With the trades the Boston Red Sox made this week fresh in our minds, it’s worth thinking back to the most similar move they made a year ago.
On Dec. 21 of last year, the Red Sox shipped lefty reliever Cam Booser to the Chicago White Sox for teenage pitching prospect Yhoiker Fajardo. Booser was coming off a fairly strong start to his major league career, with a 3.38 ERA in 43 appearances for Boston.
Earlier this week, however, the White Sox cut Booser loose, solidifying the trade as a win for the Red Sox (though they certainly weren’t rooting for Booser to fail) and proving chief baseball officer Craig Breslow knows what he’s doing with these minor offseason trades.
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Cam Booser non-tendered by Chicago
On Friday, Booser (5.52 ERA in 31 innings) was one of three White Sox players to be non-tendered, alongside outfielder Mike Tauchman and first baseman Tim Elko. Booser would have still made a rookie salary for another year had the White Sox kept him under team control, but they decided his struggles this year warranted a clean break.
The real story for the Red Sox, though, is Fajardo. In 72 innings this year, the 19-year-old pitched to a 2.25 ERA and struck out 83 batters, and he’s risen to the No. 11 spot in the SoxProspects’ Top 60 list. He’s still a long way away from the big leagues, as he finished the year at High-A, but he’s got some “helium” now, as the true prospect gurus like to say.
Boston traded Booser because Breslow didn’t see him factoring into a bullpen picture that included two new lefties in Aroldis Chapman and Justin Wilson. That should be kept in mind when considering why this year, lefties Brennan Bernardino and Chris Murphy were traded, even though both had pretty good numbers this year.
Between signing Chapman and Wilson, the Booser deal, and pilfering Carlos Narváez from the New York Yankees, Breslow proved last year that the minor moves the Red Sox make in November and December can really make an impact. That’s just more reason to watch the transactions wire over the next few weeks.
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