The Red Sox have officially announced their signing of outfielder Masataka Yoshida. To create space on the 40-man roster, infielder Jeter Downs was designated for assignment.
Downs, 24, is perhaps best known as one of the key pieces of the trade that sent Mookie Betts and David Price to the Dodgers in February of 2020. Downs went to the Red Sox alongside Alex Verdugo and Connor Wong. At the time, Downs was a highly-touted prospect, featuring on the back end of Baseball America’s top 100 list in both 2020 and 2021.
Unfortunately, his stock has completely nosedived in the past two years. After the pandemic wiped out the minor leagues in 2020, Downs spent 2021 in Triple-A, getting into 99 games on the year. His power and speed were still evident, as he hit 14 home runs and stole 18 bases. However, he struck out in 32.3% of his plate appearances and finished with a batting line of .190/.272/.333 for a wRC+ of 62.
2022 was an improvement but only slightly. His strikeout rate dropped but was still quite high at 29.6%. He added another 16 homers and swiped 18 more bags, but his batting line of .197/.316/.412 added up to a 95 wRC+. He also got into 14 MLB games but hit just .154/.171/.256 in that small sample, striking out in 51.2% of his trips to the plate.
Despite making him a key piece of a franchise-altering trade, it seems the club has run out of patience with him. They will now have a week to trade him or put him on waivers. Despite the rough results in the past two seasons, it seems likely that some team would take a flier on him. He’s still only 24, was a top prospect less than two years ago and has two option years remaining. He also brings defensive versatility, having primarily played shortstop but also some second and third base.
For the Boston fans, trading away an elite talent like Betts was always going to be a bitter pill to swallow, but it seems to be getting worse with age. While Betts helped the Dodgers win the 2020 World Series, Verdugo seems to have settled in as an adequate but unexciting outfielder. Wong has yet to establish himself at the big league level and Downs is now potentially leaving the organization on a low note.
Wow. How someone can fall from such a high prospect status shows how hard it is to survive in this league
Pretty hard not to fall if you can’t hit over the Mendoza line.
Tell that to 2016 Aaron Judge…
Now compare Judge and Downs minor league numbers from the same time frame. What a bad comparison.
Judge was a sophomore in college at the same age Downs was tearing up high A and AA ball.
After just 12 games in AA, Down missed the entire 2020 season because thee minor leagues shut down for COVID. Then his new organization, the Red Sox, pushed him straight up to AAA in 2021 and he struggled. He has never recovered.
Some team is going to give him a chance to slow down the game again at AA and then build him back up.
I think he can still be a productive player in the majors. Not a star, but not as bad as we have seen the last two years. He is still just 24 years old.
He can’t hit. He’s not going to transform in another organization. He can be at best a defense first infield bench piece for a team like the pirates
“I think he can still be a productive player in the majors.”
Have you seen any of his ABs from the ML level? He looks like a High School ballplayer at a ‘hit again a pro’ event. Totally overmatched.
I hope Im wrong, and it was touching when he did play, and he got a standing O from the fans for his first big league hit. But, I have my doubts.
Now go sign Swanson.
Right, because players never suck for the first couple years of their career then figure it out. I mean, there were multiple free agents from this class who were bad at first, but yeah, Downs is doomed.
@myaccount2, sure, plenty of players sucked at the start of their MLB careers. Mike Schmidt was bad his rookie season. Greg Maddux was even worse on the pitcher side. Those are HOFers and two of the greatest ever, so starting poorly in the majors isn’t the end. The Judge comparison by someone above wasn’t good since he barely had a cup of coffee in 2016, then was injured in September, and had success at each level in the minors. Judge’s rookie season was 2017. The difference is Downs was over matched in two straight years in AAA, and before that he had all of about 50 PAs in AA. What success he had in the minors was all lower level in 2017-19. Some team will pick him up because of his skill set and hope they can fix him (maybe they can) but the Red Sox designating him says they no longer believe in him and are okay risking losing him.
No!!!!
Budget – Mayer will be called up in 2024, Story is locked up longterm, and Devers may get a longterm extension (I’m not holding my breath though).
They will be looking for a stopgap, or will move Hernandez or Story (if his arm strength improves).
myaccount – How many of those multiple free agents were designated for assignment? Are you saying Bloom is clueless for cutting Downs? Dude has a .661 OPS in AAA, name one of those free agents who had similar or worse numbers at that level.
I agree.
Red Sox would be crazy to not covet Swanson after losing Xander.
Plus RSN loves the goofy names, so who better than Dansby Swanson?
I don’t think he’s doomed.
maybe an overhyped utility guy who turns out to be a utility guy.
