The Boston Red Sox need some solid starting pitching, and soon. Sonny Gray may be the best trade target, if the Oakland Athletics can part with him.
With an ever weakening starting rotation, the Red Sox are running out of options and time. They are in the thick of a division race, despite the lacklustre performances from much of the starters not named Steven Wright. Major League Baseball is ripe with talent, but only a few teams would actually part with any of their big arms, as pitching is becoming more of an arms race.
While Oakland tends to be an automatic response to anyone looking to start a trade rumor, Athletics manager Billy Beane is no fool; he’s not going to just throw away a blue chip pitcher without being properly compensated. Peter Gammons wrote that while Beane will listen to trade talks “on Hill, he thinks with Gray, Daniel Mengden and Sean Manaea he has the makings of a strong rotation in 2017.”
From that information, one would think that Gray is off of the market, at least for now. Yet, Christopher Smith of MassLive.com raised a good point two days ago: “Josh Donaldson wasn’t thought to be available during the 2014-15 offseason and then traded him to the Toronto Blue Jays.” Smith adds how the Red Sox “continue to have trouble developing starting pitchers,” and proceeds, in detail, to describe many of the pitchers Boston has in their minor league system, each with their own troubles for not cracking the major league roster.
So, with no help from below, issues with the current roster, and the unlikelihood of any other teams willing to part with anyone halfway decent on the mound, it starts to smell like desperation on Boston’s part, with the summer heat soon ready to be cooking the reeking pile into an even nastier stench of depression.
With all of that in mind, can anyone be blamed for seeing Gray as some sort of hope, even if proven to be false hope?
Forget the fact that Gray is 3-5 with a 5.77 ERA in 10 starts. The 26-year-old just came back from the disabled list, with a bad back, and had a heck of an outing, allowing only one run in five innings. One could argue that his previous experience speaks for itself, even before this season. In three seasons, Gray posted a record of 33-20 with an ERA between 2.67 and 3.08, including 14 wins apiece for 2014 and 2015.
Gray’s attractiveness to the Red Sox doesn’t stop there. While many proven talents, including Hill, are either off of the trade market or will be free agents by the end of the season, Gray will not be a free agent until 2020 and can only seek arbitration in 2017 from his current contract of $528 thousand.
Maybe that’s what Beane likes most about him and would require much more from the Red Sox to try to pry Gray from the Athletics. It would definitely require either bench players or prospects, as Boston looks very happy to keep the current, young position players where they are. It would be a hard sell, as Gray looks to have more upside for the Athletics to keep him than to trade him, unless some kind of blockbuster trade were to happen; however, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.
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And, can you really blame Smith for writing about the possibility? Even a shot in the dark is still a new hope, which is all that Red Sox Nation is clinging to right now. That, and the prayer that every single fan and member of the Red Sox organization must be making each night: please, let the bats continue to score runs!