The Red Sox And Dodgers Finally Agree Upon A Trade That Will Send Mookie Betts To The Dodgers
Welp. That's that. If you want my take on the Red Sox trading Mookie Betts, you can read that full reaction here, because I wrote it two fucking weeks ago when this thing should've gotten done in the first place. Anyways, it appears as though taking the place of the Twins' Brusdar Graterol will be the Dodgers' number five prospect, shortstop Jeter Downs. Yes, he was named after Derek Jeter and he's also the younger brother of Red Sox minor league first baseman Jerry Downs. The, now, former Dodgers prospect hit .276 with an .888 OPS between High-A and Double-A last year. And after all that, Graterol is going to the Dodgers now in this deal instead of the Red Sox.
There was some confusion as to whether or not David Price was in this new deal after the Jeff Passan tweet, but Mark Feinsand just confirmed that Price is, in fact, going to LA. The Dodgers will essentially be taking on half of the $96 million that's owed to the left-hander with the Red Sox fronting the bill for the rest.
Alex Verdugo stays in the deal as well, coming to Boston after a 3.1-win season last year, hitting .294 with an .817 OPS in 377 plate appearances. Although, he doesn't come to Boston without some baggage. I'm sure Boston sports media will have a field day with that. To be honest, I've tweeted about Verdugo's off-field history as being "unsettling", and that was met with some people coming forward with all different versions of what happened. So, I'm just going to talk about Verdugo the baseball player moving forward until a definitive version of that story is provided. I think that's fair.
Anyway, the Red Sox just punted on the 2020 baseball season, so that's awesome. Again, I'd encourage you to read my actual reaction to Betts being dealt because that blog has all of my thoughts on the matter. I can be upset about it and still understand why it happened at the same time. It sucks to know that baseball season hasn't even started yet, and that's the message that most fans will get out of this -- we're not trying. I mean, how do you spin that to the fan base? Trading the best player on your team, and a frontline starter, for a player who's one third as valuable as Mookie in the same year that you raised ticket prices. It's just shitty.
Like I've said before, I still have hope that the Red Sox will make an honest effort to re-sign Betts in free agency. Whether or not that actually happens is anybody's guess. It's not likely that Betts ever ends up back in Boston again, but it's not a pipe dream necessarily. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, the Red Sox, after an 84-win, third place season, just got notably worse. At least we've got that to look forward to.
UPDATE:
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Connor Wong is the No. 28 prospect in the Dodgers' system according to MLB.com, just in case you needed more news to not get excited about.