Really not so bad after all
Jose Iglesias was like that and he turned out fine. Bloom is deep-sixing this club at a record pace. Downs never got a chance. Hopefully someone picks him up (I’m looking at you, Mike Elias) and he pans out.
Jose Iglesias was known for his glove.
yet another example of an overhyped defensive specialist turning out to be a defensive specialist.
Downs kinda looks like a journeyman utility middle IF .
At best, he’s a Jonathan Schoop type if he can hit well enough to start at 2B. (not looking likely)
At worst we don’t see him in the league.
Gallo just got $11MM with those numbers.
For anyone still shilling for this Bloom trade debacle of Betts you can now STFU.
would’ve rather had Brusdar ..
Boxscore: The Red Sox main goal when trading Betts was to reset the luxury tax. The Dodgers took on $48M of the $96M remaining on David Price’s contract. The Dodgers paid $48M for just one year of Betts. That is why the prospect return to the Red Sox was lower. The Red Sox shed Betts’s $27M salary and $16M of Price’s salary and reset the luxury tax.
Nice post ‘all in suit’: To further that point: If MLB teams could buy prospects from other teams, 48M would buy you a top-notch prospect. So , you have to figure that money would have translated into a nice addition to the trade.
suit – Bloom told us Mookie was traded to get the payroll flexibility to retain the other homegrown stars.
Xander and Benny are gone, and Devers could very well be too.
Bloom lied.
And I find it hard to believe he couldn’t find another way to dump Price. It’s not like the Dodgers took on his entire contract, other teams would have been okay with paying just 50% of it.
Trading betts is not losing him for nothing was always a win for the Redsox it’s not debatable. Now stfu
Sox are probably hoping he slips through the claim process and they can assign him back to AAA, but he’ll no longer occupy a 40-man spot. My guess though is some team will claim him based on his pedigree. A change of scenery might help. Wouldn’t surprise me if the Dodgers claimed him, although they pick last so seems unlikely.
Seems like the Yankees should get Jeter.
I doubt any team would claim Jeter if they looked at film of his batting. I bet he slips thru, or becomes one of those claim, waive, claim, waive guys.
Ahhh! The original 3-Way trade until Twins pulled out
Dodgers receive: Mookie Betts, David Price, cash from Boston
Red Sox receive: Alex Verdugo from Los Angeles, Brusdar Graterol from Minnesota
Twins receive: Kenta Maeda, from Los Angeles
You mean until the sox called it off because of Graterol’s physical that made them believe he wouldn’t stick as a starter?.. Bloom sucks
negative…..try google search “twins pull out of mookie betts trade”
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/twins-pull-out-of-original-three-team-mookie-betts-trade-with-dodgers-red-sox-next-steps-uncertain/#:~:text=Picks-,Twins%20pull%20out%20of%20original%20three%2Dteam%20Mookie%20Betts%20trade,Red%20Sox%3B%20next%20steps%20uncertain&text=It%20looks%20like%20the%20Boston,complete%20the%20Mookie%20Betts%20trade.
My bad!!!! you are right..lol It was the medicals that the sox didnt like so the twins pulled out.
A beer for you.
Twins didn’t want to pull out of the original deal. When Boston asked for an additional player the twins gave a deadline for the original deal. Smart move for twins that any business person would do.
You mean a trade that never happened because of reasons, but fans want to blame Bloom. And only mention it because the guy is pitching okay. Bloom doesnt suck the fans do.
Dude, are you Bloom’s wife or something? I’ve never seen someone so vehemently defend a GM at the helm of a tire-fire franchise who wasn’t related to him or actively screwing him. Just asking.
If you are directing this to me then call me Monica Lewinsky 😉
“tire fire franchise”
6 games below .500, almost exactly in the middle of the pack. Playing in the toughest division in baseball. 4 recent championships, ALCS team 2 years ago.
You just sound like an idiot, when you say things like that. And after that last comment, I think I’m right.
audio – He’s just trolling Red Sox fans.
Quite obvious even before he said Red Sox fans suck.
You’re my new project, Mrs. Bloom… 😉
Also, have to ask given your username: over or under 5’7″? I have a guess…:-*
Says the guy posting on a message board. Go get some real life love and put the phone down.
Audio … I think that might actually be Chaim Bloom. “Luxury tax” – got it.
Graterol didn’t stick as a starter so he wasn’t wrong there.
Very few top 100 prospects make a large impact at the mlb level. I believe a study was done that less than 30% of top 50 prospects achieve a career war of about 10.
It’s always super fascinating to look through old top prospects lists and the first round of previous drafts. Some teams make it look easy, but it really is tough to scout and develop talent.
Michael – You are absolutely right, and that’s exactly why Dombrowski will be inducted in the HOF. He wasn’t dumb enough to hold onto a bunch of prospects until they had little or no value. He used prospects to get Eovaldi, Pearce, Kimbrel and Sale. The results speak for themselves.
