With baseball's hot stove starting to heat up, the first major trade went through with the Red Sox acquiring Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell from the Marlins for highly regarded prospects Hanley Ramirez and Anibal Sanchez.
Beckett is a pitcher with World Series experience, a career 3.46 ERA, and at 25 years of age, is in the prime of his career. Mike Lowell struggled last year, hitting only eight homers and batting .236 in 500 at-bats. Lowell is owed $18 million over the next two years, and was packaged with Beckett as a salary dump.
Hanley Ramirez has long been the Sox' top prospect, but the shortstop has never dominated minor league competition - although he seemingly has all the tools to succeed. Anibal Sanchez overpowered single-A hitters last year before being promoted to double-A and performing well. In total, Sanchez had 158 K in 136 IP and walked only 40 batters.
This is a trade that satisfied the needs of two clubs going in opposite directions; the Sox are trying to build a championship contender now, while the Marlins are dumping payroll for young players to rebuild around Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis.
With help from the PECOTA forecasting system, on page 14 are the Value over Replacement Player (VORP) projections until 2009.
Beckett will continue to be a solid starting pitcher; he probably won't win any Cy Young awards, though he might pitch in a couple of All-Star games and compile 14-17 wins per season in Boston. Lowell can not get much worse than his performance last year, and he will be able to progress gradually playing at Fenway.
Steroid speculation swirled around every player who suffered a serious drop in power or was "injured", and Lowell is not an exception. This only adds to his unpredictability and his contract definitely does not represent value for money at $9 million per year. However, this was a price the Sox were willing to pay to get a very good big league starter in the prime of his career. Another bonus is that Beckett will not be a free agent until after the 2007 season, and should make around $4 million per year through arbitration.
We see that Ramirez and Sanchez project to be solid everyday players, but PECOTA projections for prospects that have yet to see any significant major league time are simply regressed performances of past comparable prospects and the future of individual prospects is quite volatile. For every Ryan Howard or Miguel Cabrera there are scores of guys who never make it. To illustrate this point, below are Ramirez and Sanchez's projections with standard errors.
We will not know how good these two prospects turn out until we see them play in the majors, and that could be soon for Ramirez since the Marlins have a vacancy at shortstop. Many times, looking back at deals involving prospects is not entirely fair because of the current needs of the clubs and the volatility of prospects' future performances.
The Sox desperately need pitching and if that means giving up prospects (future value) for Beckett (current value) and Lowell (an $18 million cost), then Boston must pull the trigger on the deal because the free agent market lacks pitching.
Beckett will join the core of young pitchers the Sox have developed, including Jon Papelbon, Jon Lester, Manny Delcarmen and Craig Hansen. At the current time this deal seems fair; hopefully Sox fans won't relive the question "we traded Jeff Bagwell for Larry Anderson?"
