Kimbrel Deal Shows Dombrowski Means Business

It was just yesterday morning when I posted a piece talking about whom the Sox were most likely to move in any deal. Two of the three names in the minor league system were Manuel Margot and Javier Guerra.

Less than twelve hours after that, the Sox included Margot and Guerra in a four-player swap for Padres closer Craig Kimbrel. Also included in the deal were lefty Logan Allen and infielder Carlos Asuaje.

There is no sugar-coating that the Sox paid a heavy price for Kimbrel. Margot, Guerra and Allen were all top-20 prospects in the Boston system, Margot and Guerra top-10. But Dombrowski made clear that there were no sacred cows in the minor-league system. He drafted none of these kids, which makes him quite capable of moving them on for what he sees as a good deal.

And you can't argue against Kimbrel being a great pickup. Only 27 years of age, he already has 225 saves. A four-time All-Star and former Rookie of the Year, he led the NL in saves four out of his five seasons and is a two-time Sporting News Pitcher of the Year. His fastball velocity has remained constant or improved his entire career. He is also under Boston's control for the next three years. Most importantly, he instantly improves a bullpen in Boston that was a disaster last year.

But I'd be lying if I said that moving some of these guys doesn't hurt. Margot especially; I watched him in Portland and you can tell he is going to be a good big leaguer. But the old saw that "You have to give talent to get talent" exists for a reason; because it's true.

Now, was it too high of a price? That depends on who you ask. Some people think it barely hurts at all. Others feel the pain is a little more palpable. Which I think reflects how Boston fans have viewed their minor-league system over recent years.

Who Will the Red Sox Trade This Off-Season?

So the 2015 season is over and all eyes in Boston turn to one man: Dave Dombrowski. The man who is known for wheeling and dealing will undoubtedly continue that tradition as the top man in Fenway Park. Heaven knows enough stories have been written about it over the past few weeks.

But whom exactly could Dombrowski be open to trading? Which young talent will be going out the door to fill a need? Or could it be a more established player? Let's look broadly at the major league level and then at the minors. We won't look at every single player; just the bigger names that could or couldn't be moving this off-season.

Major League Roster

Going Nowhere

Xander Bogaerts

Mookie Betts

David Ortiz

Dustin Pedroia

Rusney Castillo

Hanley Ramirez

Eduardo Rodriguez

Rick Porcello

Bogaerts and Betts are going nowhere. That is as close to a sure thing as you will find in your life.* David Ortiz is the heart and soul of this team and it would be career suicide for Dombrowski to cut him loose as one of his first acts, even if an argument could be made for it. Pedroia could be interesting trade bait but he is too popular and is a 10/5 guy this year. Castillo has shown flashes of the talent that brought him here which makes you want to see if he can build on that in 2016. Also, his $11M a year deal makes him a little hard to move. Hanley Ramirez is on this list because his contract is too big, almost as big as the disappointment we all felt watching him play last year. To move Ramirez would require Boston eating almost all of his contract AND finding a team stupid enough to take him in. Getting both of those things done is very unlikely.

E-Rod is going nowhere; he is the best arm Boston has in the majors right now. Porcello is going nowhere because he has the same combination of cost and poor performance that makes Ramirez unmovable. Although Porcello's performance at the end of the year was encouraging.

Unlikely to Move

Wade Miley

Pablo Sandoval

Jackie Bradley, Jr.

Blake Swihart

Brock Holt

Wade Miley was exactly the pitcher Boston thought they would be getting; an innings-eater who keeps you in games. You need guys like Miley in the back of your rotation and with an affordable two years left on his deal, Boston will want to hold on to him unless their off-season dealings leave them with no room for Miley.

Sandoval performed poorly and has a big contract. But he didn't play as poorly as Ramirez and is paid less. He is also younger and there is a legitimate chance that Sandoval will play better in 2016. He is also a very likable player and that gives Sandoval some value. It is unlikely that Boston will be able to move him but a team looking for a third base presence that is marketable (like San Diego) may be at least willing to talk.