@Fever Pitch Guy… Tigers fan here. I remember in 2012 when DD traded our #1 draft pick Jacob Turner with Rob Brantly and Brian Flynn to the Marlins for Omar Infante and Aníbal Sánchez. At the time, many Tigers fans called for his head. And that year was the last time we made it to the World Series.
DD is the single most overrated GM of all time and it’s not even close. Fans love the guy because he convinces owners to spend like morons and leaves franchises in shambles. Gets lucky occasionally and his team wins the World Series which everyone intelligent knows the mlb playoffs are a complete crapshoot.
If DD ran any team that didn’t have a top 10 payroll the team would be god awful. And then dumb fans would equate that to spending equals winning. That’s why fans love DD he runs a team stupidly like they would.
dkhits – That’s a great example, thank you. It sure seems like Dombrowski knew which prospects to trade. I don’t think any Sox fan is missing Espinosa or Moncada right now.
And he was smart enough to hold onto Devers, who Chicago really wanted in the Sale trade.
bure – You’re embarrassing yourself.
Dombrowski built up the Expos and Marlins farm systems on low budgets.
He took four different teams to the World Series.
That ain’t “luck”, son.
He’s a guaranteed HOF’er.
I agree he’s the single most overrated gm of all time glad you agree
I find it fascinating how fans have become so obsessed with the prospect industry over a relatively short span of time.
I understand why fans of teams like ‘my Mariners’ put an emphasis on up and coming talent. The team at the MLB level was rubbish for years! At least we had the future! Haha
I do feel like there is a trend of over-valuing prospects. I feel like the expectations and projected stats for all these young players breeds a lack of patience for these teenagers and college age young men.
Ayr – good point. I think some of the fan obsession with prospects may be fuelled by a fantasy sports mindset. Far too much prospect hype.
was Jeter downs a top 100 guy ?
I remember him being more of a fringe top 20 organizational guy.
regardless, Brusdar is exactly the closer the Red Sox have been searching for ever since
What this reinforces is why you don’t trade all your proven MLB-caliber talent to gather lower level milb ‘prospects’…. make sure you get major league ready guys, or, expect your baseline return to be nothing.
I believe the Miguel Cabrera trade was also a bust. It’s near impossible to trade a hall of gamer and come out ahead.
That applies to every sport.
Here’s how I knew his prospect rankings was BS. When he was with the Reds, unranked. Traded to Dodgers and suddenly in the top 75.
Rowsdower – Close to right. Cincy thought he was a bust and sent him to Friedman in a deal as a first round prospect with huge upside due to his bat speed and launch angle.
Friedman got him and saw how bad he was so he promoted him to AA late in the 2019 season when the AA team was facing 2 of the 3 worst pitching staffs in the league. He hit .333 for 12 games after failing miserably for 198. Friedman called some folks at the rating services put him on the radar as the LAD shooting star and then he packaged him to his protege as a key piece in the now famous Mookie Betts give away.
Friedman manipulated the prospect rankings like he often does and Bloom did not do his due diligence on the kid. Downs never had talent and never showed talent except in 12 games at AA against very weak pitching. Lies and deception catch up with false rankings and the GM ends up looking like a fool, ….again!!
This tale is far too common for a guy who supposedly was the brains in TB. Yep, that was a great duping too. Nobody mentioned when the interviews happened for Bloom that he did nothing more than write a book on the fundamentals of building a farm system. An impression was left with Boston ownership that he was the brains in the organization. If he had been they wouldn’t have so grossly outperformed the Red Sox since Bloom came to Boston. He was just the guy taking credit for anything good that happened.
The owners have egg on their face. Bloom has egg on his face for believing Friedman who sold him on the merits of Downs and now Red Sox Nation has egg on it’s face because the team that won a championship is gone and a bunch of slugs have replaced them.
Yes, inexpensive below league average slugs like Kike Hernandez, Arroyo, Yoshida, Refsnyder, the highly touted perrenial all-star Verdugo, Frenchy Cordero, Tommy Pham, Reese McGuire, Connor Wong, Eric Hosmer, and countless other mediocre below league average cheap players.
Lots of depth but the depth has no talent but to satisfy many of the Bloom guys at least they didn’t cost much so we could afford a bunch of them and fly by the CAP in a year where we finished last!!
But hey as someone pointed out yesterday, 2022 wasn’t that far from 2019 the worst year of the Dombrowski era. hahaha the things Bloom’s guys write on this site to try an spin even the smallest level of success is hysterical!!
I just read that Downs got released from his winter ball team last week because of how much he was struggling.
Sorry Sox fans, there’s only one real Jeter. Giving up on him already seems a bit quick though.
