The last time anything was posted in this space, Markus Lynn Betts – better known as Mookie – had never won a major league championship. He was also the starting right fielder for the Boston Red Sox. As of Tuesday, assuming the medicals clear and this cryptic warning proves to be resolved, neither of those things is true.

The trade of Betts was certain to send shockwaves through Boston and beyond simply because of the quality of player he is. As Ben Lindbergh notes, no one as young and good as Betts has ever been traded. In the non-Trout cohort of Major League Players, Betts is probably at the top of the list if we ignore contracts. Unfortunately, however, contracts do matter which is how we ended up where we ended up, which is with the best positional player the Red Sox have had in my lifetime being traded for two quality players, neither of which approaches his ability level.

Even given the caliber of player that Betts is, however, the level of vitriol this trade has unleashed is like nothing I’ve seen before. That’s expected from the Shaughnessy’s of the world whose stock-in-trade is spewing poison, but when typically calm and level-headed columnists such as Chad Finn go scorched earth in this fashion it’s clear the trade hit a nerve. Even writers with no attachment whatsoever to the Red Sox were incensed, from Michael Baumann of The Ringer to Craig Calcaterra of NBC Sports.

Like the fans currently calling for the heads of Henry, Bloom and everyone else involved in the Red Sox decision-making process, for most the explanation for this trade is simple: it’s the money. Nothing more, nothing less. The normally mild mannered Finn rebranded the club “Tampa Bay Rays North,” and Calcaterra’s pithy summary was “This trade was born of the Red Sox being unwilling to spend a few million bucks to field a championship caliber team.”

Ambiguous, the returns are not.

There are, to be fair, a few lonely souls out there arguing that the deal while profoundly depressing made baseball sense – Soxprospect’s Chris Hatfield and Ian Cundall, for two, along with whoever it is that mans the invaluable @redsoxstats account. But to Calcaterra, Finn and – sadly – Ken Tremendous, dissenting takes on the deal are signs that one “roots for the financials over the ballplayers” or, worse, “the spreadsheet column that tracks this year’s net profitability for one of many divisions of a billionaire’s company’s portfolio.”

Like the heretics above, however, as much of a tragedy as the deal is, and it’s a tragedy make no mistake, the take here is that it’s also a deal that is a logical response to a set of market conditions. Market conditions that are in some cases at least are not the responsibility of the Boston Red Sox, and yet which they are being held accountable for. Let’s unpack the context here to try and get beneath superficial rage to understand the motivations, the mechanics and ultimately the choice faced by Bloom.

The Player

One of the players headed out in this deal is a very accomplished lefthander who set the major league record for pitcher salaries at the time of his signing, and yet this will never be anything but the Mookie trade. That is a testament to the player’s ability, which is surpassing. On or off the field, there is basically nothing Betts does not do well. He can hit, he can field, he can run the bases. He’s a marketer’s dream, always smiling and seemingly always upbeat. Never a whiff of controversy off the diamond, and in fact ran out to feed the homeless after a playoff game.

There’s nothing not to like about Mookie. His career trajectory is consistent with two other players Red Sox fans are likely to be familiar with, which is notable because both are in the Hall of Fame and one has an argument for being the best hitter that ever lived.

Betts is not, in other words, a player to trade, he’s a player to build around. Why will he not following in the footsteps, then, of the great Red Sox outfielders that preceded him?

Part of the answer is context, and part of it is the player. We’ll come back to the context, but it’s important to acknowledge Betts’ agency in this regard.

It is true that Betts never once said he would not resign with Boston. But it is also true that he rarely – but admittedly not never – expressed an outsized affection for the city. Like most players, when pressed his response was something generic and noncommital like “this is all I’ve known.” This was usually in conjunction with sentiments such as, “it’s a business” – which is, besides being an entirely accurate statement, it’s his absolute right to view it that way. According to Jim Rice, Mookie Betts told him on Tuesday night that “I wanted to stay.” That may be the case, but it seems curious that never once until he was traded did he express his wishes that plainly. Bogaerts did, and was signed shortly thereafter.

None of which should be taken to mean that Betts should have felt compelled to fall over himself saying how much he loved Boston and wanted to stay, let alone accept less than his full value. If his goal was to strictly to maximize his value by reaching free agency, no one has the right to question that.

Unless his private communication with the club was materially different than his public statements, however, his consistent ambiguity must have left the club with questions about whether the player was signable even with a top of market offer. Bloom and Dombrowski before him, therefore, had to allow for the possibility – even as critics of this deal generally have not – that even if the money was there, Betts might depart for climate, geographical or other reasons.

It is interesting to speculate, on that point, whether Betts would have been traded had he promised the club the right of first refusal. Alas, we’ll never know.

The Trade

One of the other criticisms of this trade is the return. And on the surface this makes sense; even two well regarded major league or near major league ready players seems a light return for a player of Betts’ caliber. But, as mentioned above, contracts matter.

First, the player was owed close to thirty million dollars, which immediately narrows the potential destinations to a small handful. The fact that Betts had a single year left limited his market value further. The fact that he had expressed no willingness to sign an extension before hitting free agency limited it yet again. Having the potential albatross of Price’s contract stapled to him brought it down to the return we saw.

