OH HENRY! YOU’RE KIDDING ME
Betts trade explanations don’t quite make sense
Here’s the first problem with the prepared statement about the Mookie Betts trade that John Henry read Monday in Fort Myers: Anyone smart enough to read it isn’t dumb enough to believe it. Literacy is all that’s required to be insulted by it.
For one thing, Henry equated trading Betts with shipping quirky Nomar Garciaparra out of town on July 31, 2004.
Betts is 27 and in the past five seasons with the Red Sox averaged more than 148 games a year. By the time Garciaparra was dealt, he was 31, had a bum Achilles tendon, had become a liability in the field, and nobody was talking about his “great, great smile.” He wanted out, the Red Sox wanted him out, and the majority of fans who had once adored him weren’t sorry to see him go.
Those trades had about as much in common as the personalities and reliability levels of the squeaky-clean Mookie and Alex Verdugo, the outfielder with the bad back and checkered past who was the primary of three pieces coming from the Dodgers to the Red Sox in exchange for Mookie and talented, experienced, moody left-hander David Price.
Henry’s statement, which took him six minutes to read, also was designed to let Red Sox fans know he feels your pain. (Someone forgot to coach him to bite his lower lip and quiver when reading that part).
“So, on one level, when I say I understand how many of you feel about this trade with the Dodgers, I know many of you, particularly our youngest fans, are disbelieving or angry or sad about it,” he said. “I know it’s difficult and disappointing.”
Translation: Obviously, adults who know enough about baseball economics understand why he had to do this, but I do understand how the young and naive don’t get it. I was young and naive once, too.
Don’t fall for that for a second. You are not naive for hating this trade, regardless of your age. The Red Sox did not have to do this. In fact, they had to not do this.
Henry also painted himself as a champion of players’ economic freedoms today compared to when he was a boy idolizing Stan “The Man” Musial of his beloved Cardinals. Times were different then, he rightly said. Players didn’t have free-agent rights. You know what else was different? The value of ball clubs didn’t wildly appreciate back then. Forbes last year estimated the Red Sox net worth at $3.2 billion and estimated the value of Fenway Sports Group at $6.6 billion. The Sox were purchased for $700 million.
And this is the thanks shown to the people who made that $2.5 billion appreciation possible?
The prepared statement was bad enough. Naturally, the Red Sox kept digging.
Obviously, the trade was made in order to move the payroll under the so-called “competitive balance tax” threshold of $208 million.
“You don’t trade Mookie to get under the CBT,” Sox CEO Sam Kennedy said.
No, you trade Mookie and make the Dodgers take Price and half of his remaining $96 million salary for the next three seasons.
“We are not giving up on the 2020 season,” Kennedy said. “We think we are built to be able to compete.”
And swampland well to the south of Jet Blue Park is built for building nice winter homes. That might make a nice side business for the Red Sox. Caveat emptor.
Talk about placing unfair expectations on interim manager Ron Roenicke. The Red Sox won 84 games a year ago and swapped the 2018 American League MVP for a right fielder suffering from a back stress fracture. This is supposed to make them competitive? Price was injured for much of last season, but still went 7-5 with a 4.28 ERA, so it’s not as if subtracting him from the rotation will make them better.
If the Red Sox wanted their fans to begin looking ahead instead of licking their wounds from a historically bad trade, they needed to tell the world how many years and how much money they offered Betts to stay in Boston. Then everyone could decide for themselves how they feel about the trade.
The Red Sox failed to do so, leaving them only one grade for the day, which happens to match the grade for the trade: F.