Drek717 said:
How these two thoughts wound up in the same post I'll never understand.
Why should the Red Sox look to unload prospects they will have a plethora of openings for in the next couple years for a single player who they will likely be able to sign for just money in a couple years?
Lets consider the Red Sox farm.
Pitching - Webster, RDLR, Ranaudo, Barnes, Owens, Workman. Those are the five guys close enough to the ML level to talk about as potential starters. We'll be lucky if two of the five are good starters. After 2014 Peavy and Dempster (if he's even on the 2014 roster) are gone, as well as Lester if he isn't resigned. Buchholz has suspect health. John Lackey is already 35 and he's gone after 2015 at the latest. I'd say we have pretty significant need of all five of these guys.
JBJ - unless we resign Ellsbury he's starting in CF next year. IF we resign Ellsbury he's starting in RF at the start of the 2016 season at the very latest, likely after spending a bunch of time in 2014 and 2015 filling in for the oft injured duo of Ellsbury and Victorino. This assumes Nava doesn't turn back into a pumpkin. As the only CF capable ML ready prospect in the entire farm system I'd say he's pretty indispensible.
Bogaerts - He's the starting SS next season. End of story. If Bogaerts is anything close to what he projects to be he'll be worth more than Stanton starting next year and will only widen the gap as he provides middle of the lineup offense from the single most valuable position to get that offense from on the entire diamond.
Cechini - far enough away that you would be trading him before fully maturing the asset. Right now he's a top 100 prospect by any sensible accounting. If he goes to AA and hits like he did this past season with any defensive growth he's quite possibly a top 25 prospect. Trading now would be like buying Google's IPO and then selling when it hit $100 because hey, you've made some nice profit. Nope. Sit on the asset, let it further mature. Odds are it's only going up.
Betts/Coyle - same thing as Cecchini, but even further away.
Swihart/Vazquez - good catching wins. Look at the Giants and the Cardinals. Two titles in this decade, why? Because their catchers are good defenders with respectable bats who get the most out of their staff. The only concern is health, as both of those franchises have struggled mightily when either Posey or Molina leave the lineup. The Red Sox over the last decade had a similar established vet with solid offense and good pitch calling in Varitek, won two titles with him. When he left the team suddenly stopped being competitive. When Salty matured and Ross stepped in they suddenly win aother title. Crazy how that works, huh? Well the Sox have two highly promising catchers coming one after the other up through the farm and they'll be under team control on low salaries well into their prime years. So um, maybe it'd be smart to keep them around and pair the two of them into a dynamic catching duo that stabilizes the ML club for half a decade?
Etc. etc.. The current farm is set up ideally to provide for the big club's ML needs. Let it do that job. If in two years we find ourselves with both Betts and Coyle hitting the cover off the ball in AAA while Pedroia is still the laser show and one of WMB/Cecchini has locked up 3B then we talk about trading prospects to fill other holes. As long as the short term holes are few enough and small enough to fix entirely with money why not just stick with that?
And by the way, Giancarlo Stanton has had one season with a >.900 OPS. He isn't Manny Ramirez. Maybe in a couple years he'll mature into that kind of hitter, but by then he'll be a free agent you can get for just money. Also, I really don't see how he has the range to stick in Fenway's RF, so he'd be moved to LF which is a big hit to defensive value for the Red Sox.
Grabbing Stanton wouldn't be a knee-jerk reaction. He's been a target for a while now, and would fit into our long-term plans much more significantly than any of the prospects you just mentioned besides Xander, who is obviously untouchable.
The fact of the matter is that our farm system has pretty much incomparable depth right now, but that's exactly what it is. Depth. If you think we're going to be able to field a Championship caliber team simply by plugging every single hole on our roster with those guys over the next 3-4 years, you've got an absurdly optimistic outlook on their collective potential. The goal is always to build from within, and we've done a tremendous job at doing that. But go back and look at the guys you mentioned. Who on that list is someone you wouldn't be willing to give up for someone of Stanton's caliber? For a generational right handed power bat in Fenway Park?
We have the potential to have a AAA team that wins the IL every year for the next 3 years. Or, we could leverage the strength in our farm system to acquire one of the best players in baseball. Stanton is 23. 23!!! There's a reason the Marlins won't do this deal, because we'd be robbing them. You've fallen in love with our prospects and lost the forrest for the trees. I agree you don't want to deal them for middling talents or one season rentals, but when you have the chance to acquire a franchise player you HAVE to do it.
Let's run through the guys you mentioned:
Pitching: Webster, RDLR, Ranaudo, Barnes, Owens, Workman: Solid prospects, no doubt. I think there's good reason to be excited about Ranaudo and Owens. Barnes could end up as an end of the rotation arm but we pretty much know what we have with Webster, RDLR, and Workman. Bullpen strength. In other words, the single easiest commodity on the free agent market. It's nice to have these guys in the system, but it's a massive stretch to say we NEED them. I'd be happy if two of Ranaudo, Barnes, and Owens end up spending time in the rotation over the next 4-5 years. But either way we're going to have to go outside the org. at some point to grab top of the rotation talent.
JBJ - Once again, it's nice to have him in the system, but do we NEED him? Would he do more for our team than Stanton would? Obviously not. JBJ is a nice player and I think he'll do tremendously well for the Red Sox, but he's not someone I would lose sleep over trading.
Cechini - You're falling into the trap of overvaluing players that have shown some nice potential but haven't proven anything yet. Everything you said about him is true, but does that make him a more valuable asset than Stanton for the next decade? Obviously not. There's just as likely a chance he regresses back to what we expected out of him and we end up with an average every-day third basemen in 2 1/2 years to spell Middlebrooks. You might hit the lottery with Garin, but you also might strike out.
Betts/Coyle - Not worth worrying about. Betts is quite possibly the most unnecessary asset in our farm system right now. He's shown TREMENDOUS potential over one season, and has almost no future payoff for us unless Pedroia bottoms out and then we've got larger problems than maintaining our farm system. He's probably close to reaching his peak trade value some time over the next year, and I'd be ecstatic if he could serve as a major part of some blockbuster trade. In doing that he'd be contributing more to the team than he will on the field for the forseeable future.
Swihart/Vazquez - Both good catching prospects, and unlikely we'd have to deal either/both to get Stanton. But once again, explain to me without using ridiculous comparisons to Posey/Molina how either of these guys would be more valuable than Stanton?
EDIT: I'll just add that the silliest thing the Sox can do right now is overvalue every single asset in the organization because we won a world title. Ben won't allow that to happen. Look at things objectively, and you'll see there is absolutely NO ONE in our system that would be more valuable to the big league club over the next decade than Stanton. And we're not considering X, because he's not going anywhere.