In spite of these hindrances, however, Bloom was able to extract multiple years of two Top 100 prospects from the deal while simultaneously granting himself maneuverability this season under the CBT and, with the reset, the ability to spend freely next.

Assume if only for the sake of argument that Mookie Betts had to be traded with David Price: it’s difficult to imagine a materially better return given the limited suitors and nature of the two contracts involved.

The Payroll

As discussed, the conventional wisdom about this deal is that it’s strictly a function of money, and that this is essentially nothing more than a billionaire lining his pockets with more money. Which is, in the strictest sense, true. This deal was certainly motivated by the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT threshold) and the penalties involved – though those extend beyond just the financial as we’ll come back to.

But accusing this ownership group of being cheap is an interesting assertion given that the Red Sox had the highest payroll in the major leagues last year, and the year before that. And for the three years before that, John Henry and co ran the sixth, fifth and third highest payrolls in the game.

Were the Red Sox profitable in spite of those high payrolls? Presumably. But just two seasons ago they outspent the second ranked San Francisco Giants by nearly $30M; last season they outspent the second ranked Chicago Cubs by less than ten million. On a possibly related note, neither club made the postseason.

Surely the Red Sox are unique in their newfound apprehension about going over the threshold, however? Not so much.

The Dodgers avoid it.

As do the Yankees.

If you want to criticize the Red Sox for their budgetary constraints, then, it seems fair to acknowledge that they have historically been more willing to exceed it than larger market counterparts.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Speaking of…

The System

The subtext to all of this discussion is the CBT, so it’s probably useful to take a moment to examine what the CBT actually is and what it means. The CBT is a multi-tiered threshold of escalating penalties which is theoretically a soft cap but is, in practice, treated like more of a hard cap. It gets worse a) for each level of spending you exceed and b) for each year you’re over. We’ve been over the maximum threshold two years in a row; this would be three.

Besides a fifty percent tax on every dollar spent above the threshold and the loss of revenue sharing – this is one side of the money that everyone is complaining about, there are draft penalties. If you exceed the maximum threshold, your draft spot – and more importantly, the budget associated with it – is knocked down 10 spots. Additionally, the draft compensation for departing free agents drops from the first or second round to the fourth. The draft penalties are suboptimal if you’re generally a successful club; if you’re a club facing potential draft sanctions for sign stealing, as the Red Sox are, they’re potentially ruinous.

Ten years ago, none of this would be an issue, because amateur spending wasn’t capped. Which is how Henry’s ownership group invested close to $70M (with the 100% tax on amateur spending) on Yoan Moncada, later the headline piece in the acquisition of Chris Sale. But in 2020, amateur pools both domestically and internationally are capped such that exceeding them is simply not done.

Which in turn means that while the CBT’s most obvious implications involve financial penalties on overages, the ongoing impacts to amateur talent acquisition have the potential to harm the long term health of a club’s talent pipeline.

Given that the club flaunted the old draft systems without hard caps on amateur spending by investing liberally in amateur talent (Rusney Castillo is making $13.5M to play the outfield in Pawtucket, remember), it seems safe to assume that the Red Sox are not in favor of the new system. A system, as described by Calcaterra:

in which the threshold where such decisions allegedly must begin to be made — $208 million this year — has grown at a far slower rate than player salaries have. A system which actively works against teams getting good and staying good. A system which is antithetical to the very ideas of competitive sports and the cultivation of fan loyalty. A system which is designed for the express purpose of suppressing team payrolls, even if it means trading away generational superstars.

Somehow, however, this system that at least encouraged if not outright caused the Betts trade, that the Red Sox as a large market club are likely not in favor of, that was collectively bargained by the clubs and the players, is being held against Boston in singular fashion.

The Roster

It is ironic that one of the primary reasons the Red Sox are being criticized for not spending on Betts is that they spent too liberally on players more willing to sign. Before the trade, the combination of Sale ($30M), Price ($32M) and Eovaldi ($17M) were projected to cost the club nearly $80M. In 2019, they got a tick over 300 innings out of those three pitchers – combined. All of them had ERA’s north of 4, and all had significant injuries (elbow for Eovaldi and Sale, wrist for Price).

For context, to open 2019, there were five clubs whose total 25 man roster made less than $80M, and another within hailing distance at $83M.

This suggests, correctly, that Dombrowski was spending commensurate with his club’s big market status, but without much of a long term plan for fitting Mookie into the picture or regard for the risks involved. Which is certainly on the club for employing him, and likely explains in part why they no longer do so.

But in Dombrowski’s defense, it’s possible that his assumption based on repeated failures to sign the player or even find common ground led him to believe that Betts was unsignable in practical terms. An assumption that the player could not be secured would help explain why he was comfortable locking up Bogaerts, Eovaldi and Sale while cognizant that budgets, at some point, are finite and that he was going to run out of room for a Betts contract.

