Boston Red Sox trade target: Steve Cishek
By Rick McNair
Old Silver in Falmouth, Ma is a far superior beach to South Beach in Miami. Boston and Miami? No comparison. Boston is famed as the Athens of America and Miami as the adopted home of Tony Montana. Time for Steve Cishek to return home. Cishek is a Falmouth native.
Cishek has been the Miami closer the last few seasons and was toiling away at 3.8M for 2014. For an arbitration player the forever cost conscious Marlins may be willing to part with Cishek either in a small swap on part of the potentially larger one in the forever mentioned Giancarlo Stanton trade.
Cishek is at 4-5 for the Marlins and has some interesting and potentially alarming numbers. Something to be concerned with for both bargaining and performance for 2015 and beyond. With pitchers there is always a warning label.
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The stats place Cishek sixth (at end of August) among NL relievers in xFIP at 2.66. His FIP is 2.31 and he checks in with a respectable K/9 rate of 11.46, which places him seventh. The knock down is a middle of the herd 2.98 for his BB/9 and an ERA of 3.61. Where is degrades for Cishek is after May.
For June through August Cishek has posted an ERA of 4.74 and a WHIP of 1.46. In August the opposition tuned him up for a .350 average. Overwork? Injury?
You look at some of the deeper metrics and see use of his fast ball is down and use of his slider is up based on previous seasons. Velocity has also taken a slight dip over previous seasons. The line drive rate is also up and the RE24 is negative for the first time in his career. The multimillion dollar question for any organization is this a trend or just a blip?
Is Cishek worth the risk?
Burke Badenhop is a free agent for Boston so that veteran presence may be gone. Koji Uehara has shown some wear and tear as has Junichi Tazawa. The various younger pitchers have experience issues. Bullpen depth will be essential in any conditions and the way the Red Sox rotation for 2015 is shaping up it may be a well-used option. And for a sidebar? How about resigning Andrew Miller? So, to me, the risk is one worth taking since Cishik is young (28) and can potentially close.
What would it take?
The most viable candidate would be to offer either Jackie Bradley or Daniel Nava. If Cishek was the same pitcher in June through August as he was in previous years or April and May it would take a bundle more.
Bring Cishek back home.