Boston Red Sox five biggest player busts from 2010-2019
We take a not-so-sentimental look back at the Red Sox’s five biggest player busts of the decade. Spoiler alert: Hanley Ramirez not included.
The concluding 2010’s were a decade comprised of a fascinating mix of highlights for the Boston Red Sox (World Series titles in 2013 and 2018 top the list), lowlights (the infamous September belly flop of 2011 and back-to-back losing seasons in 2014 and 2015 come to mind), and unsolved mysteries (i.e., the chaotic Bobby V cameo of 2012, Allen Craig‘s injured foot, and the Chris Sale and Nathan Eovaldi contract extensions).
While casting their vision toward 2020, the Red Sox now plug ahead with their fourth GM/Baseball VP/Baseball Chief of the decade. Now batting in the cleanup spot (literally) is still-new Baseball Chief Chaim Bloom. His apparently antithetical mandate is to pare a bloated payroll and annoying luxury-tax bill down to under $208 million and zero, respectively.
As we can clearly see, bad signings and self-sabotaging trades are young Chaim’s kryptonite going forward. There is no space for Dombrowskian waste. No more doling out nine-figure contracts or extensions without taking a closer look at the MRI’s and X-rays of those involved. Even spending, say, and let’s pick a number at random, just $4 million to bring back a popular first baseman with some batting bop (two seasons of it, anyway) is deemed too lavish an expenditure.
While Bloom exercises caution, patience, and scrutiny figuring out what moves to make, he also has to exercise restraint regarding moves not to be made, mindful the Red Sox had their share of player busts during the decade, the archival remnants of which are exhumed on the following five pages.
Just a heads up to cut down on the suspense before turning the page: Hanley Ramirez didn’t make this list, as tempting as it was to thusly dishonor him. If this list were 10 busts deep, maybe. In his favor, he did have one borderline All Star-worthy season (2016, when he hit 30 home runs and drove in 111) as well as two so-so seasons – which is about what you’d expect to get these days for a five-year deal worth $110 million.
The five busts of the decade follow in reverse order of relived angst:
Tyler Thornburg
Righty relief pitcher Tyler Thornburg already had one strike against him when he came to the Red Sox after the 2016 season, the expectation being that he would be Boston’s main setup guy running interference for ace closer Craig Kimbrel.
Strike one: Thornburg arrived in Boston in December 2016 via an unpopular trade with the Milwaukee Brewers that sent well-liked corner infielder Travis Shaw as well as three prospects, including promising shortstop Mauricio Dubon, to the Brewers. Thornburg – and Red Sox Baseball VP Dave Dombrowski – were in the hole from the git-go; Double D’s for making the ill-fated trade in the first place.
Strike two came when Thornburg reported to spring training in 2018 with a sore left shoulder, ultimately diagnosed as thoracic outlet syndrome, as reported by the Boston Globe’s Peter Abraham. Season-ending surgery was performed on June 16. It would be another 13 months before Thornburg made it back to the Red Sox mound, in July 2018.
Strike three was simultaneously watching Shaw, now adorned in a Brewers uniform, tear up National League pitching. The lanky lefty hitter with the smooth-as-silk-swing, who had worn down in the second half of Boston’s 2016 season – his first full MLB season – hit 31 home runs and knocked in 101 runs for the Brewers in 2017. He rubbed it in Dombrowski’s face some more with 32 home runs and 86 ribbies in 2018 while producing a second straight .825+ OPS.
The Red Sox gave Thornburg plenty of chances to redeem himself in the second half of 2018, but things only got worse. He posted a 5.63 ERA in 25 relief stints in 2018 and was left off the postseason roster as the Red Sox went on to win the World Series.
Despite a lackluster spring training in 2019, Thornburg was given another chance. He broke camp with the Red Sox and quickly broke Dombrowski’s heart once and for all, producing a 7.71 ERA and 1.661 WHIP in 16 games and 18.2 innings, all wrapped around a stint on the injured list for what was called a right hip impingement. He was finally released by the Red Sox in July, and Dombrowski exited a little over a month later.
Rusney Castillo
At first glance of this page, there probably is strong sentiment among Red Sox fans that outfielder Rusney Castillo, now on the high side of 30 years (he’s 32), should be higher on this list. Maybe even in the No. 1 spot.
OK, let’s think about this. In signing Castillo to a seven-year deal in 2014 worth $72.5 million that included a $5.4 million signing basis, according to spotrac.com, then-Red Sox GM Ben Cherington essentially was saying this was a gamble worth taking. The Red Sox outfield was in a state of flux, all three starting jobs still being contested. Chris Young, anyone?