Regardless of the precise sequence of events, however, the Red Sox had a number of very high price assets monopolizing a large part of their budget. Which might still be workable if the farm system could be tapped for a reliable supply of major league ready players. Unfortunately, however, as is Dombrowski’s modus operandi, that had been systematically converted into major league assets, leaving behind a thin pool of potential prospects years away from playing meaningful roles with the club.

The situation that Bloom inherited then, was a roster in which a mere eight players (Betts, Bogaerts, Bradley, Eovaldi, Martinez, Pedroia, Price and Sale) out of a roster of 26 were set to be on the books for $175M, or more than all but four teams (Astros, Cubs, Nationals, Yankees) entire opening day payrolls last season.

Which, again, is poor roster construction on the club’s part, specifically Dombrowski. In this way, it is absolutely fair as Peter Abraham of the Globe did to characterize this as an organizational failure, because that’s exactly what this is.

It is curious given the above facts, however, that the Red Sox are being characterized as merely cheap when a more accurate diagnosis would seem to be be mismanaged.

The League

One argument for keeping Betts goes that the Red Sox could retain him for 2020, making one last run at the World Series with their MVP, accepting the risk he walks away for nothing at the end of the season. As it’s an argument based on contention, this argument necessarily must factor in the league context.

If you’re an optimist, as many in the audience are, you’d probably point to the fact that they still had the core of a roster that won 108 games and blitzed through the postseason en route to their fourth title this decade a mere two seasons ago. The counter to that, unfortunately, is that everyone on that roster is two years older and coming off a season in which they won 84 games, finished third in their division and missed the playoffs.

Worse, the Rays appear poised for sustained success – hence Bloom’s presence – and the Yankees chose this offseason to flex, landing easily the best free agent starter on the market to shore up one of the few weaknesses of their roster (though it’s worth asking whether Paxton’s injury after the fact would change that calculus at all).

Would the Red Sox roster with Betts and Price have a shot at contending? Certainly. But with two of their starting pitchers having been unable to finish out the season due to injury and a third almost wholly ineffective after coming back from his, the outlook was uncertain at best.

Which makes it a poor factor for consideration in regard to any move the magnitude of a trade of a talent like Betts.

The Choice

In case any of this is unclear, this is an awful deal, and a genuine tragedy for Red Sox fans. Nothing would be more satisfying than seeing that talent end his career never having worn another uniform, and nothing will be more painful seeing him in Dodger blue. This is, again, the best position player the Red Sox have had at least since Yastrzemski and arguably since Williams.

Saying it’s a tragedy is a different thing, however, than saying this is the wrong move for the team, and it’s at least mildly surprising that a region so reflexively enamored of Belichick’s absolutely ruthless lack of sentimentality and the results it produces can’t recognize that.

All other considerations aside, Bloom’s choice essentially amounted to:

• Option A:
  One guaranteed year of Betts, after which he had no guarantee of resigning the player even if he was the high bidder. If the club doesn’t resign him, he gets nothing.

  Three guaranteed years of Price at $32M per. Best case, he’s healthy and adjusts to declining velocity. Worst case, his “special” elbow, wrist or some other ailment costs portions of some or all of those seasons and $96M is now effectively immovable and nearly $100M of dead money.

  The non-trade means the club is over the CBT, so financial and draft penalties apply. It also has limited room to maneuver in-season.

• Option B:
  Three years of a good young outfielder worth 60-70% of Betts production.

  Five years of a young pitcher with a ceiling of #2/#3 starter and floor of late inning relief pitcher. Or maybe not.

  Financial flexibility for in-season moves and/or negotiating extensions with Devers or Rodriguez.

  2020 CBT reset allows for the signing of high dollar contracts beginning in 2021.

In a perfect world, one where budgets are infinite and money is no object, there is no CBT, no caps on amateur spending, and no one gave a lefthander heading into his thirties the largest contract ever handed to a pitcher, this is a simple decision. That not being the world we live in, this might have been the best the club could do. Much as those howling are loathe to admit it, this isn’t just about the money. It never was.

One last thing worth noting. Assume that the trade proceeds, and that the Red Sox reset their CBT threshold. Let’s further assume that Betts’ stance remains consistent following the trade and that he intends to hit the open market rather than re-signing prematurely with the Dodgers. There is, at that point, nothing stopping the Red Sox from using their 2020 reset to bring back the best free agent on the market…one Markus Lynn Betts. It’s a long shot, and smart money is on the Dodgers, but a useful reminder nevertheless that judging trades at the time they’re made is a fool’s errand.

Whatever happens from here on out, however, there is one thing that everyone – regardless of where they stand with respect to this deal – can agree on: Mookie is an absolute joy to watch, a credit to whatever team he plays for and a player and person that will be sorely missed.

Ave atque value, Mookie.

In a season of unexpected twists and turns, most of which ended up being blind alleys where the Sox got hit in the head with a pipe, last week’s trading deadline was easily the strangest. With almost a third of the roster exiting over a period of weeks, culminating in Thursday’s bloodletting, there’s a lot for Red Sox fans to process. As Chad Finn notes, the prevailing opinion isn’t as much anger or despair as confusion. Part of that is because the moves by themselves were so unanticipated, but it’s also because they suggest that they were just the beginning. To recap what just happened and reflect upon what might happen next, let’s ask and answer a few questions.

