Conventional wisdom is convenient, but seldom right.
Generations of baseball fans have continually been told that pitching is the most valuable asset in the game. An ace is supposedly the rarest commodity in sports, akin to platinum or uranium.
But that’s no longer the case.
Offense is down across the board in a post-steroid era Major League Baseball. An average of 4.11 runs are scored per game, which is the lowest total since 1980. The league average OPS is at its worst mark since 1992, as are the number of home runs hit per contest.
Conversely, the league average ERA is the best it’s been since 1989, and the strikeout rate is the highest in history.
Pitching is easy to find these days, but legitimate middle-of-the-order hitters are increasingly hard to come by. With that trend in mind, the Red Sox traded their two best starting pitchers – Jon Lester and John Lackey – in exchange for two right-handed power bats on Thursday’s trade deadline. Yoenis Cespedes and Allen Craig are flawed players, but they both possess the ability to hit the ball out of the ballpark and drive in runs. In other words, they’re the last of a dying breed.
The Red Sox rank 14th in the American League in runs scored this season, and have received a combined 14 home runs from their outfielders. Cespedes, a two-time Home Run Derby champion, has blasted 66 round-trippers over the past three years. Craig is having a putrid 2014 campaign (.237/.291/.346), but knocked in 97 runs and hit over .400 with runners in scoring position last season.
There was a dearth of power within the Red Sox organization prior to Thursday. Now that gap has been filled.
It’s a shame that the club refused to offer Lester a market value contract extension this spring, and seemingly had little choice but to trade one of the best post-season pitchers of all-time. But there’s little point in looking back. Red Sox General Manager Ben Cherington turned a negative situation into a positive one Thursday, even though he had to lose his two stalwarts at the top of the rotation.
The rest of the 2014 season may be bleak. A starting staff of Clay Buchholz, the recently acquired Joe Kelly and three kids might get rocked on a nightly basis. But that’s an easier problem to fix than an inability to score runs.
The Red Sox possess a plethora of financial flexibility, and one of the five best farm systems in baseball according to Baseball America. They have the resources to pull off major acquisitions to improve the pitching staff over the winter. As Ben Cherington said in his press conference Thursday, arms will be available.
But bats won’t be, which is why it was imperative for the Red Sox to address their offensive needs through any means necessary, even if it meant trading away two World Series heroes.