As reported by Stephanie Apstein of SI.com, Castillo had been playing for his hometown team in the Cuban league, the Ciego de Avila Tigres, and had demonstrated enough all-around skills to convince Cherington it was safe to fork over an eight-figure deal. Castillo, although just 5-9, had the power-packed look to go with plenty of speed, a strong bat and a solid glove that had the Sox believing him to be the Red Sox’s center fielder of the future. Or at least it was between him and Jackie Bradley Jr. There was always left field, too.
As Apstein points out, however, the keen contact skills and power Castillo had shown in Cuba didn’t carry over to Major League Baseball in America. In 99 games for the Red Sox between late 2014 and early 2016, Castillo batted a credible .262, but numerous base-running blunders, surprising lack of power (only 7 home runs in 317 at-bats), and a dearth of walks (16 total) showed substandard offensive skills begging for more time in the minors.
Although unknown at the time, a demotion to Pawtucket in 2016, while removing Castillo from the team’s 40-man roster, would effectively doom his chances of ever playing another MLB game with the Red Sox over the four-plus years left on his contract.
Here’s what happened: Less than six months after Castillo was optioned back to Pawtucket (June 2016), MLB changed a rule regarding salaries of players added to the 40-man roster. Those salaries would now continue to be counted for luxury-tax purposes even if such a player were to be later removed from the 40-man roster. Castillo and his $10+ million salary were now stuck at Pawtucket, tucked away like aging sepia-toned photos stowed in a trunk catching dust in the attic, out of reach of the luxury tax.
With Andrew Benintendi, Bradley and Mookie Betts now firmly entrenched as the Red Sox starting outfield as the 2017 season opened, the Red Sox had no fiscal choice but to keep Castillo down. He was now the highest-paid sailor banished to a ghost submarine stealthily roaming the depths of the sea, its mission being to not surface for another four years. His hatch had been battened down.
Castillo has since blossomed somewhat at Pawtucket, winning PawSox MVP honors the last two seasons. Over the three and a half seasons years since that 2016 mid-season demotion, he has batted .294 and slugged .429, earning praises and recommendations for a promotion from PawSox Manager Billy McMillion. Still, no promotion nor is their one likely forthcoming, unless Betts gets traded and Sox stay in-house to fill that spot. Don’t hold your breath.
Allen Craig
Just from the standpoint of numbers, outfielder/first baseman Allen Craig might be the biggest bust among this UnFab Five. Acquired by the Red Sox in a July 31, 2014 trade engineered by then-GM Ben Cherington that sent disgruntled pitcher John Lackey and minor leaguer Corey Littrell to the St. Louis Cardinals and also brought pitcher Joe Kelly to Boston, Craig never found his footing (we’ll explain the pun in a jif) with the Red Sox.
Having emerged as an accomplished hitter and solid RBI man for the Cardinals (.291 BA, .460 slugging in parts of 4.5 seasons with the Cardinals, to go with 92 and 97 RBI’s in 2012 and 2013, respectively), Craig was being counted on as a potential middle-of-the-order type hitter for the Red Sox. It remained only a dream, though.
The problem was that Craig had arrived in Boston as damaged goods, and it was not easily, if ever, fixable. He had been diagnosed with what twobirdsonabat.com described as a Lisfranc injury, one in which one or more metatarsal bones in the foot are separated from the tarsus. It was an injury Craig had suffered running out an infield hit late in the 2013 season, the extent of which remained a mystery throughout his remaining days with the Cards and then his entire time in the Red Sox organization.
Craig played sparingly for Boston at the MLB level during the 2014 and 2015 seasons. He appeared in 65 games total and accumulated 173 at-bats with the Red Sox, producing a paltry six extra-base hits and an alarmingly-low five RBIs while batting .139 in what approximated a third of a season.
Although viewed as a good teammate with a strong work ethic – it’s really no fun putting him on this list, but he has to be here – Craig spent the rest of his time with the Red Sox organization at Pawtucket. There, he continued to search for his swing and power, although his foot issues persisted, affecting his stance and swing. Despite occasional flashes at AAA of his former hitting prowess, none of it ever stuck and he never made it back to the Red Sox in 2016 or 2017.
There was no getting around it: the Red Sox were stuck with a bad contract and the dollars were escalating year by year. By the time the Red Sox released Craig on June 30, 2017, he was making $11 million a year (none of it counting as taxable payroll as he was no longer on the 40-man), with money still being paid out to him in 2018 in the form of a $1 million option buyout.
Craig was later signed by the San Diego Padres in 2018 – twice in fact – but was finally released by them for good in March 2019 without him ever making it back to the majors.