Q: The first and most obvious question is: literally, what the hell just happened?
A: Setting aside the DFA of Pierzynski, which was not particularly surprising, the Red Sox made the following moves:

• (July 26) Jake Peavy traded to the San Francisco Giants for Edwin Escobar (Giants #2 pitching prospect) and Heath Hembree
• Felix Doubront traded to the Chicago Cubs for a PTBNL
• Stephen Drew traded to the New York Yankees for Kelly Johnson
• Andrew Miller traded to the Baltimore Orioles for Eduardo Rodriguez (Orioles’ #3 pitching prospect)
• John Lackey traded to the St Louis Cardinals for Allen Craig and Joe Kelly
• Jon Lester and Jonny Gomes traded to the Oakland A’s for Yoenis Cespedes and the A’s competitive balance draft pick

Q: All of which means what?
A: Most obviously, that the Red Sox have officially thrown in the towel on the 2014 season – as they should have. The math says it isn’t technically impossible – yet – but also that it’s practically impossible. Which means that correct course of action was to use this year as a means to reload for future years.

The interesting thing, however, is that unlike traditional deadline trades, the centerpieces weren’t prospects. Every year the rumored trades are not the actual trades, but it’s usually because the names are wrong. This year, not only were the names wrong the entire type of player was different.

The Red Sox did acquire prospects in the Miller/Peavy deals, it’s true, but their most valuable assets in Lackey and Lester respectively were not used for the likes of the Dodgers’ Joc Pederson or the Pirates’ Josh Bell, but rather for current major league players. The $64,000 question is why.

Q: Is it because the Red Sox are playing for 2015?
A: That’s the most common narrative at this point, and there is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that’s the case. Clearly the Red Sox aren’t going to commit to a full tear down and rebuild, nor should they with the roster of young, controllable talent they have assembled. And virtually every statement from Cherington, Farrell, Hazen or anyone else associated with the team has focused on the importance of 2015.

That being said, the Red Sox are both intelligent and intensely focused on value. It seems unlikely that if a a Top 30 or 40 MLB prospect was made available to them – with the six years of control attached to it – in return for Lackey or Lester the Red Sox would prefer wild cards like the deeply slumping Craig or the big time power but limited on base skills of a Cespedes. Maybe this year with all of the associated growing pains of Bogaerts, Bradley and so on has left them a little gun shy about prospects, but that seems improbable.

Which implies that the Red Sox simply were not offered that type of elite talent. Faced with a list of sub-Addison Russel type prospects who would be years away from helping in a best case scenario, the front office changed their tactics to focus on major league players, in particular what they believe to be a scarce market resource: offense.

Q: Why is offense down?
A: There are many potential explanations, and probably all of them play some role. From better drug testing to defensive shifts to an explosion of high velocity arms, offenses around the league are depressed. Not as much as in Boston, obviously, but there is no question that pitching is currently ascendant.

More problematically for the Red Sox, potential solutions aren’t exactly plentiful on the free agent market. There are decent hitters available, but nearly all come with question marks. Victor Martinez and Hanley Ramirez are old, Melky Cabrera comes with PED questions and so on. There are no true superstar hitters available.

There is, however, a lot of pitching.

Q: What kinds of pitching?
A: All kinds. Excellent starters in Lester, Scherzer and Shields. Pitchers with a few more question marks in De La Rosa, Kuroda, Masterson and McCarthy. Others with options like Anderson, Burnett, Chen (both Bruce and Wei-Yen), Cueto, Gallardo, Happ, Haren and Morrow. And so on.

Q: So the Red Sox appear to be betting that it will be easier to remedy their pitching than their hitting via free agency?
A: Or trade. Apart from Bogaerts and potentially Betts, the Red Sox lack elite talent. Owens is good, but not in the class of the Oriole’s Gausman and pitching prospects go. Swihart and Devers, meanwhile, are potentially elite but not widely regarded as being in that class yet.

All of that being said, in the wake of this week’s trades the system is now absurdly deep. Whether the Red Sox are able to package some of that quantity and return elite talent via trades remains open to question, but that’s certainly an avenue they’ll have to proceed.

Q: Why?
A: First because there are almost too many candidates. Consider the starting pitching candidates: De La Rosa, Escobar, Johnson, Owens, Ranaudo, Rodriguez, Webster, Workman and Wright. For the sake of argument, say two thirds of those fail: the Sox are still left with three potential starters.

That kind of depth is an asset, of course, but it also presents substantial roster construction challenges, as the Red Sox were reminded this year.

Q: What do you mean?
A: One of the inviolable rules of player development is that it is non-linear. Some players succeed immediately only to stumble later, others struggle for years before putting it all together. The best example of this currently playing is Mike Trout; the widely accepted best player in the game pancaked when first hitting the majors.

