nighthob said:
Meh. At some point there needed to be a culling anyway. There's decent list of guys that are potential major leaguers that just have no place here (Marrero, Cecchini, Shaw, possibly Bradley), that need to be bundled off in deals for major league talent. They also have a glut of guys with mid-rotation starter potential to move in trade.
I sincerely doubt that Moncada, Espinoza, or Devers will be going anywhere since two of them project as middle of the order bats and the other as a front of the rotation starter, and those are the guys GMs/Presidents are supposed to acquire, not give away for marginal upgrades. But guys like Manuel Margot, on the other hand, are prime candidates to be moved. He's clearly an extremely talented player, and a potential all star, but in Boston they have a better guy ahead of him (Betts) and guys like Andy Benintendi and the good Basabe twin behind him (before getting into the new international players). So that's where I see movement potential.
I disagree.
Marrero has very little trade value. However, his optionable years are hugely important for the team's middle infield depth. You need a Marrero type around on the bench/AAA or else you occasionally end up with Nick Green, starting shortstop.
Shaw (see Marrero). Neither of these guys are meaningful pieces for the kind of players we need to be bringing in, but they're important to the team's depth while they have options.
Bradley and Cecchini are two flavors of a different situation. Cecchini has underperformed for years now. He has *zero* trade value. The team needs to decide if he has any shot of returning to form, and either keep him or cut him/throw him in as like a tertiary piece in a trade. But there's not much need to do that, because we have so little in AAA that he's not really blocking anyone until Moncada and Devers, et al, get up there. If I were a rival GM, Cecchini isn't the guy I'd pick as a tertiary piece from the Sox system.
Bradley's glove gives him a bit more value, in that he'd be useful as a fifth outfielder even without much offensive improvement. But now that he's showing glimmers with the bat, we need to figure out if this is for real. If he can actually hit, he's pretty much a top-five CF in the game. Seriously: a .750 OPS version of Bradley is better than all but Trout, McCutchen, Pollock, Cain, and Jones — Bradley put up a 1 WAR season with the batting line he sported *in 2014*: hell, he's put up about 1 WAR so far *this year* in only 100 PA. Personally, I think he can hit; that .750 OPS is basically the MLE of his AAA line. If he can't, he's a decent bench player.
But you don't want to trade a top-five CF for the return of a decent bench player, but you can't get his legitimate return right now. That tells me you hold on to him, probably slotting him in as a bench OF in 2016.
If we're looking for good SPs, we'll need to trade some of the Margot types, and some of the mid-rotation types (Owens and Johnson) could be secondary pieces in that kind of deal.