The Red Sox designated Julio Lugo for assignment.
The Red Sox designated the shortstop for assignment on Friday, a move that will likely lead to his release, according to a major-league source.
The Red Sox will have 10 days to trade Lugo once the roster move is official. If they are unable to deal him, Lugo will be released.
The move comes a day after one source told FOXSports.com that the Red Sox were “desperately” trying to trade Lugo. Another source said the team recognized Lugo as a “sunk cost” and was not expecting much in return for him.
I’m a bit surprised the Red Sox played this so poorly. Once it got out that they weren’t going to keep him anyway, no one was going to make a trade. Just wait until he’s released, sign him for next to nothing and let Boston pay the bill. He’s not worthless, so someone will get a good deal out of this.
Posted by David Pinto at 4:57 pm | Transactions | Permalink | 4 Comments
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July 17th, 2009 @ 5:06 pm
He’s pretty worthless but some NL team will take him.
July 17th, 2009 @ 5:47 pm
I agree that he’s got some value — if I were the Royals, I’d rather have him than Betancourt, for instance — and I suspect there are undisclosed reasons for the haste. He reportedly missed a mandatory workout; perhaps he issued an ultimatum during the All-Star break? He’s been averaging about one start per week; on a couple of recent occasions Francona used Aaron Bates as a pinch-runner, passing up an obvious chance to use Lugo. He may have gotten tired of riding the pine and forced management’s hand.
July 17th, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
I was just about to say, the Royals came to mind straight away, but then I remembered that they just picked up Betancourt…
July 18th, 2009 @ 12:47 am
How else are you going to play it? He makes 9 million a year and makes Jeter look like a Gold Glover at SS with exceptional range.
His value is zero w/o eating whats left on his contract which they will do in any trade or when he is released..
The main issue was Lugos lack of range following his knee surgery. He has been decent offensively with his new muscles (might have trained with Manny in the DR).
Assuming a team really needs offense at SS and are willing to sacrifice defense for the remainder of this year and would bet on improvement defensively next year as his knee recovers, then the Sox eating all of Lugos salary should be worth a prospect or bench player. Not like there are a lot of decent SS out there.
Picking Lugo up on waivers risks someone beating you to it, and I am not sure you get Lugo for next year (wouldn’t he be a FA after the season). The odds are he does not get traded, but the probability of a trade is not 0.