Boston Red Sox re-sign shortstop Stephen Drew

With Will Middlebrooks on the disabled list, Boston found themselves short on depth on the left side of the infield. In order to boost the infield, the Boston Red Sox turned to a familiar face: Stephen Drew. Boston signed Drew to a one year $10.17 million deal. This amount is about the same rate as the $14.1 million is for a full season.

Drew, 31 served as Boston’s starting shortstop last season. He batted .253 while hitting 13 homeruns for the club. On defense, Drew was outstanding as usual. He boasted a .984 fielding percentage, a huge improvement over Xander Bogaerts.

Now that Drew is back in Boston,it is likely that Xander Bogaerts will move back to third base for the time being. Bogaerts is better defensively at third base as of right now, so Boston will improve in that department.

There has been no announcement as of right now saying who was designated for assignment off the 40-man roster in order to add Drew back, but Jonathan Herrera is a possibility. This is because Drew gives the team defensive stability, meaning Boston is no longer in dire need of a solid defensive backup shortstop. By keeping Brock Holt, Boston receives an upgrade on offense over Jonathan Herrera, which is more valuable to the team at the moment. Boston could take the other route fearing to lose Herrera and option Brock Holt down to Pawtucket. This makes less sense however, as they would need to DFA someone else. Hopefully if Boston does DFA Jonathan Herrera, he accepts Minor League assignment.

Overall, this is a smart move by the front office. Hopefully Stephen Drew learned a valuable lesson that greed does not pay off since now he only gets to play about 3/4 of the MLB season. Not to mention he lost about $4 million and did not get to go to Spring Training. He should do well nonetheless, and is an upgrade for the Red Sox.