Stop embarrassing us our team sucks
What are you talking about? Clearly you aren’t a fan of the Yankees, who far from suck, even if they haven’t won the world series in 13-14 years.
The Yankees are terrible
Terrible for the Yankees= 97 wins
You should become a TR subscriber so that you have the TR coin next to your TR coin avatar
I prefer silver
Terrible for the Yankees is 97 wins and losing before the world series every year. They’re overrated.
Look, I’m an endocrinologist and the Yankees definitely suck
Always trust an endocrinologist, im a gynecologist for dogdays mother
Yankeesfans: True, quality teams know how to close the deal. Mediocre teams dont.
So only the champions are quality?
Yeah, wrong
@dogdays2
With the payroll the Yankees have to work with year in and year out, to have 2 WS appearances and 1 WS win SINCE 2003 is a DIGRACE.
Any NYY fan that tries to defend that is obviously in denial.
Yes , what a “DIGRACE”!!
I simply said they weren’t terrible, like ever.
Learn how to read a thread.
Dog days smears mustard on his toes before bed
Guess we know who’s not in the running for an everyday job on the MLB roster.
How the heck does Boston DFA Downs over Ort or others? What a terrible decision! Some other team like Pitt or Miami will be all over him. While Downs will never hit for a high average, he has good speed & power. He can play a Util role in the majors if he cut cut down on the K’s.
Ort must have comprising photos of Bloom
Ort also throws 98 with kind of nasty stuff. There is more potential for him to become solid in the majors than Downs did. Think Darwinzon is next, if you can’t throw strikes, it doesn’t matter how nasty your stuff is.
Ort had 12.3 Ks/9 at Triple A last year. Does anyone do anymore research than ‘last season’s ERA’? He has only pitched 28 innings at the MLB level.
Because Downs is a 2.5 A player at best?
They were worried that putting a DFA on Hosmer would be too upsetting to their fan base.
Wasn’t he supposed to be a centerpiece from the Mookie Betts trade?
Verdugo was
Verdugo was the starting player requested as part of the trade. Nothing more nothing less. A starter.
Verdugo was literally the Dodgers top prospect in 2019 who was in the majors for a couple of years and had really solid first full year. Obviously they expected his batting average to stay up near .300, and for his power to develop closer to 20 HRs a year, but that didn’t happen.
I can’t believe I forgot Alex Verdugo existed
$48M from the Dodgers was the centerpiece of the Mookie Betts trade.
I would say Verdugo was the biggest piece, but Downs was definitely next.
POS
Yes he was. But a Top Flight Prospect was not coming because we sent over half of David Price’s salary. With that thought in mind you get what you get.
At the time of the trade Mookie was the 2nd best position player in all of baseball. To say a top flight prospect wasn’t coming over is ludicrous. This trade is an abject failure for the red sox. John Henry needs to sell the team soon because that division is only getting stronger.
I think the Red Sox pictured Andrew McCutchen when they looked at Mookie betts 10 year contract request.
Probably good for the next 4 or 5 years but then a total drop off in the mid-30s. Followed by 5 years of massive money for no production other than glimpse of what was.
Mookie was not going to re-up with the Sox. They got what they could get.
At the time of the trade, Downs was a top 50 prospect.
No but bright boy Bloom nixed Gratesol in favour of Downs
The Red Sox team doctors nixed Gratesol. Get your facts right.
nonetheless whoever nixed it sure looks good today don’t they?? At the end of the day brightly Bloom made the decision.
A lot of people would have made the same decision. Extremely hard throwing pitchers seem have a much higher fail rate than infield prospects. Especially with the poor medicals.
Sox got Alex Verdugo and Connor Wong too. Dodgers got stuck with Mookie Betts, David Price and cash.
Dang, stuck with Mookie, sounds terrible……uh?
Chaim Bloom is an idiot. Rich teams should learn how to be rich.
Don’t forget to blame Henry too. Bloom is doing Henry’s bidding
All GMs answer to owners however they do make their own decisions being in the role they are in. Like any business, I’m sure bloom is given a yearly budget and has to stick to that.
You should tell John Henry that.
He will never be more than a utility player at best…. this goes to show that Prospects don’t always pan out….. Maybe they should have stuck with the original trade in receiving Graterol.
You think?? But bright boy Bloom knew best
Oh look. The new Angels starting SS…
Thanks, I just felt sick in my stomach at the thought..
Since getting to triple A, his previously great plate discipline has evaporated. Wonder if he was selling out for the long ball? If so it’s cost him a 40 spot. Hopefully he gets back on track with a soon to be new team. He still has the fact he’s very young too working in his favor
His plate discipline was fine, he had a walk rate of 11.3% at AAA last year. Not making meaningful contact was his downfall
His strikeout rate was almost 30%. It wasn’t the issue of making meaningful contact (he had a .216 isolated slugging percentage), but making contact period.
