Baseball’s offseason just keeps getting crazier.
Just weeks after the Los Angeles Dodgers learned that the two now ex-managers that have beat them in recent World Series, AJ Hinch and Alex Cora, are both a couple of dirty cheaters, they have completed a trade that should make any future sign stealing irrelevant.
In what was initially a three-team deal that included the Minnesota Twins, the Boston Red Sox have traded Mookie Betts and David Price to la-la-land for a bag of peanuts.
Okay, okay. It’s not quite that bad.
But it’s pretty bad. You’d think in any sport where one of the best five players in the world gets shipped off with a full year left on his deal, there would have to be a pretty impressive package headed back the other way.
That is very much not the case here.
The initial version of the trade had the Red Sox receiving prospect Alex Verdugo from the Dodgers, along with a young rocket arm pitching prospect named Brusdar Graterol from the Twins (with Kenta Maeda heading from LA to Minny). However, after concerns rose over Graterol’s physical, Boston tried to get Minnesota to sweeten the pot with another top-10 prospect from their pool, a request that was laughed out of existence. The deal was cancelled as a result, and the Twins and Dodgers made a separate deal to get Maeda to Minnesota.
Just a quick side note here… does anyone else think that Boston asked the wrong team for another player in the three-way version of this trade? Boston asked Minny to hand over another player despite Los Angeles getting Betts… seriously just how good is the guy negotiating for those Dodgers?
Moving on.
The new trade that is officially official has the Red Sox gaining Verdugo, a solid outfield prospect that has handled himself nicely in his limited MLB experience, but is still a guy that wasn’t even the best prospect the Dodgers had. With the new additions to the deal being Connor Wong, a young catcher with the athleticism to play in the field, but hasn’t played higher than Double A ball, and infielder Jeter Downs, another young prospect that blah blah blah…
Listen. I could try to talk about these guys based on what I’ve read. But I’ve got no idea who they are or what they can do. Baseball prospects are a total crapshoot, and “Jeter Downs” sounds more like a chant the Miami Marlins fan base is working on for next season than a guy that should be traded for Mookie Betts.
I know. I’m hilarious.
And now we arrive back at the point of this article. This is Mookie freaking Betts!
The move appears as a blatant salary dump by the Red Sox. Certainly there are arguments that can be made that getting rid of Betts and Price now is appropriate. Most importantly, Boston and Betts have never been close on contract extension talks. In fact, it’s been reported that Boston’s last attempt at re-signing the MVP winning outfielder failed with the two sides over $100 million apart in their offers… just a minor discrepancy there.
With Boston not willing to get close to Betts’ asking price, they appear to have done what all teams do in these situations, make sure you get at least something in return.
But given what that something ended up being, the first impression I was left with when I heard the news is that the Red Sox hate David Price so much that they were willing to give up Betts for next to nothing, so long as Price went with him. They are actually now paying Price to play against them, as the Red Sox will pay roughly half of the $96 million Price is owed over the next three years.
No, that can’t be it. Strike one.
My next thought was this is Boston’s way of apologizing to the Dodgers for employing Alex Cora. “Hey, Dodgers, sorry our manager that led us to a title over you is now a proven cheater… here’s our best player and a past-his-prime starter… but don’t worry! We’ll throw in a ton of cash too as long as you give us some middling prospects.”
Strike two.
Alright, let’s try the salary dump idea. This is what the baseball world has settled on as the reasoning behind the deal. Baseball has no salary cap, but it does have the luxury tax threshold as a measure of keeping the league somewhat balanced. If a team eclipses the threshold they pay a penalty. But while those penalties are monumental sounding to you and me, they are relatively meaningless to the clubs that are willing to surpass the threshold… clubs like the Boston Red Sox.
Baseball analysts mostly agree that the deal was nowhere close to what it should have been for Boston, but many feel that they were wise at least to get all that money off the books so that they can start somewhat fresh.
But here’s the thing. Guys like Mookie Betts don’t come around very often. He is a Hall of Fame caliber player in his prime, and money is no object to this club. The Red Sox are no strangers to exceeding the luxury tax threshold. They could have easily opened their pocketbook more for Betts, and given the $330 million that Bryce Harper got they knew damn well that the $300 million over ten years they were offering Betts was never going to fly.
And I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the Red Sox are filthy rich. Some seem to be okay with the team moving on from a guy that they couldn’t agree on a price with, citing a trade as the only course of action that made sense. But I’m pretty sure the people of Boston would agree that their ridiculously wealthy club should have just paid the man.
So why didn’t they?
Baseball fans know the market price for all-world talents. Remember, the Angels just gave Mike Trout half a billion to man center in Anaheim for the rest of his career. And furthermore, Boston always pays. After all, these are the guys that gave David Price $217 million in the first place despite the fact that he had done nothing but choke come playoff time. They have a top-5 payroll every year. They won the World Series two years ago, and they don’t take years off. They had a golden goose in Betts, and the resources to keep building their dominant organization around him, and all of a sudden they’re sellers? All of a sudden they are content with spending less and letting world-class players walk out the door?