What this means for the Red Sox is that they’re probably not going to want to trust too high a percentage of their rotation or lineup to rookies. Youth will be an important, indispensable part of the Red Sox strategy now and moving forward, but you’re not likely to see them roll out a lineup of six rookies with four in the rotation next year.

Far more likely is that some of these assets are converted to talent with a more predictable major league performance track record.

Q: Such as?
Q: That’s the question, and it’s far too early to say. But let’s say that you offered a team a “Pick 5” such as the club reportedly did with Seattle once upon a time:

1. Cechinni
2. Webster
3. Marrero
4. Vazquez
5. Johnson
6. Rodriguez
7. Escobar
8. Barnes
9. De La Rosa
10. Middlebrooks

A lower payroll team could miss on two of the five and still solve three roster spots with eighteen combined years of control attached. That’s a return everyone would have to at least think about.

Q: So how should Cherington be graded on his deadline moves?
A: It’s hard to assign anything but an incomplete. It was strange, for example, for a pitcher of Lester’s caliber – even granting the fact that he’s a rental, especially for a lower budget club like the A’s – moved for a player who A) doesn’t get on base particularly well and B) is only under contract for one more year.

But we don’t know what was available. And we certainly don’t know how Cherington plans to use the potential minor league surplus in the offseason.

At the very least, however, Cherington gets points for doing something.

Q: Meaning what?
A: Imagine being a Philadelphia fan, were Amaro Jr essentially stood pat with a club that is worse than the 2014 Red Sox, has far less prospect depth and two pitchers making north of $20M a year – one of whom may now be out for the season with an elbow injury.

While it was nice to see the brief bounce the Red Sox received coming out of the All Star break, the subsequent five game losing streak at least made the front office’s job simpler. Instead of sitting on the fence until the last minute, they were able to shift into sell mode with a week to spare. Cherington needed to take advantage of what will hopefully be a rare opportunity to sell, and he did.

How he fared is a subject we’ll likely be debating for years.

Q: What’s next?
Q: The rest of the season, obviously, will serve as an audition of sorts for Betts, Bradley, Middlebrooks, Webster et al. Bogaerts, his horrific midseason slump notwithstanding, isn’t going anywhere. But pretty much everyone else could be. Two months of at bats, particularly given that one of them will include September call ups, won’t make for a definitive evaluation, but it will at least give the major league coaching staff the chance to make their own assessments of players up close.

Entering the offseason, then, the Red Sox need to figure out what to do with their logjam of outfielders. Nava, Cespedes, Bradley, Betts, Victorino and Craig can’t all play at once. Who goes? Who stays?

The most important task, however, is figuring out the rotation. Given that it’s extremely unlikely that the Red Sox are going to roll out Clay Buchholz and four pitchers with an average of a year of service time per, where are the additional starters going to come from? Free agency? Trade? The return of Lester?

Q: Isn’t it “fanciful” that Lester returns to the Red Sox?
A: He probably doesn’t end up here, no. If they were going to retain him, wouldn’t they have already? Didn’t John Henry pretty explicitly say that the Red Sox weren’t signing big money deals for players over thirty? And when was the last time a player traded resigned with the team that traded him – apart from Cliff Lee, that is? Probably, yes, and I can’t remember.

But how many players would say, as they’re about to be traded away to another team, that they wouldn’t resign wherever they landed because their first preference would be to come back? Maybe it’s all just a clever public relations effort on the part of Lester’s agent, but the pitcher doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’s going to read from a PR flack’s script. Which means that what he’s said before the season, during the season and after being traded might actually be true: he might really want to come back.

Which brings us to John Henry’s statement. Everyone seems to be assuming that if the Red Sox were unwilling to give him a hundred plus million dollars before the season, they’d be unwilling to do so after. In other words, they have a rule and that rule is never broken. What if, however, it’s more of a guideline than a rule. And what if one of the reasons they wanted to wait was to see if Lester got hurt or underperformed, or whether one of their minor league arms like De La Rosa or Webster took a big step forward? If that’s the case, then the variables in their equation have changed as Lester’s pitched brilliantly while the would be replacements have underwhelmed. And what if “The Monster” gets involved, as Lester’s PR importance and popularity increase his perceived value? And what if ownership looks at it not as Lester but Lester + Cespedes?

What if, what if, what if. That many in a row tells you everything you need to know about how likely it is that Lester returns. But the tea leaves say the chances aren’t zero, either, which in and of itself is remarkable.

Even if Lester were to miraculously return, however, Cherington has to replace Lackey as well. Which is why, even if the club is right and the pitching market is robust, he’ll have his work cut out for him.

In the meantime, I’ll sit back and see how he reassembles the pieces he’s acquired. Should be fun to watch.

When Ben Cherington pulled the trigger on the deal sending Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett and Nick Punto to the Dodgers, it was in effect a commitment to at least a partial teardown and rebuilding effort. As has been much discussed, it left the club a substantial amount of available payroll in a market short on attractive free agent options.

