Where was this careful approach to getting, and then keeping when you had a chance for a makeup, on Verdugo? It's still tone-deaf to bring Verdugo in.
I don't buy that he had the weakest hand. He had the best player, and maybe even the 2nd best player, and a trade partner that desperately wants a WS ring. He had the strongest hand.
I'm still happy Bloom is in charge of the rebuild, but I don't have to be happy that there's a rebuild in the first place, for big-market team, and that the major part of the rebuild is trading away your best positional home-grown player in ages for a guy with a checkered off-the field past.
So no, I don't blame Bloom at all. I do blame ownership and DD for the Sale/Price/Eovaldi/JBJ moves that made this move a reality.
Look at it another way. The closest comp to this situation is probably the Goldschmidt deal — superstar dealt with one year of control left. There are differences, but they point in different directions. Goldschmidt is a good player, but Mookie is considerably better than him. Goldschmidt was willing to sign a reasonable extension, while Mookie (reasonably enough, given that he's already earned $60m or so and has little reason to be risk averse) wants to find his value in FA. The package we got for Mookie is comparable in quality, and probably a few tics better, than what Arizona got for Goldschmidt.
AND THE DODGERS ASSUMED HALF OF DAVID PRICE'S DEAL, which could save us from a full rebuild.
I didn't want to deal Mookie, but in part that was because I couldn't imagine that we would get a return for him that would actually be comparable in value to a season of Mookie Betts. I really didn't want to deal Betts with Price, because I assumed that would mean we would get barely any prospect return unless we picked up almost all of Price's deal. Basically, I had trouble imagining another team giving the FO a return that was worth trading for.
I'm still not thrilled at the direction, but if we're evaluating Bloom's negotiating, I think he did very well:
- Verdugo seems to be a pretty effed up dude, but his rookie performance suggests a 4 WAR player in a full-season's playing time, health allowing. And that's without factoring in any improvement from a 23 y/o or what a good fit he seems to be for the ballpark and the parks in the division. He's our RF now. (Hopefully he shows some personal growth; I'd feel a bit better if we had a more stable manager situation, or any manager situation whatsoever.)
- [I liked the idea of Brusdar Graterol better than I like the new package, but I trust the Sox doctors on this one.]
- Downs just had an excellent year for Rancho Cucamonga of the high A California League and Tulsa of the AA Texas League. He improved his walk rate while holding his K rate stable, and continued to drive the ball in the air. He ended the season with two weeks in AA in which he hit seven XBH in 12 games (1.116 OPS) as one of the younger players in the league — so, we might say that he made the transition to the high minors smoothly. He should start in Portland with the goal that he take over the Red Sox 2B job by opening day 2021.
- The thing with Wong is that while he had a great season in (again) Rancho Cucamonga and Tulsa, it's hard to tell if it's sustainable, like at all. He strikes out in 30% of his PA, and doesn't walk much. That's unlikely to get better as he moves up. But it sure looks like he crushes the ball: he's shown high LD rates and an above average HR/FB for his entire minor league career, and high, sometimes crazy BABIPs. So... yeah. It looks like he could actually be a catcher and a utility infielder, which could allow for some interesting roster setups, and our catching depth situation was completely dire, but it's hard not to conclude that he's a pretty marginal prospect if he can't get those strikeouts under control.
That's a second year player who was a top prospect, a top prospect, and a weird, iffy prospect. That would be a reasonable return for just one year of Betts. It's very good for one year of Betts *and* three expensive years of an old, once-great SP in Price.