Cespedes to the Sox, Lester to the A's

ZimmerNole

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/7/31/5955249/yoenis-cespedes-jon-lester-trade-jonny-gomes-cash-trading-deadline

A buddy of mine in the office is a A's fan and is just devestated....

In one of the oddest and most fascinating in-season trades in baseball history, the Oakland A's have acquired left-handed pitcher Jon Lester, platoon outfielder Jonny Gomes, and cash from the Boston Red Sox in exchange for slugging left fielder Yoenis Cespedes and a competitive balance draft pick. Lester will be a free agent at the end of the season, Cespedes is signed through 2015 at $10.5 million and then will likewise head for free agency.




That the A's, who already acquired pitchers Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel from the Cubs at the beginning of the month, would further augment their rotation with a left-hander of Lester's quality is not surprising. Nor is it surprising that the Red Sox would seek to deal an imminent free agent with whom they'd apparently reached an impasse in negotiations. What is unusual and somewhat shocking is that no prospects are involved; instead, the A's dealt away Cespedes, one of their leading power hitters, a career .470 slugger (in 365 career games) who has batted third, fourth, and fifth for them this year.

Cespedes, who joined the A's a free-agent defector from Cuba in 2012, is a flawed and fascinating player, but what makes his presence in the deal so surprising is that he's also a major contributor to a first place team. Teams are usually reluctant to trade out of the major league deck at this time of year for fear of giving up a key part; they almost never deal a productive middle-of-the-lineup bat in the middle of a playoff race.

Yoenis Cespedes is that, but he's also Yoenis Cespedes. Though he hit .292/.356/.505 as a rookie, teams soon figured out that Cespedes would give away at-bats even if up in the count, and that he was not selective in the traditional Beane-A's style. Last year he hit 26 home runs but couldn't quite get to a .300 on-base percentage; this year his .256/.303/.464 rates are a bit better than they look given that offensive levels have down-spiraled, and he augments those numbers with strong defense. Still, despite the occasional spectacular, long-distance home run, Cespedes is not quite a star, but somewhere in the next tier down.

That may change at Fenway Park, though Cespedes has played just six (homer-less) games there. The Red Sox will get to see if he can put up big numbers for an outfield that simply died this year, but they'll also have to keep him on the field. Cespedes has been on the disabled list twice in not quite three seasons, and his medical history in that time is a long litany of day-to-days and a looping repetitive mantra of "sprain" and "strain."

Gomes, also a free agent at the end of the season, has long been known as a lefty-masher, defensive butcher, and clubhouse leader. Going nowhere fast, the Red Sox could do without the latter for now. Gomes was also playing his strengths and limitations to the hilt: With injuries predominating the Sox' outfield, Gomes saw 106 plate appearances against right-handers and hit just .151, striking out 40 times. He continued to damage southpaws, hitting .302/.400/.431 to add to his career rates of .279/.379/.495 against them.

With the deal, the A's presumably get to shuffle recent acquisition Hammel off to the bullpen. He's been pounded in four starts since joining the team, going 0-4 with a 9.53 ERA. Those numbers are Steve Trout special. What is less clear is precisely how Oakland will continue to find offense from an outfield that currently has Coco Crisp day-to-day with a bad neck -- Double-A outfielder Billy Burns is currently in the majors -- and has defensive specialist Josh Reddick in right (Reddick hit 32 home runs in 2012, and has hit a total of 18 in 177 games since). There might be more of first baseman Brandon Moss in left field, more hot journeyman Stephen Vogt at first base. Gomes can only platoon with one player at a time, and the team's subsequent acquisition of reserve outfielder Sam Fuld from the Twins does little to change this equation. He too is left-handed, and despite having a good year by his standards is not much of a hitter.

As for Boston, despite their reluctance to sign Lester for the current duration and price of pitching, this must have been a wrenching move. When you think of the great left-handed pitchers in history, you can often associate them with just one or two teams. Warren Spahn = Braves. Carl Hubbell = Giants. Whitey Ford = Yankees. Jerry Koosman pitched all over the place, but is most remembered as a New York Met.

Going by Wins Above Replacement, Koosman is 14th on the career list. The guy just above him, Frank Tanana, also moved around quite a bit, but I would guess that for hardcore baseball fans what resonates about him are the days that he and Nolan Ryan formed a hard-throwing tandem at the front of the California Angels rotation. In this writer's inevitably subjective memory, Andy Pettitte means Yankees despite his Houston sojourn, Mark Langston is a Mariner or an Angel despite pitching a few other places, and Steve Carlton wears the uniform of the Philadelphia Phillies and not the Cardinals. Jon Lester, who had been with Boston his entire career, belongs on this list.