I want to go on record as saying that I really hope that Boston keeps Bradley. He showed what he is capable of in the last two months of the season. His batting improved and he is already one of the best outfielders defensively in the game today. But those same two things, along with his age, make him an asset. In the end I think they don't trade him because Boston's outfield is so dynamic with him in it. But you cannot ignore what he gives Boston in trade value.

Swihart is in the same boat as Bradley. He came on strong, showed his talent and value and is young. The difference here is that Christian Vazquez, who would have been the 2015 starter before Tommy John surgery, will likely start in Pawtucket to make sure his arm is 100%. That should ensure Swihart begins the season in Boston. But if/when Vazquez returns to Fenway, some decisions will have to be made.

Brock Holt is a super-sub and a newly-minted All-Star. That gives him value, both as a player and an asset. He is so good at what he does I can't see Boston moving him on but he could be a piece of a lucrative deal.

Don't Get Comfortable

Travis Shaw

Deven Marerro

Clay Buchholz

Joe Kelly

Red Sox = Yankees? Not Exactly.

With the soon-to-be official mega-dollar signing of Cuban phenom Yoan Moncada, by my estimation the Sox have spent upwards of eleventy billion dollars this off-season.

Well, maybe not that much. But in committing over $60M to Moncada, $95M to Pablo Sandoval and $88M to Hanley Ramirez, that over $240M in commitments to just three players in this off-season. Throw in the pitching acquisitions and other players, and Boston has spent over $300M in total player-committed dollars this off-season.

And so yesterday, someone asked Boston CEO Larry "Can we forget about Bobby Valentine" Lucchino an obvious question: Are the Red Sox the same as the New York Yankees?

"It's a question of pattern and consistency over time -- that's one way to distinguish. But we're not going to not avail ourselves of what we think is a very good baseball opportunity because someone is going to compare us to the Yankees," Lucchino said.

The piece quotes Lucchino a few more times but the upshot is basically this: The Red Sox will spend money when they think they need to. And they do in a smarter fashion than the Yankees.

That's an important qualifier. Spending 20 bucks, say, on vegetables and healthy food for your family is smarter spending than buying them 20 bucks of Funyons. Same money, different quality.

Boston spent big money on Sandoval and Ramirez. But those are also manageable contracts. Ramirez is for four years and a possible fifth. Sandoval is for five years and a club option on a sixth.

Compare that to the two free-agent signings the Yankees made before 2014. They spent $85M on a 30-year-old catcher in Brian McCann, who went on to have one of the worst statistical years of his career. And then there was Jacoby Ellsbury. Seven years, $153M, and the reward was a decidedly average 2014 campaign. Fun fact: Brett Gardner, who cost about 1/4 of Ellsbury and was already a Yankee, had a better 2014. Hell, you could argue that Francisco Cervelli wasn't that far off of McCann.

And that is the big difference here. The Yankees brought in two big-dollar free-agent signings for positions where they already had a player either giving them most of what they got (Cervelli and McCann) or possibly more (Gardner and Ellsbury).

Red Sox Bring Dynamic Ticket Pricing to the Monster. Money Saver or Money Gouger?

Red Sox fans are an opinionated bunch. We have differing opinions on all sorts of things. Should the Sox extend Ortiz? Should Jackie Bradley, Jr. start in center? Was Bobby Valentine the worst manager the Sox ever had?

Okay, that last question doesn't have a lot of people arguing in Bobby's favor. But you get the point.

One thing Boston fans have agreed upon, though, is that ticket prices have become too expensive for the average family, let alone the full Fenway experience. The total cost can easily run into the hundreds of dollars.

To address one part of this, the Sox introduced variable ticket pricing this past November. Simply put, they arranged the tickets into five tiers based on expected demand and then priced accordingly. This way, Yankee tickets were still high-end full-price tickets, while the Astros would be on the low end. I should say "low" end because it costs $28 for a bleacher seat against the Astros. Better than the $40 you'd pay now to see, say, the Yankees. But still much more than the $5 I paid back in 1995*. But I digress...

Now to add to that we have dynamic pricing for Monster seats. What is this new-fangled idea, you ask?

With this new pricing model, Green Monster tickets will increase or decrease in price based on demand and market factors such as the date of the game, opponent, and even weather conditions. Demand-based analysis will be provided by two companies, Qcue and tixtrack.