Interesting. So he can lay off obviously bad pitches but can’t connect when he swings (presumably mostly at strikes).
Yeah that’s exactly what I said, idiot
Any chance to call me names.
Love how you don’t even hide your jealousy. Might tell David about you next time we talk. Probably not, though. Really you aren’t worth bringing up.
Whole reason BOS acquired Jeter was for this moment.
Hope it’s everything you thought it was.
With 24 of the Red Sox 40-man being taken up by pitchers, it’s hard to believe that they couldn’t have made room for Downs. I know he doesn’t have the same luster as at the time of the Betts/Price trade but without Bogaerts, it’s hard to imagine them not tagging Downs for at least a utility role.
Maybe there are some more moves that are imminent.
Another Dodger prospect who turned out a bust. Shocker.
Actually, the Dodgers trade the ones that turn out to be busts. They keep the others.
To be fair he was originally a Reds prospect which explains the poor performance better
He wasn’t even a Reds top-Al prospect in a weak farm system in 2019, then mysteriously became a MLB top 100 prospect in the Dodgers’s system. His failure was predictable.
Yordan says hello ️
Hmmm, wonder if the Dodgers might want to take another look at Downs.
Why didnt the front office DFA him and protect Thad Ward instead? Please Henry, fire Bloom as soon as humanly possible.
What do you mean? They let them both go?
he was left off the 40 man and was selected in the rule 5 draft
So? Now they let Downs go too. So what point is even being made here?
The point Red Sox fans are trying to make is that it’s frustrating letting go of Ward when Downs was clearly on the list of potential DFA candidates for the FO. Instead, they opted to let Ward go in the R5 draft, and keep Downs protected, along with Ryan Brasier, another player who could have been DFAd.
They would have had to trade Ward for a lesser prospect that wasn’t on the 40 if they did that because they would have needed his roster spot and they certainly aren’t going to put him on waivers less than a month after putting him on the 40 for Rule 5 purposes.
Ward was taken in the rule 5 draft. He was left off the 40-man.
And now Downs is gone too. So how exactly were they supposed to keep Ward over Downs if both are gone?
Because they had an opportunity to protect Ward before the Rule 5 draft. Why not DFA Downs back at the deadline to finalize 40-man rosters in prep for the Rule 5 draft and protect a decent pitching prospect.
That’s a legitimate question.
You’re not making any sense. So they protect Ward and DFA Downs and then who do they DFA for Yoshida? Where does this extra 40 man spot magically come from?
What about Ryan Brasier, a 35 year old relief pitcher with an ERA closer to 6.00 than 5.00. How about Kaleb Ort? It’s not like Downs was the only mediocer 40-man player.
They could’ve DFAd those guys before the rule 5 also…. This Downs move has literally nothing to do with the Ward decision. Not even relevant since both are gone…. Come on guys it’s not that confusing
Yes, DFAing Downs has nothing to do with Ward, but it’s frustrating to Sox fans losing a decent pitching prospect when Downs was a guy they could have DFAd at the time to make room for Ward. Now they’re DFAing him for another player. All three of Ward, Ort, and Braiser could have been DFAd, and made room for Ward.
Dude, the two moves aren’t even related. You don’t get it. Downs is off the team, his roster spot was given to Yoshida. It can’t also retroactively be given to Ward in some pipe dream lol.
Nobody is saying to retroactively give Ward the roster spot. You are completley misinterpreting the point here. Nobody is also saying the two moves are related. But it’s frustrating to see the Red Sox let go of Ward, who was a decent pitching prospect, in the Rule 5 draft, when they had plenty of opportunities to protect him. DFAing Jeter Downs was one of those opportunities.
I dont mean literally retroactively give him the roster spot. I’m saying Downs and Ward were both always going to be let go. Doesn’t matter which was first, it’s irrelevant to even mention keeping one instead of the other. Both are gone. And as someone else mentioned it’s way better to lose someone in the rule 5 cause you have a chance to get them back.
good thing they traded for Hoy Park… oh wait… never mind
With the Red Sox signing a lot of free agents that need to be added to the 40 man roster, Ward would probably be DFA’d shortly after being added to the 40 man roster. Instead of doing that to him, he was left unprotected for the Rule 5 draft. The Nats took him in the Rule 5 draft. If he does not last with the Nats, the Red Sox can get him back. So, it is better to be subjected to the Rule 5 draft than to be added to the 40 man roster only to be quickly DFA’d.
Thank you. These people have no idea what they’re talking about
The point people are making is that there are a series of once again perplexing moves by bloom.
Many think Thad ward was worth protecting. Bloom didn’t.