Many, myself included, have offered Cherington recommendations for re-allocating that capital, with the options ranging from tactical to strategic to absurd. Given the seller’s market in free agency, it’s logical that many general managers turn to trade as a more efficient means of obtaining talent. Certainly this is the approach that Alex Anthopoulos took in Toronto, where in a trade with Miami he obtained a frontline starter, backend starter and starting shortstop at a bearable cost both in terms of talent traded and salaries assumed.

And it is to the trade market that co-founder of Baseball Prospectus Christina Kahrl would have the Red Sox turn in 2013 to restock their roster. Specifically, her major recommendation is the following:

Trade to get Alfonso Soriano’s next two seasons and the last year that Matt Garza is under club control, sending Chicago a package of Kalish, Saltalamacchia and minor-league prospects Alex Wilson and Matt Barnes.

On a superficial level, this trade makes some sense. Barnes is at least a year, more likely two, from impacting the roster. The addition of Ross makes Saltalamacchia redundant. Wilson has potential but is far from a dominant prospect, and Kalish’s star has fallen in the wake of shoulder and neck issues, respectively. In return for these assets, the Red Sox would address their left field vacancy for two years and their mid-rotation starter need for one.

This is, however, a poor deal for the Red Sox. To begin with, it’s built on the following assumptions:

1. That Soriano is closer to the 4 win player he was last year than the 1.5 win player he was the year before or the zero win player he was two years before that.
2. That Matt Garza is healthy (he was just given leave to begin preparing for spring training a week ago) and closer to the 5 win player he was two seasons ago than the 1.4 wins he averaged the years before and after.
3. That the Red Sox are a borderline playoff team next season.

Initial projections see Soriano putting up a .770 OPS for the Cubs next year (or, about forty points shy of Cody Ross’ production last season), with Garza throwing around 150 innings with a sub 4.0 ERA – all in the NL Central. Adjusting for the AL East, both numbers would unquestionably represent well above replacement player value, but well shy of elite or even All Star levels of performance.

If we assume for the sake of argument that Garza and Soriano both skew towards the higher end of their projections, however, the last assumption is the real problem for this proposed transaction. Whatever one thinks of the potential of Barnes, Kalish or Wilson, the fact is that each has a chance to be a contributor to a major league club. And more importantly, each represents multiple years of low cost service time in those roles.

Player and prospect value, of course, is contextual. The marginal value of wins added increases the closer the roster as a whole is the playoffs, which is important in considering Kahrl’s trade proposal. The immediate impact of the transaction would be a net upgrade of a few wins in 2013, but the value would drop – potentially precipitously, depending on Soriano’s readjustment to the AL East – thereafter, as Garza is a free agent after the upcoming season.

To make this deal, therefore, Cherington would have to be convinced that the sacrifice of the years of potential service time from the prospects would be offset by the benefit to the club next season alone. Which, given the other holes on the roster, would seem to be a difficult case to make. In discussing his offseason plans, Cherington has been careful to emphasize the need to build for the present without jeopardizing the future; Kahrl’s proposal may satisfy the former, but certainly not the latter.

The Red Sox would also be selling low on Kalish, whose minor league line (.279/.366/.429) is competitive with Josh Reddick’s (.278/.332/.500). It could be argued as well that the Red Sox would be undervaluing Jarrod Saltalamacchia. His .742 OPS in spite of the 25 home runs underscores just how problematic his on base skills are, but in a league in which the average major league backstop put up a .718, Salty’s a two win player. Or roughly twice as valuable as Garza was last year in an injury marred campaign.

Ultimately, prospects are assets, to be used to better the club – whether that’s playing for them or bringing assets in who will. But in general, when multiple years of service time are being traded, it’s important to get either an elite performer or multiple years of service in return. This deal would accomplish neither goal. Exceptions to this approach can, and arguably should, be made when the existing roster is championship caliber, and the marginal value of a few added wins is great. But having gutted the roster in August, such is not the case for the Red Sox.

Hopefully, Cherington – in spite of being from Amherst – will recognize this and avoid it or similar transactions this offseason.

Returning to Boston in June as the President of the Cubs, Brookline’s own Theo Epstein spoke with remarkable candor about the end of his tenure as the General Manager of the Red Sox. While proud of the club’s accomplishments over that period, his primary regret was giving in to the “Monster.” By which he meant the business, rather than baseball operations, side of the Boston Red Sox. The need to sell tickets, sell out games, and keep the ratings comfortably sky high. Then grow them.

“[If] I have one serious regret, I think that [‘The Monster’] grew and grew and grew and then I didn’t do as good a job of [pushing back], clearly, in the later years,” he said. “[I] kind of gave in to [it].”

Two seasons removed from a World Series victory and coming off a sweep in the LDS, the Monster demanded that the Red Sox do something. That something turned out to be the 2009 five year, $82.5M contract to the winner of Game 1 in that series, 31 year old John Lackey, who held the Red Sox scoreless over seven and a third. One season and no playoff appearances later, the Monster landed us not only $142M Carl Crawford but $154M Adrian Gonzalez. Christmas had come early.

