A couple notes regarding the Red Sox and Indians, who both won on Saturday night (in Boston's case, twice) …
- The Red Sox wanted to trade for both Erik Bedard and Rich Harden once their attempt to acquire Hiroki Kuroda from the Dodgers fell through, tweets Peter Gammons. Bedard, of course, ended up in Boston, while the acquisition of Harden was nixed by Red Sox medical staff.
- It's unclear whether the Indians were the team that placed a waiver claim on the Rays' B.J. Upton, writes Paul Hoynes of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, but it'd make sense for the Tribe to do so. Outfielders Michael Brantley and Shin-Soo Choo are banged up, and the Indians were one of the teams interested in Upton prior to the non-waiver trade deadline, according to Hoynes.
- Lost in the shuffle of Jim Thome's first homer since rejoining the Indians was the Major League debut of reliever Nick Hagadone, writes Hoynes. Hagadone, a lefty, was acquired along with Justin Masterson in the deal that sent Victor Martinez to Boston in 2009. That doesn't look like such a bad swap in retrospect, especially if Hagadone turns out to be a solid member of the Tribe's bullpen.
Hagedone.. Still the one am most afraid of will bite Boston in that Vmart deal.
Lefty with 3 good pitches and hits 97 on the gun are a very rare commodity.
Getting Harden for 2 good prospects in Chaing and Fed-X was bad enough, why they thought Harden was going to help is beyond me, unless they think that the Yankees would eventually end up with either/both to help their rotation that actually needs fixing down the stretch run.
What? The Sox got Bedard for Chiang and Fed-X, not Harden, and neither of those guys were a huge loss while Bedard has a chance to help the Sox a lot.
Bedard has a chance to help for 2 months in a rotation already with *5* starters.
Chaing is a decent prospect Fed-X is yet another under rated defensive catcher. Chaing moreso than Fed-X maybe, but still..with Bucholz hurt they already had both Wake and Miller. it is flabbergasting when the team NEEDS RH hitting power OF and trades away a very young one in Chaing for a 2 month back of the rotation rental.
You might have a point if there were even a remote chance that Chiang would ever put on a Red Sox uniform…
Both were eligible for the rule 5 draft so there was a big chance another team would take them.
How did/do they need “RH hitting power OF?” The team has been crushing lefty pitchers all year, they don’t need a RH hitting anything. And despite the fact that they had Wakefield and Miller who can both start, they did need a good starting pitcher, which is what they got in Bedard. Look at his numbers, seriously, go look at them. I could pretty easily make the case that he’s a better pitcher than Buchholz and is clearly the #3 pitcher in that rotation at the moment.
Chiang is well below average defensively, and couldn’t hit much either until this year, so selling high on him was probably a really good idea. And Fedex is a good defensive catcher, but he doesn’t hit much, and with Saltalamacchia likely here for a while, and Boston showing a lot of faith in Lavarnway, Fedex was nothing more than AAA catching depth to Boston.
You are twisting mistakes i make on posts (normal for me) and jumping all over them when am pretty sure you knew the intention of what I meant from the start…
Chaing is a RH hitting OF long term that hits for power, or since he got his diabetes under control this year. Not this year would he have helped of course, but possibly a couple of years down the road.
I seem to remember another player Sox sites refused to rate very high by the name of Lavarnway that fell through all but the Red Sox themselves cracks.. Defensive liability.. learning the position.. Good power from the RH side.. yet several sites who chat about prospects refused to give Lavarnway a fair shake until mid way through this season and I just think Chaing may be another of this “ilk” thrown away as I posted for a back of the rotation, injury riddled past, 2 month rental.
Not saying ya gotta agree with me or anything, but this has really gotten testy.
I wasn’t trying to twist anything, you said that they need a RH hitting outfielder, and I assumed you meant that they need one now. I agree that Lavarnway didn’t get the attention he deserved until this year, but there is a huge difference between him and Chiang; Lavarnway has always been able to hit very well, Chiang could never hit until this year, so even with the diabetes issue there is still a very good chance this year is just a fluke. Minor league players come out of nowhere to have great years all the time, only to fall back into anonymity almost every time.
Hagadone is a reliever long term.
I so hate that use of the term nixed with regards to the Sox medical staff – they did no such thing. They were asked their opinion of the medical records and they gave it. Based on that opinion, the people in charge, Theo and his front office tried to re-work the deal due to concerns that Harden wouldn’t last the season (hardly unreasonable). Oakland didn’t want to rework the deal, thought the deal was already fair and probably thought the Sox were being odd since everyone knows Harden’s medical history (also hardly unreasonable).
In the end, Oakland were willing to trade him, Red Sox were willing to trade for him, they couldn’t agree on his value.
Given Ellsbury last year, there is plenty of reason to dump on the Sox medical staff without creating a situation.
Pitchers with injury history and sign with them BECAUSE of the injury history will disagree with that.
Penny, Colon, Smotz.. They sign there in some cases (penny) to fix a problem another team (LAD) could not find for 2 seasons….
The deal was that when the Sox looked at Harden’s medical reports they found out that he was getting cortisone shots just to stay on the field, which wasn’t known before that.
And as far as the Sox medical staff and Ellsbury; there were like 4 other specialists who do not work for the Sox who looked at him and were saying the same thing (same story with Buchholz this year) so while they may have been wrong they were hardly alone in that, and can’t really take all the blame. Nobody got it right.
But Hagadone didn’t pitch in this game at all….