Many think there are worse players on the 40-man than ward OR downs, with less upside and less team control affordably remaining. There are. Thus the cite to brasier et al.
What is being less than coherently advocated for was to protect ward, and/or politi, and RL song so they couldn’t be taken.
Then, the masses say, you DFA the likes of brasier et al while ward, for example, still kept his slot.
Make more sense now? It’s not downs slot for ward, then same slot to yoshi. It’s multiple different moves, keeping ward.
Dodgers pick him back up and turn him into a super U. Jk but he did have potential in the minors
Wow that Mookie trade just keeps on looking worse and worse. Chaim!
5 years of Verdugo for 1 expensive year of Betts isn’t the worse thing. Plus whatever prospects you can get for Verdugo. You don’t get Mayer if Betts is there.
.889 OPS in the Dodgers’ organization in 2019.
Nothing since.
Dodgers will probably sign him.
Love this move by Bloom for what it shows in his character. Not afraid to admit a highly regarded Prospect trade did not turn out.
Some GMS May hold on to a guy in the hopes everything works out to save face. Bloom Stands Tall here and owns up. Puts ego in the backseat and is running the team without it. Bravo.
Bloom absolutely sucks in every possible way. So does John Henry. And I’m a Sox fan.
He has to go
Maybe they should instead get a GM who doesn’t make constant mistakes?
Cue the “they kept this guy over Thad comments”.
Dodgers good trade with Reds to acquire both Downs and Josiah Gray. Both prospects shot up after the Dodgers acquired them. Downs was flipped to Red Sox with Verdugo and Wong for Price and Betts with RSox eating a chunk of Price’s contract.
Gray was part of trade to Nationals for Scherzer and Turner. Gray to me doesn’t seem like he’ll be very productive at MLB level.
That’s how you build and use prospect trade capital.
Yep trade your overrated prospects for real assets. You should know your guys better than any outsider.
Dodger prospects are always over rated. Yankees prospects too. Trades with those teams rarely work out well.
Most prospects are overrated. Very few actually make it. Even many of the elite prospects turn out to be busts. It’s how difficult this game is. The most unpredictable out of the major sports.
Have to be smart about trades. Sure, you lose out on occasional Yordan Alvarez and Pedro Martinez but in general the traded prospects don’t do much.
While “very few actually make it”, every player in the Majors was once a prospect.
Those teams are also great at player development so usually what you trade for is what you get.
Or perhaps the Dodgers simply know which ones to keep. Remember the Seager/Urias/Pederson for Hamels proposals many moons ago?
Like Yordan Alvarez and Oneil Cruz.
He’ll be a Royal in no time.
Jeter really never even got the chance to develop at AA. Got thrown basically right into AAA and missed the 2020 season…probably got in his own head.
the lost covid season was a make or break year for a lot of prospects… and high school and college players… Yankees farm system improved dramatically and others completely derailed
Wait! Wasn’t he the Red Sox can’t miss SS prospect just last season?
That’s Marcelo Mayer.
Mayer was 18 at the beginning of 2022. Now he is the new can’t miss SS prospect. His odds of making it as a star in MLB are the same as Downs had.
Mayer has much better odds.
Actually a GM in baseball worst than Hahn.
What is that baseball advice- you hit, you play.
No hit here. Goodbye
Bloom ain’t that bad.
Red Sox lost so many players over the past few years, not getting much back in return, but at least they kept Chris Sale off the open market
Silly me, I thought Jeter Downs was the next Pokey Reese. Oh well.
Do the Sox have a problem developing prospects recently? Seems the past few years they’ve had a lot prospect with ‘high upside’ who have completely imploded. Far too many to blame on the prospects at this point, I think..
Or am I wrong… agian :p
No problem developing them…. Just KEEPING them
Wild. I thought Downs and Josiah Grey were a nice grab for the Dodgers back in the day. Downs should be sliding in Xanders spot right now. Grey lead the league with 38 Homer’s and walks with 66 in 145ings.
Can we talk about how 66 walks leads the league? That’s a cray low number!! Nolan Ryan walked over 200 in season. These dudes need to take a walk. Strikeout totals are are inflated for the pitchers now days
Saw enough of Gray as a Dodger to know he was a gopher baller. 4 HRs allowed in 8 innings.
wow – that Mookie Betts trade keeps getting worse and worse
Strange perspective. Probably just piling on.
Scenario 1) Mookie Bettsts walks with no compensation other than a fourth round pick.
Scenario 2) Trade Mookie, unload Price money, get a player who’s like a fourth round pick in Downs, get a starting outfielder, get it back up catcher.
Still don’t understand the logic of some folks here but they just like to complain I guess. Misery seeking company?