This could be...interesting. It sounds like something that could save money. If you decide to go to a Tuesday night game when it is expected to be 45 degrees and you are watching the Astros...the dynamic pricing model should noticeably lower the ticket price. To be honest, the dynamic model should be paying you money to watch that game. As opposed to the Yankees or Cubs, where I would assume the dynamic model will demand your first-born child.

Why the Yankees Won't be Competitive Going Forward...Why Boston Will

There is an excellent, excellent piece at Grantland by Rany Jazaleri that covers why the most successful franchise in the history of Major League Baseball will be distinctly mediocre in the future.

Rany goes into deep detail about why this is. How the Yankees over-performed last season. How paying hundreds of millions of dollars for Brian McCann and Jacoby Ellsbury almost makes up for losing Robinson Cano. How this Yankee team is amazingly, amazingly old. In fact, they were the only team in MLB last season with a roster than had an average age of 31 or higher. Signing a 30-year-old Ellsbury actually makes the Yankees younger.

Members of the Yankees' 2014 lineup

But the biggest reasons lie in two areas. First, the well-known Yankee penchant for signing or trading for big-name players. When they sign them as free agents, they lose draft picks. When they trade for them, the Yankees give up whomever happens to be the best players in their farm system at that time. The result is a barren farm system that cannot supplement an aging team with any comparable level of talent. As Rany points out:

There also isn't enough talent on the way. You'll notice that, in this entire article, I've yet to mention a single prospect or rookie who's ready to step in for the Yankees, giving them upside and youth in a nice, payroll-cleansing package. That's because they don't have any. While the Red Sox have Bogaerts and Bradley ready, the Rays have a full season of Wil Myers in store, the Blue Jays have Aaron Sanchez and Marcus Stroman, and the Orioles have the electric Manny Machado along with pitchers Kevin Gausman and Dylan Bundy, the Yankees have … bubkes. No rookies, no second-year players who might take a step forward. Their farm system is terribly weak; Jason Parks, the chief prospect guru for Baseball Prospectus, recently described it as "[Double-A catcher] Gary Sanchez and a list of interchangeable prospects with reliever profiles or bench futures." By comparison, the Red Sox's farm system is so deep that, according to Baseball America's Ben Badler, they may have as many as 10 of the top 100 prospects in baseball.

And he isn't wrong about the Boston system. Living outside of Portland, ME I get to see these guys. And there is some major talent that will be hitting Boston in the next couple of years.

And that leads the the second reason why the Yankees are going to slide and slide hard. And it's almost easy to miss. Rany mentions it towards the end of his piece but it is important and I think is the over-arching reason why this is happening. Again, from Rany:

Hal Confirms What We Already Know

Guess what? Yankee tickets are overpriced!. In other news, water is wet and the sun rises in the East.

Not that this acknowledgment will change anything, but at least Hal Steinbrenner is being honest about it...kind of.

"I think if anybody in any business had known where this economy was going to go, they would have done things differently," Steinbrenner said Thursday. "Look, there's no doubt small amounts of our tickets might be overpriced.

"Small amounts?" When you set your top level at $2,625 per seat per game, you are going to have more than "small amounts" of tickets being overpriced. The result is an average ticket price of $72.97, a price that blows away the rest of the league. Boston, in second, has an average price of $50.24 per ticket.

How bad is it? Lower-tier seats in the outfield cost between $95-$150. Field seats behind home plate cost $375. Compare that to Fenway, where center field seats are $26 and those field seats behind home plate run between $90-$125. The pricing levels in the Bronx are insane.

And this isn't a "Guess how New York is inferior to Boston" post (although they are). This is just wrong on a basic level. You can't tell me there are generations of Yankee fans who will be unable to watch their team because of these prices. Well, unless they want to sit an insane distance away from the action or have a big pillar in their way (ask a Sox fan sometime about how much fun that can be.)

And the bigger insult here to Yankee fans is that a lot of them are already paying for the cost of building this Parthenon of Greed thanks to a questionable bond issued by the city that allows the Yankees to avoid paying taxes, as well as hundreds of millions of tax dollars in infrastructure upgrades.

It's just...shameful. I don't know of any other word to use here.