Eric Gagne makes the Red Sox a much better team than they had been before the trade. The Gagne trade won’t really add too many additional wins to the team over the course of the regular season, but it will make them a very difficult team to beat come October. This was a move made with the playoffs in mind, much like the Dave Roberts deal in 2004.
Theo Epstein deserves a lot of credit for somehow managing to pull off trading Kason Gabbard (a career 5th starter), David Murphy (a career 4th outfielder), and Engel Beltre (17 years old) for one of the most coveted assets on the marker at the trading deadline. Say what you want about Theo and his free agent signings; he knows how to make trades.
I’m still at a loss to explain how Texas only managed to get the Sox’ package and nothing better. (Note: Not only did he get Gagne, but he got probably two picks in the first two rounds of next year’s draft from the team that will sign Gagne this off-season under the CBA compensation rules. The biggest strength of the Epstein regime has to be his drafting. See Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz, Justin Masterson, et al., and he put himself in a position to make more quality choices next June.) It’s possible that Texas had to accept less from the Sox due to the money they had to pay Gagne to get him to wave his no trade clause. The overall cost in prospects and dollars could be viewed as equaling the overall cost of the Yankees giving up Joba Chamberlain or Phil Hughes, whom Texas allegedly wanted.
The trade is even more interesting and appealing to Sox fans because it’s pretty evident that the Yankees’ needed bullpen help much more than the Sox, but actually dumped Scott Proctor rather than adding a reliever. Granted, Joba Chamberlain should be up and in the Mariano Rivera/ Jonathan Papelbon setup role within a week or so, but he’s still going to be a rookie performing in the heat of a playoff race, so a great performance isn’t guaranteed, though I wouldn’t bet against it. Detroit also had interest in Gagne; it was widely predicted that they’d acquire Gagne and essentially book their ticket to the World Series. Their interest probably faded due to the high asking price and also the impending returns of Joel Zumaya and Fernando Rodney.
One of my readers asked me to run Gagne through my trade machine to see how much he’d improve the Red Sox. I ran him through before yesterday’s outing, so basically using his Texas statistics.
The Trade: Red Sox trade David Murphy, Kason Gabbard, and Engel Beltre to Texas for Eric Gagne. Curt Schilling replaces Gabbard in the rotation; Gagne replaces Kyle Snyder or Javier Lopez in the bullpen.
In his last full season, 2004 with Los Angeles, Gagne pitched 26 times from August 1 through the end of the season. Even though he was a closer then and closers are more likely to pitch in pennant races than non-closers, the Sox, who have no obligations to Gagne after the season, will probably rely more heavily on him than Jonathan Papelbon because they have Papelbon under control for at least 3 or 4 more years. Projecting 26 appearances out of Gagne using the method that I had described in previous posts, he should have a VORP of 8 over the rest of the season. By itself, 8 VORP isn’t even a win, but remember the trickle down effect.
Gagne should be 7 run improvement over Javier Lopez or a 6 run improvement over Kyle Snyder. The improvement in the trade comes from Schilling (projected 17 VORP remaining) replacing Gabbard (projected 4.5 VORP remaining). This move would have happened anyways, but Schilling’s return allowed the Sox to deal from a position of strength and complete the trade for Gagne using Gabbard, so the two are not completely unrelated.
By combining the additions of Gagne and Schilling with the departures of Snyder/Lopez and Gabbard, the Sox should gain about 20 VORP over the remainder of the season, or about 2 additional wins. While they might not really need the two wins to win the division, it adds a nice insurance policy.
No comments:
Post a Comment