I think Redsox dump salaries to LAD seems not to work out baseball wise for SOX but financially it sure does.
recalling the dump of Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett for a bunch of scrubs —It makes the return for Betts/Price as an improvement
Without that salary dump, the Red Sox don’t win the WS in 2013. They were able to hit the reset button and sign several key FAs like Victorino and Dempster and Gomes in the 2012 offseason that were key contributors. Not to mention having enough cash to keep David Ortiz off the FA market as well. The Red Sox have made some bad moves over the years, but I cannot put the A-Gon salary dump into that category
Their problem was trading him with Price There was no reason to do that if you wanted a good return.
Betts had backed them into a corner by turning down the extension. Every other team knew the Sox had to trade him. And attaching Price was the ONLY way to get out of that contract. Boston did about as well as they could, especially since the market for trading Betts was basically the Dodgers and no one else. Nobody else was giving up anything for him because they knew he wanted to go to LA the next year anyway.
if his parents had only named him Garciaparra Downs or Schilling Downs or Big Papi Downs they’d find a spot for him
Maybe…. But not if they named him Babe….
Was once the Dodgers #5 prospect
Soon to be the Dodgers #25 prospect ?
Maybe 75
Braves need to be all on this
how long until Boston gets a new GM… are they gonna wait for this one to trade Devers for a couple of prospects who don’t pan out too?
Yankee fans on here might want to pipe down…the Yankees just claimed him as per Twitter.
Did they trade Aaron Judge for him?
Arson Judge and 50k
Mookie Betts trade looking bad now for tge Rec Sox.
This is when every coach thinks he can fix a guy. He’ll get claimed off waivers, the only question is where he’ll end up.
If it still goes reverse record by league, A’s get first dibs followed by the Royals, Tigers, and Rangers.
This looks like a no brainer for a rebuilding A’s team.
THIS is the shortstop the twins will acquire this off-season
Seems like Redsox RUSHED him and he should have been placed in AA instead of AAA
He is going to be claimed because he needs to head back to AA and work on his bat there.
I remember this guy being a big deal when Mookie and Price got traded. So few prospects make it to the show and stay good.
Wonder if they would take dejong and his whole contract for downs? Extra pieces either way to make it work
Ah .. the highly touted prospect…. Can we agree they are PROSPECTS!!! Most overrated term in life is potential …sure I don’t want to pay for someone who might be slightly older ( but has put up the numbers before!!). Is what they say… good grief… for every Jeff Bagwell there are hundreds of Rusney Castillo / Carlos Quintana/ and Scott Coopers….much worse if football but I got nothing else to B$tc& about
Just think, the Padres were rumored to offer two young MLB ready prospects and Wil Myers. The two prospects were said to be between one OF being Josh Naylor or Manuel Margot and one starting pitcher in Cal Quantrill or Joey Luchessi. Red Sox could have had a top of the rotation SP in Quantrill and a solid bat with Naylor, now both are part of the success of the Guardians. Adding Wil Myers and his contract blew the deal up for the Padres though. Red Sox could have been a lot better though and not going through a rebuild due to the garbage return they got from the Dodgers.
It looks like the Red Sox main goal in the Mookie Betts trade was to reset the luxury tax. The Dodgers took on half of David Price’s contract which led to the Red Sox resetting the luxury tax. It doesn’t look like the Padres offer would help reset the luxury tax.
Oh yeah that’s right, and I believe the Padres didn’t want Price with his contract.
I agree with you about the player return.
I think there will be a few teams that will give him another shot
Could this mean a trade package including Downs is imminent since they have a week to trade him before he hits the waiver market? Maybe I’m just wishfully thinking Bloom will make some sort of a splash to make this team a competitor for 23.
Another can’t miss prospect that missed.
Not trying to sound like a hater, but have the Red Sox developed a hitter that has proven it at the major league level since Devers came up?
I guess Dalbec has shown that he’s capable, but his trajectory is going the wrong direction
I know it’s been mentioned already but it’s wild that they were adamant of getting this guy over Graterol over concerns of his medicals and here Graterol has been a major leaguer while this guy can’t hack it.
Unless the prospect is a true blue chipper you sell every time. Prospects rarely pay off.
Watch the Dodgers take Downs back on the cheap and turn him into a useful MLB player.
WTF IS BRASIER STILL DOING ON THE 40 MAN! JETTISON HIS 6.6ERA TFOO HERE! Downs!? They must have a trade worked out is all I can think…? They where fleeced in the rule 5 draft too with Ward, our minor HR leader & another quality prospect. WTF is Boston even doing???????????????????????????????????????????????????
1r HRs 18SB at 24 years old I take that over bag of S**T Braiser
Sounds like Boston’s version of Lewis Brinson.
Jeter is DFA’d by the Red Sox !!
