Devil's advocate maybe, but like the left fielder at Fenway, the right fielder at Yankee Stadium probably generally plays shallow to be able to catch soft liners and line drives in front of him. Therefore, in both cases, it still probably isn't easy to get back to the respective walls on drives out to them.
How? Can't expect to stash him in the minors (he can refuse to go) and keeping him on the big league roster is an extremely inefficient use of a bench spot. Obviously things can happen over the next couple weeks to shake things up (guys can get hurt) but if Casas were returning today, the easiest and cleanest way to activate him would be to DFA Smith to open up the 40 and 26-man roster spot.
Pretty sure Romy didn’t hit 26 homers in the majors last year. I like Romy, but the idea that he’s better or equivalent to a guy like Drury because of 60 good ABs is ridiculous. Drury was a stud last year - and a bad 120 ABs doesn’t make him worse than a 27 year old who has been a career minor leaguer.
Sogard wouldn't be replacing Romy or Smith, he'd be replacing Valdez, who has hit better lately but his defense seems beyond repair. He can be optioned back down to AAA.
You want Brandon Drury to replace the guy who's made us happy that we didn't get Brandon Drury in the off season?
Are the Angels paying all of Drury's salary in this deal? Because despite Drury hitting those HRs last year, he's been atrocious this year with a price tag of $8.5M. Meanwhile Romy has been more than serviceable playing multiple positions and he's getting the league minimum. Certainly looks like a downgrade in the short term in the hopes that Drury can get healthy and regain his 2023 form. So why do it?
Didn’t realize a bad 120 ABs means a guy is now a bad player. Drury had 2.7 fWAR just last year and 3.2 fWAR the year before. You have to go back to Pedroia’s 2016 season to find the last time a Red Sox second baseman had that good a season.
You don’t think this team can find ABs for a good fielding, right-handed power bat who can play anywhere in the IF and in the OF corners? Drury isn’t going to require much to acquire. The goal would be to throw him in the mix and see how he does.
I would hope half of that salary wouldn’t be beyond the means of this ownership. And please, man, Romy has had 62 good ABs this season but he’s 27 years old and has a .639 career OPS in the majors. I think we all understand the risk of wish casting on small sample sizes.
They weren’t willing to take on any more payroll at the beginning of the year, what would make us think they would take on money now?
Particularly when there are areas -- starters, relief -- proving to be of greater need
I think they may be willing to take on money if they expect to see a return on it.
I think a right handed hitter with power and positional flexibility is a pretty huge need.
The team has shown (today excepted) an ability to overcome a ton of injuries and win games. The team looks like a true contender and not mediocre team especially if a a couple of additions were permitted.
I completely agree. I would invest in these guys. I just don’t trust the venture capital bros that they brought in a couple of years ago to feel the same way.
In theory, an added benefit of trading for an SP is that you can use Winkowski or Criswell in a bullpen role to replace innings that would otherwise go to Weissert and/or Anderson. In theory, of course. Not that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get more pen depth on top of that!
Definitely. I'd like to see them flat out upgrade Anderson and Horn's spots AND be able to push Weissert to Worcester even for just a little while. Weissert made 55 appearances (60 IP) between the minors and majors last year, and he's at 38 (38 IP) this year, including today. Already at 70% of the workload from last year and barely 50% of the way through the season. He might just be overworked, causing the downturn in his production of late.
Honest question/zero snark intended: is there anything you've seen or heard about Drury's season that makes you think there's a bounce back due? That statcast stuff looks rough.
I agree that the hamstring issues may be a concern- just not seeing that as overly worrisome for an incredibly low-risk trade. After all, I'm not advocating giving up much of anything for Drury - only suggesting that he might be worth giving a look. Not sure what you mean about the "magic from last year" as that implies he wasn't good before that. Actually, his best season was 2022 when he had a 3.2 fWAR. I also think it's a it deceptive to point out that he's been worth "just 6 fWAR" for his 10 year career when I'm sure you realize that he's been worth 5.9 fWAR for the last 2 seasons. So yes, prior to 2022 he was never that great but that doesn't discount the fact that he's had nearly 1100 plate appearances of being significant above average for the last 2 years.
The trade deadline is the end of the month. I don't think anyone is suggesting that we don't wait the month out before making a decision. By that point, maybe Romy can get another 62 ABs.
That's really not much of a risk for a guy that wouldn't cost anything to get. They wouldn't be committed to keeping him for the rest of the season just because they agreed to pick up some of his salary (which I'm guessing would be the cost).
So yeah, what Drury did is rare, and that's even for a guy that was a viable major leaguer in his age 23 and 24 seasons (as Drury was). It's even more rare for a guy to do at 27 who has shown nothing at the major league level before that point. But I'm not bashing Romy. He's been fun to watch. I'm just not buying the whole "our RH hitter problem is now solved because a random 27 year-old has had 62 good at bats" take. Obviously, we have a few more weeks until the deadline so we'll see how Romy and the rest of the IF is doing at that time.
Casas is going to give us a nice bump at first when he comes back, too.
I think this is what I would try to do. As I said in the game thread, I would be trying to match up with the Cubs, dealing from our position player prospect surplus to try to get some of their pitching. They have a good but pitching heavy farm system, so I think we match up really well, and Breslow obviously knows their system really well.
90 games of MLB experience, mostly with the Padres. Not great MLB experience, but experience nonetheless
It hasn't been stellar defensively either. A return to form from Grissom would be most welcome but an upgrade on both sides of the ball at 2B would do a lot for this team.
This is interesting. I think it could hurt. I see Yoelin Cespedes (or Bleis or Zanetello) as having the highest upside of that group.
A thoughtful post. Hard, hard, hard pass on trading Bleis, however. The Sox are not yet in GFIN mode and that's the only way you give up a prospect of his caliber--regardless of his distance from the majors and the flame-out risk. Legitimate all star ceiling as a center fielder. He is a different caliber prospect than Cespedes or Zanatello.
