around $260 million. The Red Sox are basically saying, “let’s redo what Theo did.”
Okay, maybe I do get it. The Red Sox have been pretty awful since their collapse in September a year ago. Josh Beckett has been the lightning rod of some of that awfulness. Carl Crawford is a free agent they spent a lot of cash on who hasn’t performed well at all for that cash. (He’s not doing as bad as the Met’s Jason Bay though. Sorry I needed to get the Mets in here somehow.) So I guess I can see the Red Sox getting rid of these two guys, especially since Beckett and Sox manager Bobby Valentine will never be lunch buddies. The thing that I don’t get is trading Adrian Gonzalez. He’s having an “off year” at .300 with 15 homers and 86 RBI’s and he may be the best fielding first baseman in baseball. I guess in order for the Red Sox to unload Beckett and Crawford they needed to give up Gonzo.
Okay, I guess I do get it. The Dodgers see this year as their chance to win a world series so they jumped on Gonzo and hoped Beckett can be the Beckett of old in a new environment. Plus they are gambling once Carl Crawford gets healthy he will be the player who resembles deserving that contract he has. The Red Sox figured they were going no where and paying a lot of money to get there. So they unloaded and decided to rebuild. I’m pretty sure it will work out well at least in the short run for the Dodgers. As for the Red Sox, it could work in the long run. But as a famous economist once said, “in the long run we’re all dead.” After all there is no guarantee they will spend their money better this time.
