I'm not inclined to argue strongly against trading Verdugo if there's a market and Bloom can get back good value, but there's no way that Rafaela's presence in any way makes Verdugo expendable. If they trade Dugie, they need to be getting an outfielder back or be prepared to sign or trade for one in conjunction with shipping him out.
I would like to see Verdugo play RF, and Duran play LF/CF and Rafaela CF/SS for the foreseeable future. They can move (Duran/Rafaela/Mayer) to other positions; they'renot fixed to one single position). Verdugo is not expendable. Not yet at least.
That's interesting. He's a 0 (average) by OAA. Wide gap! Not saying either is more right, but I've been under the impression that DRS is better for infield and OAA for outfield. +11 DRS seems quite good though.
That puts Yoshida at DH with no real other option, unless you give the SS a day off and let Rafaela play there, and Yoshida moves to the OF.
I'm assuming Turner is no longer here when Rafaela is ready (whatever the position). Unless you're worried about Dalbec, and I don;t blame you there, ha!
15m a year for a guy who we can reasonably project as a 3-4 win player going forward is perfectly fine unless they think his defense this year is a mirage.
I know we all love Duran these days, and this is just me, but have you seen him actually throw? Trust me, he'll NEVER be able to play right field at Fenway. His arm strength is somewhat like Jacoby Ellsbury's. He'll get it there in a couple bounces.
I'm not opposed to trading him, but who would you suggest as a replacement? I don't see any obvious upgrades on the free-agent market - lateral moves, maybe, but different flavors of useful-yet-flawed players - and trading for a replacement might wind up as a net negative depending on the return and cost.
He's a free agent after 2024, so the choice is to be paying him 5 years from now or find a new right fielder in 2025. There's no way I'd trade him now since he's a very difficult to replace part of the outfield defense. But they could look into options in the offseason and bring him back if nothing good is available. Worst case is they offer him the QO and have to deal with figuring out who plays right in 18 months.
I agree they don’t have to commit long term, but trading him at the deadline would be pretty likely to hurt the 2023 team unless they somehow got an even better player back which seems unlikely unless it’s a 3-way trade. Anyone trading for an above average MLB player in 2023 is probably in contention.
That’s a pretty iffy defensive outfield replacing Verdugo with Duvall. Of course, if Duvall is going to hit like peak Ted Williams, then we probably wouldn’t care but I doubt he returns to that. It was a ridiculous 8-game hot streak to start the season.
A QO probably won't work to keep him in 2025 (he'll decline and hit the market most likely), but what about a 3 year offer right now? Sign him through 2026 and he's still in line to hit the market entering his age 31 season. And by that point, projections suggest that both Roman Anthony and Miguel Bleis, not to mention some of the MI prospects who could move to the outfield (Romero? Meidroth? Jordan?), could be ready to take his place. Maybe none of those guys pan out, maybe some other prospect emerges, or maybe they find someone available in trade or free agency. That can be a 2026-2027 problem. In the meantime, RF is locked in but not so tightly they can't change tack if opportunity arises.
Well, we do still have Adam Duvall, who is maybe starting to pick it back up (.910 OPS over his last two weeks).
Is Bloom deft enough to send out Kenley, Enrique and Duvall (mutiple places obviously) and get Bednar in and then use the salary savings for affordable SP?
Sign me up for the bottom option. I would love to buy low on Carlson and sell high on Blaze
I don't really see a good reason to trade him in the offseason. There aren't a lot of great corner OF options on the FA market. And if you keep him through 2024 you can offer him a QO if there's still a need for him in RF and no desire to sign him long term.
But that STL trade has nothing to do with Verdugo, why not just make that one and be done with it?
It’ll be interesting to see what Montgomery fetches. He’s def the best pitcher in that group but he’s still a 2 month rental so I don’t think they’re getting anyone elite.
The idea there would be for Carlson to step in as the right fielder. He’s been a solidly plus CF the last few years, and following the rule of thumb that Fenway’s RF is a second CF, he’d fit well.
Houck would have to fetch something super enticing because he’s the exact type of player that Bloom would want when peaking at that 2024-27 window. His stock is also a bit down after the ball to the face but it hopefully shouldn’t mean much longer term.
