Just when we thought baseball had been fully relegated to the metaphorical basement of the sports world, it rose once more from the dead like some vengeful Dead Ball-era ghost.
Barely a week before pitchers and catchers report to spring training, the Boston Red Sox traded outfielder Mookie Betts, the consensus second-best player in baseball, to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Starting pitcher David Price will also be shipped to California, while the Dodgers parted with a top-five prospect in Alex Verdugo and gained former Minnesota Twins prospect Brusdar Graterol in return. Baseball’s nexus now lies squarely on either end of the I-5 with Betts in Chavez Ravine and Mike Trout in Anaheim, but the reverberations affect every championship contender.
Red Sox fans should be rightfully disgusted that management for one of the league’s premier brands effectively punted on at least the upcoming season by dealing a player who is rightfully mentioned in the same stratosphere as Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, and Trout. In a move usually reserved for mediocre organizations with bloated budgets, Boston worked out a way to ship out their best homegrown ballplayer since Williams in order to avoid footing his eventual bill while also ridding themselves of a steady but overpriced starter in Price.
Lost in all of this is a remarkable fall from grace for Boston sports fans. Consensus all-time-great, Tom Brady, is as close as ever to forsaking the Patriots. The Red Sox are less than 16 months since their last World Series title, but have since unceremoniously parted with the head coach and MVP that led that team (for very different reasons). Simply mentioning an unfortunate string of events for North America’s most blessed sports town of the last 20 years is probably enough to reverse the jinx, but even this small morsel is plenty to relish in.
Condemnations
aside, the calculus of the trade is simple. Los Angeles is even more of a
front-runner for the 2020 season, while Boston is conceding to an edition of
the AL East owned by the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays. Before the trade
was even announced, the Dodgers were predicted to follow up a 106-win campaign
in 2019 with a 112-win effort, according to FiveThirtyEight. That pre-Betts
prediction probably still would have been good enough for a 20-game cushion to
dominate the National League West with. Pencil the Dodgers in for at least the
National League Championship Series.
With a suddenly crowded outfield, the Dodgers sent outfielder Joc Pederson down the freeway to the Los Angeles Angels. This is their latest move in an offseason designed to make some attempt at capitalizing on Trout’s prime. The Angels took every swing at ace Gerrit Cole, but Cole ended up with the Yankees. The Angels instead settled for World Series hero, Anthony Rendon, who won his first Silver Slugger award after posting an on-base plus slugging statistic of 1.010 in 2019. They also hired new manager Joe Maddon to replace Mike Scioscia, signaling an attempt at organization-wide change in direction. While not as loaded as their crosstown compatriots, the Angels have enough sky-high upside to factor into any championship conversation.
Elsewhere, there are still shoes to drop and cases to be made as postseason contenders. Francisco Lindor and Kris Bryant could be moved in decaffeinated versions of the Betts trade, but such moves would say more about their current teams tearing down than new homes loading up for meaningful runs.
Far more likely would be a slew of incremental moves from a team like the Minnesota Twins, who could accelerate from being a 2019 surprise to a legitimate contender in 2020, following the Washington Nationals’ model. The easy move would be for the Twins to fortify the pitching staff with either Jon Gray of the Colorado Rockies or to pry relief pitcher Ken Giles from the Blue Jays. Minnesota did not have the firepower to match up with the Yankees in the 2019 ALDS, and few ever do. However, the Twins would have to bet on someone to push farther.
The Rays could also make a rarely-seen splash by trading for Kansas City outfielder Whit Merrifield, who led the league in hits last year. Merrifield had as good of a contact-and-defense season as anyone, and his team-friendly contract is exactly the kind of added bonus that makes the small-market Rays salivate.
Baseball may be suffering a slow and steady decline, but its offseason fireworks can still inspire weeks of headlines and talking head deliberations. Given a few more savory moves, the league might even put together a thoroughly entertaining product this season.
Jonah Baker can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @jonahpbaker