The Red Sox can talk all they want about wanting to be below the luxury tax threshold. But this team makes so much damn money no matter what they do, and they have demonstrated a proclivity for spending as much as they want on whomever they want for decades. They have won four titles in fifteen years, and suddenly they want to be economical and give away the best player they’ve had in ages for pennies on the dollar?
To me, that’s a crock of you know what.
And therefore, to the idea of a salary dump, that would be strike three, and you’re out.
Teams like Boston don’t move away from guys like Betts to save money. If Betts was in Tampa, Miami, or Oakland this would be an entirely different conversation.
But he wasn’t. He was in Boston. With a team that according to Forbes is worth about $3.2 billion, good for the 12th richest sports franchise on the planet.
So you can call it a salary dump all you want, but it just doesn’t add up. I have searched my soul, along with the internet, for an answer that makes sense, but was unable to uncover one. Fortunately for you readers, I have the real answer, as there is only one possible explanation I can think of that even makes the slightest bit of sense for Boston’s reasoning behind this trade. Mookie Betts is now a Dodger for one reason and one reason only:
The Red Sox are terrified of the Yankees.
This argument coincides nicely with the tanking epidemic that has plagued Major League Baseball in recent years. Teams profit no matter what they do. So more and more we are witnessing teams choose to lose now in hopes of a brighter tomorrow.
But the Boston Red Sox are the first of the disgustingly wealthy franchises that seem to be following that model. With all the money they have at their disposal and the absence of a salary cap, there is no real excuse for Boston not to give Betts everything he’s asking for, or for them not to try to contend for a World Series every single year. The only reasoning I can use to make sense of this new direction the Red Sox are taking is the one I just mentioned…
They are so scared about how good the Yankees look that they’d rather just not even try right now. And just because they hate their rivals so much, they gave away their primo asset to the team that most threatens the Yankees’ chance at winning a championship next season in exchange for nothing but a smaller payroll next season.
The worst part is, if that is in fact their rationale, they aren’t entirely wrong. The Yankees organization is currently an embarrassment of riches. Their two outfield studs Judge and Stanton, though both looking pretty injury prone, are both set to return and are healthy for now. Then their infield is downright terrifying, boasting DJ LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres, Luke Voit, and Gary Sanchez. Their bullpen is second to none with the likes of Chapman, Britton, Kahnle, Ottavino, and Green patrolling the later innings. Then there’s the starting pitching, the one question mark on this club that isn’t injury related. While Masahiro Tanaka, James Paxton, and Luis Severino are nothing to sneeze at, the club has been missing that bona fide ace that championship teams possess. But no worry, because the Yanks decided to go full-blown Yanks and signed Gerrit Cole for over $300 million.
The Bronx Bombers were elite last year while being the most injured team in baseball. With the addition of Cole, and if they can stay somewhat healthy, by the end of the year we could be talking about this Yankees team as one of the best teams the sport has ever seen.
With the Betts trade, it appears as though the Red Sox have been thinking the same damn thing. So instead of re-tooling around their MVP, they shipped him off for nothing, waiting for the Yankees to start to come back down to Earth so they can strike when the iron gets hot.
This trade wasn’t a monetary decision, it was a strategic transaction by a bunch of cowards. There will never be an excuse for a team that rich to get rid of a guy that talented that makes sense. New York is miles ahead of Boston on paper, so the Sox have decided to run to the hills where they can hide behind the long-game argument, instead of diving into the trenches where they’re supposed to be out of fear of getting destroyed.
Now on the flip side of the trade, if the pressure to win for the Dodgers wasn’t big enough over the last few years, it’s monumental now. The weight of winning a championship lies heavier on the Dodgers this season than it has on any team prior to any season that I can think of, and that’s all in spite of what I’ve just said about the Yankees.
Los Angeles now boasts AJ Pollock, Cody Bellinger, Chris Taylor, Joc Pederson, and Betts… and I’m still in the outfield here… The infield is equally as scary, with the likes of Justin Turner, Corey Seager, Gavin Lux, and Max Muncy. Then you add David Price to a rotation that already includes Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler and you have to wonder how the hell this team is going to lose any games in 2020.
Buehler, Muncy, and Bellinger are all getting paid pennies compared to their worth, and Mookie only has one year left on his deal. The Dodgers have everything they need to win the title this year, but everyone knows how hard that is when the entire world expects it. They would likely have been the favourites to come out of the NL prior to the Betts trade, and now add one of the best players in the world to an already World Series caliber lineup. I don’t care if every team the Dodgers face this year steal signs, if they can’t get it done with this team they will have no one to blame but themselves.
So call it a salary dump if you want to. But it just can’t be. Not when it’s the Red Sox. The Yanks look like they could dominate the American League for the next while, especially now that Gerrit Cole is on the mound, so the Red Sox have stuck their tail between their legs so they can hide in the shadow of their arch rivals until the Yanks begin to fade. But as scary as those Yankees are, it’s the Dodgers that have all the pressure going into this season. LA feels like they’ve been robbed out of a pair of championships in the last three years. Well, the cheaters have been caught and you just added Mookie Betts to your all-star team, so shut your mouths and win a damn title, because after this trade no one will feel sorry for you if you don’t.