Back in 2005, Brian Cashman told George Steinbrenner that the Red Sox “had surpassed the Yankees with the strength of their organization…in their player development and evaluation.” Five years later, with the signings of Crawford, Gonzalez and Lackey, things had come full circle. The Red Sox had become the club that they had been built to beat. They had lost their way.

Which might still have been fine, as it was just John Henry’s money. Except that, a year after Crawford and Gonzalez inked their respective deals, it wasn’t. In November of 2011, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Player’s Association reached a new five year labor agreement. While the new collective bargaining had many implications for the Red Sox, from the amateur draft to international spending, the most important provision concerned the Luxury Tax.

Teams that surpass the luxury tax threshold of $178MM will be taxed 42% in 2012 and 50% in 2013.

If John Henry did not like the previous luxury tax system – and he did not, to the tune of $500,000 – it seemed safe to assume that the new CBA with its more onerous luxury tax provisions would have a substantial impact on the Red Sox payroll and operational structure moving forward. And while the head of the players union downplayed the notion that the new CBA would constrain Red Sox (or Yankee) payrolls as recently as March of this year, the Marco Scutaro trade two months before was proof enough that the times were changing. When the Red Sox trade their starting shortstop for a long relief candidate simply because the trading partner will pay a one year $6M commitment, it’s difficult to argue that it’s business as usual. As Keith Law said at the time, “You don’t dump a 3 win player making $6MM for no return.”

Unless, that is, a Monster bloated payroll was suddenly and unexpectedly about to be charged at nearly fifty cents on the dollar on the dollar over the threshold you’re already bumping up against. In that case, as Cherington demonstrated, you dump a 3 win player making $6M to whomever will pay the freight. And so we come to today’s trade. Enough has already been written on the historical nature of this deal, both in major league talent and in financial commitments. What’s left to dissect is what this means for the Red Sox today and tomorrow.

In the space of a few hours, the Red Sox somehow managed to not only shed approximately $250M of payroll obligations, they managed to acquire some potentially useful pieces in the process. In Law’s words, “The Red Sox got a pair of high-ceiling arms in exchange as well as two useful spare parts, which, considering how much salary they just cleared, is a very strong return.” When you consider that not only were these contracts essentially non-absorbable by any other club, but that arguments could be made that every player in the deal was in decline, the deal appears almost miraculous.

The only player the Red Sox were likely sad to be seeing go was Gonzalez. Apart from being a relative bargain next to contracts like that issued to Albert Pujols this offseason, Gonzalez had more or less rebounded from a poor September and difficult first half. But as Peter Gammons pointed out on Twitter, from 2008 through the All Star Game last season, Gonzalez was a .926 OPS performer who got on base nearly 40% of the time. Since, he’s an .845 OPS player getting on base less than 37% of the time. Still good, but less than excellent. Maybe that will change with a return to the National League: his first at bat in a Dodger uniform was a three run homer. But the fact is that under the new CBA, Gonzalez had become an expensive luxury.

Even so, it’s tough to imagine the Red Sox trading him absent the immense financial relief involved here. Not just because his combination of defense and offense is not easily replicable, but because they have no replacements looming, having traded away first base candidates like Anthony Rizzo, Lars Andersen and Miles Head in recent years, assuming that Gonzalez was the solution for the better part of the next decade. But as the bait in a bigger deal that allowed them to unload the contracts of both Beckett and Crawford, they bit the bullet as they had to and pulled the trigger on what is being called the biggest trade in the history of the sport.

For all that the City of Boston owes Beckett for his role in securing the 2007 title, as Chad Finn wrote, the time had come for Beckett to move on. Forget for a moment the baggage: the chicken and beer incident, the questionable conditioning and his disastrous public relations strategy. The bigger problem is that Beckett isn’t the pitcher he used to be. Here is his average fastball velocity from 2007 through this season: 94.4 (07), 94.0 (08), 94.0 (09), 93.6 (10), 93.0 (11), 91.4 (12). His K/9 this year is the worst of his career, and his WHIP is the second worst in that span. A move to the National League generally and Dodger Stadium specifically should benefit him, but the fact is that he’s unlikely to be worth close to the $30M he’s owed over the next two years. And ok, yes, the fanbase loathes him.

Crawford, meanwhile, has been star crossed since the day he got here. After the devastation of being dropped in the order after two games last season, he went on to put up a .255/.289/.405 line in year one of his seven year deal. In performance terms, he was worth less than a million dollars while being paid almost fifteen. Worse, his performance against left-handers declined for the third year in a row (.704, .696, .566 OPS) to the point that he was bordering on platoon player status. Which is not ideal when the player is still owed better than a hundred million dollars. And is coming off of surgeries to the wrist and elbow.

Add it up, and the Dodgers may have just paid $20 for a gallon of milk, as Dave Camerson says. If Adrian Gonzalez was the cost of subtracting these contracts, so be it. Frankly, this was a deal that Cherington likely had to make if the projected return was a bag of balls. In a single stroke, the Dodgers allowed the Red Sox to recalibrate their payroll to the realities of the new CBA.