Some teams haven't had a great career left-hander, or even a great season by a left-handed pitcher. You might think the Red Sox, who in the long zombie years of the Yawkey ownership would be one of the franchise's that had gone without, because among that team's many self-thwarting obsessions was the notion that left-handers could not pitch at Fenway Park. It wasn't true, as one of Yawkey's first acquisitions, Lefty Grove, demonstrated, but Grove was such an outlier in every respect that perhaps it was easy to dismiss him and let the Green Monster rule one's thoughts. They also tended to forget the other 77 or 81 games a year that did not take place at Fenway, but never mind -- lefties were out.

And so despite the odd Mel Parnell, Bill Lee, and Bruce Hurst, Boston remained largely sans a great lefty. They dealt away Bobby Ojeda and John Tudor before they blossomed; they acquired Tanana, David Wells, and Frank Viola after their best years were behind them (though Viola actually pitched quite well during his short stint with the team). All of the foregoing means that in terms of both career and peak value, Jon Lester was the greatest Red Sox left-hander since the close of the 1940s. And since the brand of baseball played in the 1940s, particularly in the American League, was primitive compared to the level of competition we enjoy today, that makes Lester the best and most consistent southpaw in the history of the Boston Red Sox.

Made. Past tense. None of the foregoing was a reason not to do the deal. Lester's contract was up, the Red Sox have a rigid position in terms of giving extended contracts to veterans, even if Larry Lucchino says otherwise -- one supposes Carl Crawford will teach you that lesson -- and as deep as their farm system is, it couldn't save them from a horribly disappointing season this year. They have fresh blood, but another transfusion was needed.

Lester's historic standing in the organization says more about the team's inability over most of its history to develop left-handed pitchers. Twenty-four Cy Young Awards have been voted to southpaws, and Lester wasn't one of them; he's more like Boston's Andy Pettitte than its Whitey Ford. Even if you don't accept that the baseball of the 1930s and 40s was hardly major league, the version of Grove the Sox had after 1933 was more Jamie Moyer than Randy Johnson. Yes, he won four ERA titles in that condition -- again, at Fenway -- but the Greatest Boston Portsider title remains open to future claimants.

In summary, the Red Sox get a year and change of Cespedes, but they're out a terrific pitcher who will not be easy to replace in the short or long term. The A's get to try to bull their way through the postseason with a dominant starting rotation, but will miss Cespedes' bat and defense. This is all very strange, but wonderful, and will surely go down in history as one of the most daring deadline-period deals of all time. For all that we don't yet know about how it will work out, we at least know that.

Resinhead

Not sure how Boston pulled the cleanup hitter from Oakland for a pitcher that was going to be free at the end of the year. Crazy.

Gomes is a good dude. He'll like it in Oakland.

ZimmerNole

Resinhead wrote: »

Not sure how Boston pulled the cleanup hitter from Oakland for a pitcher that was going to be free at the end of the year. Crazy.

Gomes is a good dude. He'll like it in Oakland.

Seems to me like a gut punch to the A's and their faithful, and a homerun for the Sox.

However, the A's are making a solid postseason push and their rotation is just a bit silly with Lester this year. Lester was prob the more important member of the Sox last year (sans Papi)

Cane Pole

Definitely one of the oddest trades.....

ZimmerNole

Cane Pole wrote: »

Definitely one of the oddest trades.....

Sox traded Lackey as well.

Two starters in one day :shrug

cpr

Sox can pick lester back up in a few months if they are willing to pay.

ZimmerNole

cpr wrote: »

Sox can pick lester back up in a few months if they are willing to pay.

Yep, the A's traded 1.5 years of Cespedes for 6 months of Lester.

Mister-Jr

The Sox were not going to pay Lester next year. Better to get something for him now.

Salty Gator

A's needed the arm to hold off the Angels and make it deep into the playoffs. Lester has more playoff wins in his career that all Oakland starters combined in the past 20 years. Gomes is a good guy to platoon in left field and will add a solid pinch hitter off the bench. The Sox got a player in return who will really help them next year and they will still negotiate with Lester in the off season.