Seems like when he's "on" he hustles down to first on every play.....but now......no hustle.....acts like he doesn't care....this is just my perception.
Well Drohan gets thrown around pretty cavalierly here, in terms of value with service time they can’t be a lot different.
Well if it could fetch Keller back, maybe. Keller seems erratic but his track record puts him a clear notch or two ahead of Tanner who I like alot. He is proven he can take the ball every fifth day and there is a decent chance he becomes a legit number 2. He is not a FA until 2026. Maybe Tanner and Yorke? But surely not dealing Bleis or Rafaela for Keller.
Dugo has been good this year, but has he... ever been a 3-4 win player? He's got 2.1 right now, according to fangraphs. 2.8, according to bref. If he continues to play as well as he has, he will break 3, but if he gets worse... watch out below. Last time bref had him at 3 wins was 2019. Last time fangraphs had him as worth 3 wins was, uh, never. 4 wins - also never. He was on-pace in the shortened season of 2020, but that season was shortened, and he has not been that good in a full season since.
This is also all true, but mostly because the OF defense is already iffy. Duvall would be fine in right-field and has played all three outfield positions in his career. He's also such and up-and-down player that I can't read if this is one of his above-average years or if he's going to crash in the second-half.
Yeah, doesn't make sense. Return on Houck isn't going to be young cost-controlled starting pitching that we want anyways, because Houck has yet to throw 100 innings in a major-league season, which... well, if he had, then we wouldn't be looking for young cost-controlled starting pitching.
His offense this year is in line with his career norms, so it seems fair to except that his true talent is somewhere around the 108 he's putting up this year. When you combine that offense with his current defense that's a 3-4 win player. Hence, if they think this is his new true talent defense then he's likely to be a 3-4 win player for awhile. And yes, in 2019 and 2020 he was a 3-4 win player, really more like 4-5 (159 games, 4 fwar 5.1 bwar), then his war tanked in 21 and 22 largely because his defense was much worse.
He was injured most of ‘22 AND playing mostly in LF which I thought for some reason penalizes you.
Nicky Lopez is a name I like here. He's an astoundingly bad hitter but he's an excellent infielder. He's perfect as a late inning defensive substitute and would solve a lot of the infield defense problems if he's in the lineup regularly. Bloom likes trading with the Royals, and the Royals could help us address needs on multiple fronts and we have the prospect depth to make it work.
Fair enough! I'm not advocating for trading him, but I just think it's premature to assume he's definitely going to be a 3-4 win player going forward. Defensively I think he was also probably getting punished for playing a lot of LF in Fenway last year, which defensive metrics tend to punish.
They certainly don't post much when the team is playing well.
Haven't had a chance to watch him... Do you think the difference between he and Chang/Reyes is enough to justify trading for him?
I had the same question.
Agreed.
To believe Verdugo is worth the Benintendi deal (and then some), you'd at least have to think that Benintendi is worth the Benintendi deal. I don't, of course. I get the sense that few around the league do. (BTV has him at around -$10M underwater.) He's been worth 1.0 fWAR this year, and he's somebody (given the White Sox reversal of fortunes) the team would already seem to regret signing.
Rafaela and Valdez are probably the primo options right now. Rafaela for his defense, Valdez for his bat. As I noted upthread, the glut of errors Valdez made at 2B when he was promoted might have been jitters - he hasn't made that many at AAA. I'm not saying Valdez is a crazy good second baseman secretly, but maybe not as bad as he was when hecame up.
I would love to see them get Edman, but he's currently on the IL rehabbing a wrist injury
I've done the full 360 (I am using that phrase correctly!) on Yorke, at the beginning of the season I thought he was trade bait, then I wanted to keep him around, then fast track him, then back to keeping him in Portland and seeing what happens, and now I think they should trade him, let some other team deal with his K problems.
There's a good argument to be made that trading Verdugo at the deadline makes more sense than trading Duvall. I'm a Verdugo fan, but let's be real about what he is: a nice 3-4 win corner OF who hits for average and plays great defense. Doesn't hit the ball particularly hard, and hits a lot of grounders. Not going to hit many homers or steal many bases. High floor, low ceiling. But he's still young and cheap, and has two years of control left.
