While looking for something else, I ran across
this really good article about the trade from Bill James website. A little bit of it quoted below.
I remember hearing about the trade; people forget that except for the Sunday weekly column from Gammons, most of us didn't have any insight into minor league prospects. And Gammo had to be taken with a few lumps of salt - we could only get excited by the likes of Wes Gardner and Jeff Gray so many times.
But the worst part - if rumours are true - is turning down Scott Cooper. Oh well.
The Red Sox had two problems.
Well…problems isn’t the right word. The Red Sox had two variables that complicate this story. The first very obvious variable is that the team already had a Wade Boggs-type player: they had Wade Boggs. Boggs was under contract for two more seasons, and it was highly unlikely that they were going to move their perennial batting champ just to see if Bagwell has the same talent.
This seems, at least to me, like an eminently reasonable position to take. We wouldn’t expect a major league team to be cavalier with one of the best players in the major leagues, just to make room for someone putting up the same numbers in in Double-A. There’s too much of a gap between who Wade Boggs was in 1990 and who Jeff Bagwell was in 1990 for the team to seriously consider moving Boggs.
So that’s issue one: the Sox had Wade Boggs entrenched at third base, at least for a few more years. We all know that.
The second variable is less known. The second variable is that the Red Sox were insanely crowded at any position where Jeff Bagwell could have reasonably played. At third base, the Red Sox had Wade Boggs, and then they had Scott Cooper in Triple-A. We’ll come back to Scott Cooper.
What about first base? That’s the positon that Bagwell was transitions over to. How did the Red Sox look at first base?
The Red Sox had Carlos Quintana, a rookie, playing at first base. Carlos Quintana wasn’t blocking anyone, but he held his own 1990 rookie year, posting a respectable triple-slash line. But Quintana was viewed as a place-holder for the Red Sox 1989 first-round pick, who was, in the summer of 1990, crushing baseballs in Pawtucket. The same year that Jeff Bagwell posted his .879 OPS in Double-A, Mo Vaughn was posting a .921 OPS in Triple-A. The Red Sox clearly saw Vaughn as their future first basemen, and judging by what Vaughn and Bagwell had done to that point in their profession careers, that was an absolutely reasonable projection. Vaughn was a better hitter than Bagwell in the summer of 1990.
And the Red Sox were right, as it turned out. Mo Vaughn turned into a terrific player.
What about the outfield?
The Red Sox outfield was crowded. Mike Greenwell was a twenty-six year old with an adjusted OPS of 137. Ellis Burks was a year younger, and was entering a season in which he’d win the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger as a centerfielder. The team added Tom Brunansky early in the year…they swapped Lee Smith for Bruno, who was under contract for two seasons past 1990.
And the Red Sox had Phil Plantier waiting in Triple-A. Mo Vaughn hit 22 homers in Pawtucket in 1990….but Phil Plantier hit 33 homers for that team. In 1991, Plantier cracked the Red Sox lineup halfway through the year and ended up posting a batting line that would’ve made Fred Lynn blush: a .615 slugging percentage in 53 games.
Phil Plantier had a short career, but he was a good hitter: after a disappointing sophomore turn, the Red Sox traded him to San Diego, where he put up a 34 HR, 100 RBI season before fading into obscurity. That’s not really ‘fading’: he could hit.
So it is not just that Jeff Bagwell’s path to the majors was blocked by other prospects …it’s that Jeff Bagwell‘s path to the majors was blocked by a lot of prospects and young major leaguers who actually had good major league careers. Mo Vaughn wasn’t a better player than Bagwell, but he won an MVP and hit a bunch of homers. Ellis Burks and Mike Greenwell and Tom Brunansky aren’t getting into the Hall, but they all had fine careers. Wade Boggs was a terrific player through his thirties, though he ended up missing Fenway Park tremendously. He got to ride a horse, which is nice. Carlos Quintana was a good player in 1990 and 1991.