Exactly. I love these small, low-cost/no-risk gap filler transactions. Assuming he doesn't have an early opt out (no earlier than, say, May 1), he's good insurance against early injury or abject performance failure by JBJ or Rusney.
Pretty sure those opt-outs are standard issue for guys with enough MLB service time to be free agents. Team doesn't really have a choice about it.
I think pretty close to zero. Murphy was mostly injury insurance, with a little what if one of the non-Betts outfielders seemed completely lost insurance. Neither of those happened.
If he doesn't opt out, he won't really have a choice in the matter. He's on a minor league contract. Unless the team purchases his contract and puts him on the 40-man roster, he's headed to the minors.
For the record, Murphy has opted out. No decision yet on what the Sox will do.
And who's the casualty to get Murphy on the 40-man? Frankly, I'm not seeing the appeal of keeping Murphy around if he's not going to be stashed depth in Pawtucket. He's barely been replacement level for the last three years (-0.5 bWAR, 0.1 fWAR in total) and hasn't exactly torn things up this spring. If Castillo were Mookie's age and they felt he needed more development time, maybe send him down. But he's 28...time to shit or get off the pot with him, and the way to do that is to let him play for the first couple months at least.
I get the shit/pot argument but Murphy is a professional player and Rusney, to me, is a tremendous crapshoot and one who has looked pretty terrible until now in really all respects except pure athleticism.
I understand the sense of urgency coming from Dombrowski, but this is also the guy who really liked what he saw from the Betts, Bradley, Castillo outfield last season. Plus, he’s smart enough to know that “playing the hot hand” is somewhat of a fool’s errand as one never knows when a hot or cold streak will end. I don’t see the infatuation with Murphy, and if Castillo isn’t getting it done then Young and Holt can take some of his at-bats.
I don't think there's any need to gasp. Papi's retirement announcement changes the conversation about his playing time. The one thing you can take as a given as that as long as he's healthy he'll make at least one start in every road series, especially if it's the last road series of the year with that team. But other than that, all bets are off. There's no need to pad his stats; he's already passed 500 HR--what's the difference to his Hall case whether he winds up with 515 or 525? He may stay in the lineup when he's red-hot, but otherwise, I think he'll sit quite a bit, especially vs. LHP. I'd put the over/under on his total starts at 130, and that might be too high.
Logically one would hope so - but it would be surprising if he was blasé about it.
