There were about two good hitters on the open market, give or take, and the Red Sox reportedly snatched them both up. Welcome to the offseason. As of right now, it belongs to the Boston Red Sox.
The Red Sox are much improved, and they have their farm to thank
The Red Sox signed Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval over the weekend, doing it because they could.
Jason O. Watson/Getty Images
They’re not done, either. They have Pablo Sandoval to play third and Hanley Ramirez to play ... left? But that means Yoenis Cespedes is in right, unless he’s in center, unless he’s getting traded. Wait, they’re going to put Ramirez at second, Pedroia at first. Keep the throws low, Panda, and this just might work. Allen Craig is catching in this scenario, of course.
I don’t know what they’re going to do, either. But I envy them and their ability to do it. The offseason of the Red Sox is a testament to two things: an otherworldly farm system, and bales of $100 bills in a warehouse somewhere. This article will focus on the first one. At the same time, know the other one is lurking as subtext behind everything. When the Royals had an otherworldly farm system, they didn’t supplement it with a pair of $100 million players.
Distill it down to a one-sentence thesis, then: There is nothing more dangerous in baseball than a rich team with a great farm system.
Boston and Free Agency
People will use the spree of the Red Sox to comment on the state of competitive balance in baseball, as if the Red Sox didn’t just lose 91 games. As if the bottoms of divisional standings aren’t filled with teams that spend a lot of money. There’s still competitive balance in baseball, and plenty of it, because of the indentured servitude of rookies and pre-arbitration players. The Rays can compete because players are paid below-market salaries for the first six or seven years of their careers. The Pirates, A’s, and Royals did the same. Young players are cheap, and usually they’re better than over-30 veterans, too. The combination means that every team with a good pipeline of talent has a chance. That’s the beauty of baseball.
It’s a beauty with a dark side, though. When the rich teams get their greasy talons on those cheap, contracted young players, they have a serious advantage. The Red Sox feel pretty confident that Xander Bogaerts can play shortstop for them for the next decade. They’re convinced that Mookie Betts will be an All-Star or something close to it. They have Blake Swihart and Garin Cecchini close, and they have Manuel Margot and Rafael Devers afar. For the next three years, the Red Sox will pay all of them less than they’ll pay Adrian Gonzalez, who isn’t on the team.
Those savings allow them to take risks, even after they dump some of the prospects on the Phillies for Cole Hamels. The risks the Red Sox took are mostly perfect fits, too. Sandoval is a valuable player right now even when he isn’t hitting a lot, considering his defense. But he should hit a lot for the Red Sox. He’s moving for one of the worst hitter’s parks of his generation to a park with a delightfully short porch on both sides, fills an immediate hole at third base, and is relatively young. When he gets older, he can slide right into the DH role that’s been filled by a gregarious, fluffy man for a decade-plus.
Ramirez would be a swell fit at third for the Red Sox, and I wrote as much here. With Sandoval around, though, I'm not sure what the plan is. Either way, Ramirez gets a similar upgrade in parks. That has to be very appealing for a 30-year-old who has only played in extreme pitcher's parks for his career. His bat still plays in left or right, or at second or third. He's probably a year away from moving from "minor disaster" to "major disaster" at short, so the Red Sox have flexibility all over in the event of an injury. The injury is likely to be Ramirez's, but still.
There is nothing more dangerous in baseball than a rich team with a great farm system.
The Giants are the inverse of the Red Sox, a rich team that has no choice but to spend their way out of this hole, the baseball equivalent of Chief Wiggum's "No, no, dig up, stupid." They got surprising production from the farm (Joe Panik and Andrew Susac) in 2014, but they're woefully short on middle-of-the-order bats to replace someone like Sandoval. They'll need to spend. They're planning on spending. It might be on Yasmany Tomas or Jon Lester or some combination of lesser free agents, but the Giants are in Walgreens a half-hour before their anniversary dinner. They need to come up with something and fast. They can't pick and choose the best fits.
The Red Sox could, though. If you could have designed a free agent for them this offseason, it would have looked something like Sandoval -- a young, contact-hitting third baseman with the potential to charm the Fenway faithful for years. If you could have designed a free agent for them just to prove they were gluttonous and grabby, it would have looked something like Ramirez -- a player they don’t really have a position for, but they’ll figure that out later.
It’s the prospects and youngsters who allowed them to get both. The Red Sox still need a lot of things to go right for them to get out of the 91-loss quicksand, but adding two quality hitters to the lineup will go a long way. They built a farm system like a poor team, and they got to take advantage of it like a rich team. There is nothing more dangerous in baseball than a rich team with a great farm system, and the Red Sox just proved it.
See More:
