Then why does Chaim make the trade for him at all if your analysis is correct.? I wonder how your thinking is different than Chaims?
To revisit the trade....Boston receives, as you put it, a "non impactful player" to shore up 1B for 2 months of 2022, which apparently is "Plan D". Boston also receives two lottery ticket A ball types, for Jay Groome. Jay Groome - whom is a cost controlled AAA, LHP starter, that SoxProspects claims has" the ceiling of a number 5 starter"
I just don't see Chaim Bloom making this trade if he is not thinking beyond 2022. Basically giving up Groome for 2 A ball lotto tickets and 2 months of Hosmer makes no sense at all. The Sox are not making the playoffs in 2022 why was it so important to shore up 1B for a 4th place team.
I'm sorry but Hosmer is on the 40 man roster this off season. I know you don't want it, but it's the only way this deal makes any sense.
Thank you for actually making the argument rather than just asserting that thinking otherwise was insane. Here's my reasoning about the trade and Hosmer's role on the team.
Hosmer at $730k (or whatever it is) is a positive value asset for a team that does not have a healthy, MLB-ready 1B and isn't ready to give up on contention,
which described Boston at the time the deal was made.
But since the trade was made, a few things have happened. The Sox have gone 4-7, not exactly improving their position in the wild card chase. Hosmer has hit .192/.276/.308 in 29 PA, a small sample performance that is actually dragging
down the already-terrible Sox season line at 1B, and can hardly be said to be powering us back into contention. And Casas' excellent performance since his return from the ankle injury means it probably won't describe Boston for much longer: three games with a bunch of strikeouts, then 17 games with a .270/.365/.540 line, including a 23% K rate and 14% BB rate.
We also got two prospects, Corey Rosier and Max Ferguson. Rosier is a 22 year old outfielder in high-A not setting the world on fire offensively, but he has a really good strikeout to walk ratio and he's had good power seasons in the lower minors, so he's at least a biiiit of a prospect. There are some tools there; maybe he can put it together. Ferguson is an infielder, also 22 in high-A, with impressive plate discipline and stolen base numbers. Again, if he can nudge that SLG up to like .390 from .350, maybe there's a utility upside there. Not exactly a massive prospect haul. Two guys who are older than the good prospects in high A, but at least have some kind of carrying tool. Long shots, but they do not need to be rostered this offseason. I would characterize this as a "modest" prospect return.
So what did we give up? Jay Groome, who at one point was a top-3 prospect in a much weaker Sox system that had little pitching. But a lot has happened since 2019.
Groome has reached AAA as a starter — awesome! — but it took him a long time to do so because of injury. He came back from said injury without the same stuff (snap on curve, FB velo) that had made him so exciting. It happens. And he lost time: between his recovery and the lost pandemic season, he already needed to be rostered last year, but his stuff and experience were such that he's clearly not advanced enough to actually be useful MLB depth today. So he was on the 40 man, but he'd been passed on our depth chart by several guys, including several — Thaddeus Ward, Wikelman Gonzalez, Chris Murphy, Brandon Walter — who now need roster protection. We actually have a lot of talented young pitching now! If Groome weren't already on the roster, it wouldn't be an issue: he's likely not MLB-ready enough for a team to take in Rule 5. But he
is on the roster, and to get him off he would need to be DFA'd. And we need him off the roster, because we can't just fill up the whole 40-man roster with young pitchers, especially guys whom we're pretty sure would get lit up in the big leagues right now. That said, there's no way he would get through waivers — he'd crack anybody's AAA rotation if he didn't need to be on the 40 man.
But risking losing one of the pitchers ahead of Groome on our depth chart to keep
this version of Groome makes little sense to me. Relatedly, and as I've been arguing: risking losing one of those guys to keep
Hosmer on the 40-man through the rule 5 draft this December is not a great idea, given how small his role would likely be after Casas' promotion.
So why did SD want Groome, then? Because
if his stuff comes back, which could totally happen as he gets further from his surgery, he would again be a legit SP prospect. He's not
that old. It wouldn't be unprecedented. SD (who have already traded or promoted all their high-minors SP depth) need AAA starters much more acutely than we do. They thus have a roster spot and plenty of innings in El Paso to give him to see if he can get that curveball snapping again. But here in Boston, we didn't really have time to find out. So in a sense, we're getting 2 months of Hosmer, Rosier and Ferguson for 2 months of Groome.
Maybe Boston will keep Hosmer! I'm not at all certain they won't! But I don't really think they should: if the A's or Pirates will send us an interesting rookie ball pitcher or two for Hosmer this offseason, we could effectively add to the return we got for Groome while clearing a roster spot for a RH backup corner infielder (perhaps Dalbec, perhaps Arroyo, perhaps someone else) to help Casas transition to the bigs before he has to face a ton of lefties.