No s**t, Sherlock. That’s the headline.
The Red Sox fans are happy for the DFA because they couldn’t stand that his name is Jeter.
This is a dumb move. No excuses for Bloom on this one. Yeah Down’s been bad, but he’s young and too early to rule him out. Asinine decision. I’m sure we have a lot worse guys we could DFA.
He’s only 24 years old,he should get picked up.
Seems a little rushed through the minors.
How do Sox fans feel about the suggestion that Devers might be traded?
https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-rumors-trades-and-signings?t=trades-and-transactions
I think we’d all leave and check back in 3 years to see how it’s going.. wouldn’t be worth spending time cheering them on before then.
This is an easy one to call…the pirates are looking for a middle infielder. They are addicted to failed prospects. Waiver wire gold for Cherington.
First Park now Downs! This team is falling apart!
Unless they was some clubhouse/coaching issue with Downs, it’s a head scratcher. His pedigree is too high, he’s too young and he has multiple options.. odd. Feels like there are unreported portions of this story.
Wouldn’t surprise me to see LAD try to re-acquire Downs
BeforeMcCourt – LAD unloaded him just like Cincy did on LAD. Look at his numbers. He had 12 games where he stood out against very bad pitchers and Friedman spun a tale about how great he was so his rank went from over 200 to 44 over night or should I say just in time for Bloom to not research him and not figure out he was a bust. 3 years later he finally realized what he should have known based on his minor league history in Feb of 2020. Great bat speed and launch angle is NOT much help if you can’t make contact. Ask Dalbec.
Someone will pick him up because he has a great group of promoters behind him but smart teams won’t touch him.
Yankees signed Rodon and Bloom needs two solid starters and all he announces Yoshida an outfielder from Japan who they signed last week. When is this guy going to pick up pitchers? Is he going to depend on Sale and Paxton ? Both have long injury histories.
Bloom is in way over his head. Andrew Friedman was the guy in Tampa Bay. Bloom rode his shirttails. There is no rime or reason to what Bloom does. He traded for guys then DFA Hoy, Downs. He signs an untested guy from Japan, does not negotiate With Bogaerts when he could have during the year. He hangs on to guys at the trade deadline who he should have traded JD Martinez, Nate Eovaldi, then picks up Tommy Pham and Hosmer then traded Vazquez to a team we are playing that night. There was no way this team was going to compete at the trade deadline last year. Even the trade he made for Betts when he backed out of one deal for another. I like Verdugo but he looks like an average outfielder.
Does this look like a guy who breeds confidence in knowing what he is doing? Now I’m worried he is going to overpay on a panic signing like Story last year. Bloom needs to go!!!!
The Dodgers only trade their dud prospects away.
GaSoxFan and Fever – Is it ok for me to claim a huge I told everyone so about Jeter Downs? I ranted for months about how badly Bloom got taken and how Downs didn’t have the skills to make the majors and how Wong was LAD’s 5th or 6th catcher on their depth chart and how he’d never be more than a back-up at the MLB level and how the potential all-star Verdugo was not just over rated but had known back issues. Turns out Verdugo isn’t as good as Benny like everyone was told by the experts paid off by Friedman but at least he’s avoided further back issues so he can maintain a league average status.
Bloom’s first mistake was NOT non-tendering JBJ and his $11MM salary in December of 2019 and then he blew us all out of the water with the premature and very weak deal for Mookie and Price. Not just a bad return for Mookie but the buy down dropped Boston’s available payroll under the cap by $16MM after they had just struggled through multiple years with over $40MM in dead payroll with Manny, Panda and Hanley Ramirez.
By the middle of February 2020 Bloom had already established a horrendous trend in making deals. That has not changed and for three years he’s proven he’s not good with Free Agency either. The evidence is overwhelming yet ownership, who has provided tons of money and absolutely no interest in the Red Sox, extended this clown for another year. Why? It seems like Bloom must be close with someone who the owners owed a favor. It’s the only logical explanation after 15 years of being good owners. They lost interest while pursuing new acquisitions in other sports on other continents and paid back an IOU to a friend by keeping the under qualified poorly performing GM in place for an additional year.
The Red Sox hit a massive iceberg when Dombrowski was fired and the ship has been sinking ever since. The stars are no longer on board but unlike the Titanic these stars were pushed off the ship and jumped ship.
As a fan all I care about is when are the owners going to fire Bloom and pivot this team back toward a championship? I’ve stored all my Red Sox gear for 3 years now since the Mookie deal and it’s not coming back out until Bloom is gone. RED SOX NATION needs a glimmer of hope and that can only come through change. Bloom was a mistake to extend but the owners have enough money to eat that deal and fix the situation TODAY.
Make it happen and give Red Sox fans hope for the future.