Carl Crawford
It didn’t take long after the Red Sox made gaudy headlines in December 2010 with the free-agent signing of outfielder Carl Crawford for this 7-year, $142 million deal to turn south. Buyer’s remorse came early and it arrived with a thud. It began with the scuttlebutt that the 29-year-old Crawford’s legs were about shot, the unfortunate result of playing nine seasons on the Tampa Bay Rays’ unforgiving artificial turf at Tropicana Field.
Crawford’s career and star status had been built almost entirely on his speed (409 steals, 105 triples, a .296 BA, etc. with the Rays), particularly noticeable when he stole six bases against the Red Sox – in one game. It was a classic case of false advertising. Note, too, that Crawford was signed in the same offseason in which a trade (made five days before the Crawford signing) also put National League All-Star first baseman and future Red Sox clubhouse malcontent Adrian Gonzalez into a Red Sox uniform.
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. To his credit, A-Gon produced on the field and at the plate reasonably well for the Red Sox; off the field, not so wonderful.
By August 2012, Sox brass had had enough. They packaged Crawford and Gonzalez along with fading pitcher Josh Beckett, infielder Nick Punto and cash in a trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers that netted the Red Sox $255 million of slashed total payroll. The massive salary dump brought back some forgettable players to be named later and set the Red Sox up for a remarkable reboot (new manager, too, in John Farrell) that produced a World Series title in 2013.
If only that 2012-13 magic could have been reenacted in 2019-20. Ho-hum.
Back to Crawford. The boo birds at Fenway came out early as Crawford got off to a horrendous start in 2011, setting him up to have to scramble just to get his batting average up to .255 by season’s end. That was alongside an OBP of .289 that paled to the .337 he had compiled with the Rays. Crawford also was no longer a threat on the bases, stealing just 18 bases after seven seasons of 46 or more with Tampa Bay.
Then came health issues in 2012, starting with a wrist injury in January that required cartilage-repair surgery. Wait, there’s more. Crawford then started the season on the 60-day disabled list because of a sprained ligament in an elbow. He would play in only 31 games in 2012 – all with the Boston before the trade to the Dodgers – and he finished his 161-game stint with the Red Sox (essentially, exactly a season’s worth) with 14 home runs, 75 RBIs and a mundane slash line of .260/.292/.419/.711 that actually looks better than it really was.
Pablo Sandoval
Omigosh, where do we start when it comes to Panda? What in the world was Ben Cherington thinking when, prior to the 2015 season, he signed free agent Pablo Sandoval to a five-year deal for $95 million that included a buyout option in Year Six for $5 million?
Guess what? The Red Sox are still paying Sandoval – that $5 million is attached and counts toward the 2020 taxable payroll, even though he was released by the Red Sox in July 2017. Panda is the gift that keeps on taking, and, apparently, eating.
With Sandoval’s arrival in Fort Myers, you could see trouble coming from a mile away. That’s because you could practically see Sandoval coming from a mile away, he was that big. At 5-11 and a reported 268 pounds (by all appearances a lowball), Sandoval reported to the Red Sox out of shape and, as we would eventually learn, out of sorts with his former club, the San Francisco Giants.
OK, in a be-kind world it’s not nice to poke fun at overweight folks, but consider this: Sandoval was obese while competing in a professional sport at the highest level, where players get millions of dollars a year to stay in shape so they can perform with excellence on the field.
Sandoval did neither.
Save for a few postseason heroics with the Giants that inflated his reputation, there had been nothing truly remarkable about Sandoval’s first seven seasons, aside from his first rookie year in 2009 when he hit 25 home runs, drove in 90 and slashed a .330/.387/.556/.943 line that helped place him seventh in National League MVP voting. He had a somewhat comparable 2011 season, but other than that, nothing to warrant getting $18 million a year from the Red Sox.
Sandoval’s first and, as it turned out, only full season in Boston in 2015 wasn’t good. He hit only 10 homers in 505 at-bats and slashed .245/.292/.366/.658. After reporting to spring training badly overweight in 2016, he missed all but three games due to a torn labrum in his left shoulder that required season-ending surgery. Despite playing just three games, it was enough for him to reach a new low, squeezing in an at-bat in which he famously busted his belt while swinging at a pitch.
Next. Red Sox: Top-5 trades or free-agent signings of the decade. dark
In 2017, Sandoval returned long enough to play 32 games, hit .212 and slug .354 before the Red Sox finally realized it was better to pay him not to play for them, releasing him on July 19, 2017 – three days before he resigned as a free agent with the Giants, still being paid more than 90 percent of his salary by the Red Sox.