I’m going to be completely, totally, 100% unbiased on this appraisal of the Red Sox going into the second half.
Sell.
Be sellers going into the trade deadline. Take a look at yourselves, face reality, and sell off what you have to rebuild your system.
Dombrowski played his hand, he brought in big money free agents and traded off his farm system. It worked, he won. Now that system is empty, they have impending free agents, and they have a lot of money tied up in pitchers who probably aren’t going to pitch in that many games during the span of those contracts.
Sale had a better first half than his record would indicate but he wasn’t great. He’s known for breaking down in the second half of the season and if you think those postseason innings didn’t take a toll, you are kidding yourself. All that money Boston pays Eovaldi will be “thank you” money and he’ll never earn his paycheck during the span of that contract.
They can say they are an arm or two away from competing, but how are they getting that arm? There isn’t much left in that farm system and there are a lot of teams still in competition, the Red Sox will be outbid for both starting and relief pitching.
The solution is to trade Benintendi while he still has some value. Benintendi had the best year he is ever going to have in 2018. He was batting behind Betts and ahead of Martinez, he saw a lot of good pitches. This year he is no longer seeing those pitches and he can’t adjust. He is and always has been overrated. Coming off the postseason last year, his value is at a high, so they might as well sell because it’s never getting that good again. There are a lot of National League teams in contention this year, he’s a better fit for the NL style of play anyway. One of those teams would probably give up a decent prospect or two for him because they don’t know he is an overrated hitter with a weak arm.
Considering Betts is probably gone in a couple years and Martinez may opt out of his contract, they might even want to consider dealing Rodriguez and Porcello. Sending one of those guys to Houston out of spite may be the only way they can stop the Yankees this year.
[…] I would like to point out a statement I made on September 4th, 2019. I stated that Andrew Benintendi isn’t a good player. He benefited from hitting between the […]