But lest you think that this deal is going to be the Batman Begins of reboots, it’s necessary to point out that this deal creates real holes in the short term. If you believe in Morales as a starter, maybe that’s a wash – at least relative to this year’s version of Beckett. But Gonzalez – declining walks or no – is a major loss, and not one easily remedied via free agency or our system. Unless you count Lavarnway in the mix, there isn’t a first baseman amongst our Top 20 prospects. So you need someone at that position, as well as a middle of the order hitter. Assuming, that is, that you can sign Ortiz in the offseason and that he can approximate this year’s production at the age of 37 and coming off a major Achilles injury. If that doesn’t happen, you’re looking at replacing two major offensive cogs in a market light on them and an economic system that just led to the trade of the best you have due to cost. Outfielders under control for next year, meanwhile, are Ellsbury (a free agent after 2013), Kalish, Nava and Sweeney.

There’s a reason that people are saying the real winners of this trade are Ortiz and Ross.

All of that said, Buster Olney’s projection of “years” before the Red Sox compete again for a world title might be a tad pessimistic. For some fraction of the $250M saved, we should be able to find a couple of useful parts – the seller’s market notwithstanding. Particularly if the front office can get back to what Cherington discussed during the press conference today, identifying and acquiring affordable, undervalued talent. Talent like Adrian Beltre, Bill Mueller or David Ortiz. Though that’s admittedly vastly more difficult than it was when front offices were populated by the likes of Ed Wade.

Either way, it seems clear that as much as the Red Sox want to talk about this trade in the context of the club’s record – they’re smart enough to know that that is largely a function of the starting pitching. As Theo put it, “If multiple starting pitchers underperform at the same time, it’s always going to leave you in a stretch where it’s hard to play better than .500 baseball.” That, more than any other single factor is the problem. The solution, at least in the brave new world of the 2011 CBA, is finding a trading partner just desperate enough to give you the breathing room under the luxury tax to repopulate the starting rotation. Which, to his credit, is exactly what Cherington found in Ned Colletti.

As for the Sox become Dodgers, fare thee well guys. We hardly knew ye.

Coming off of last September, as well as a second consecutive year without October play, it’s easy to understand why the Red Sox front office has been reluctant to acknowledge the inevitable. Particularly given the addition of the second Wild Card slot, which provides the illusion of opportunity for foundering clubs.

But it’s time. Not because the probability of a Red Sox playoff appearance hit its season nadir last night, dipping to 7%. Or at least not strictly on that basis. It’s time because there may yet be an opportunity to salvage something from this trainwreck of a season, if we can finally acknowledge that it’s over.

Forget the why for a minute. Whether you blame the injuries – 25 players on the DL in 29 separate stints, Bobby Valentine, Ben Cherington, the starting pitchers or all of the above isn’t what’s important right now. What matters now is time; specifically, the 18 days between now and August 31st. With the playoffs now a virtual impossibility, it’s time to explore the options for converting some of our current assets into longer term value.

And no, that doesn’t mean the two players most responsible for our record. While the common man wants Beckett moved yesterday, for anything, the reality is that the combination of his contract, injury situation and performance make him immovable. Moving Lester at this point likewise would be the textbook definition of selling low, so he should not be going anywhere.

But otherwise, at this point in the season, the entire roster should be on waivers. And with the exceptions of Buchholz, Lester and Pedroia, all of whom have team friendly contracts and have had performance issues this year that might impact their value, Cherington should be on the phone selling anything not nailed down. Particularly assets that are not locked up for next year.

Assuming he clears waivers and throws one more reasonable game, for example, it’s certainly not out of the question that Cook could fetch something in return. This is why I was mildly upset to see the Yankees sign Derek Lowe. Given that ZIPS expects to Lowe to outperform Cook down the stretch (4.19 vs 4.64 FIP), my hope was that Cherington would sell high on Cook and replace him with Lowe for pennies on the dollar. Granted, selling high on arm like Cook likely means a B prospect at best, but given that Cook’s not under control for next season, that would be a more than acceptable return.

Maybe you’re the Braves, Bucs, Dodgers, Giants, or Reds and not thrilled about facing Gio Gonzalez in the playoffs. This is Cody Ross’ line against lefties this year: .319/.394/.758/1.152. Think he could help?

Perhaps your concern is getting lefties like Cano, Fielder or Hamilton out in tough spots? He may be arbitration eligible next year, bu here’s what lefties are doing against Andrew Miller: .130/.200/.182 (as predicted, please note).

Salty, meanwhile, is controlled by the club for next season, but if the club believes Baseball America that Lavarnway is a major league catcher, might the Rays be interested? Salty’s not much for contact and his on base skills aren’t strong (.229/.285/.478), but at least he does something well. The Rays backstops are the worst in the league at .202/.272/.278. And replacing Salty with Lavarnway – again, assuming you think he could catch – would be a first step towards addressing our roster’s on base deficiencies.

And so on. Because the waiver process is opaque, it’s impossible to know precisely who is openly tradeable and who is not. But it’s time to think less about this season and more about next, because the current roster has given us no other choice. One hopes that Cherington both understands this and has the operational freedom to pursue this necessary course of action. Because it’s time to fold ’em.