Boston Red Sox are losing the Andrew Benintendi trade

While Andrew Benintendi has been hot, Franchy Cordero has not

It’s been nearly three months since Andrew Benintendi was dealt to the Kansas City Royals in a three-team trade that sent Franchy Cordero (via the Royals) and Josh Winckowski (via the Mets) to the Boston Red Sox (along with a few players to be named later). Winckowski is a low level prospect and the PTNBL are even bigger question marks, so while those assets could still prove productive for Boston, Cordero was the main return for all intents and purposes.

Is less than 30 games into a 162-game season the right time to declare a winner and loser in a trade in which both teams received a player with multiple years left of controllable service time? Of course not. Is that what we’re doing here today? A little bit. Using the small sample size we have available for evaluation, the two players are on different trajectories.

After struggling in 2020, Benintendi started the 2021 season slowly, but has gotten hot as of late. His season-long batting average bottomed out at .193 on April 20, but since then he’s raised it to a respectable .273 (league average is .234), up .80 points in just under two weeks. Over that span Benintendi slashed .419/.486/.742 with a 1.228 OPS. He collected 13 hits including three home runs and stuck out just three times in 31 at-bats. His WRC+ ranks third in baseball over that time period, behind only Jose Ramirez and Austin Riley. Needless to say, that’s higher than any hitter on the Red Sox.

Over that same time period the Red Sox went 5-6 and their offense as a whole ranked 23rd in WRC+. Seems like they could’ve used Benintendi in their lineup.

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Conversely, Cordero’s season got off to a solid start, but has massively cooled off from there. Cordero currently ranks as one of the worst hitters in all of baseball. Depending on the metric you choose to look at, he is the worst.

Expected statistics are some of my favorite metrics to assess the quality of a hitter. They go behind how he is actually performing to measure how he should be performing based on his quality of contact. Even though Cordero’s actual performance in the box this season has been bad, the underlying stats say he should be even worse. His xwOBA ranks dead last among all qualified hitters in the league this season. He’s also last in xSLG and xBA as well. He’s been a strikeout machine as well ranking in the bottom 1% of the league in both strikeout rate and whiff %.

Red Sox manager Alex Cora commented on Cordero’s struggles last week, according to Steve Hewitt of The Boston Herald.

"“He’s in a bad stretch right now but he’s a guy we trust and believe is going to make contact and when he makes contact, good things happen. Like I said earlier, I believe he’s in between. Kind of like trying to make contact instead of putting up a good at-bat. If he does that he’s going to be in a better spot.”"

I really hope he does turn it around. I was very high on Franchy coming in and still believe in him, but that belief is waning. He hasn’t even shown flashes of the prodigious power that he uncorked in brief stints in Kansas City and San Diego. He has yet to notch a homer this season and only has two extra base hits in 62 trips to plate this year.

Next. Red Sox: Bottom of the order funk a continuing concern. dark

Would I rather have had Benintendi than Cordero so far this season? Yes, Benintendi has objectively been better. Almost everybody has been better than Cordero in 2021. Would I rather have Benintendi than Cordero long term? That remains to be seen. Cordero came in as a high risk, high reward player. It’s nonsensical to write off such a player on such a small sample. So far all we’ve reaped from Cordero is the risky side. The high strikeout and low contact rate. There’s still time for him to turn into a player that rewards Cora and the team for continuing to trust in him.

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