July 31, 2014

Lester for Cespedes

The Oakland Athletics make their second big deal of the season, adding more pitching as they send Yoenis Cespedes to the Red Sox for Jon Lester and Jonny Gomes:

The 28-year-old Cespedes is batting .256 with 17 home runs and 67 RBIs. He belted 23 homers in his 2012 rookie season and 26 home runs last season. The Cuban native won his second Home Run Derby earlier this month in Minneapolis during the All-Star break. Cespedes has a .350/.395/.525 line for the postseason in his career, going 14-for-40 in the last two years in the playoffs. He’s also 3-for-11 at Fenway Park this season. He is under contract through next season and is slated to earn $10.5 million, capping off a four-year, $36 million deal he signed after the 2011 season.

According to Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports, the A’s will include their second 2015 competitive balance draft pick in the trade to help offset the compensatory draft pick the Red Sox lose by not holding onto Lester for the duration of his contract which expires at the end of this season.

Oakland obviously wants to win the World Series, and probably felt they had enough power to win with the pitching staff they assembled. Cespedes posted a .356 OBP in his rookie year, but has been a bit of an out machine since then, with a .298 OBP since the start of 2013. Gomes does a much better job of getting on base.

The Athletics starters ranked fifth in the majors this season in average game score, but were a bit behind their peers in going deep into games. With a much more veteran staff going forward, that changes, and I expect to see the rotation moving up in that category by the end of the year.

I wonder if the Red Sox will try to sign Lester as a free agent over the winter? With this trade, they improve their outfield, and don’t lose a draft pick. This might go down as a great, devious move.

Update: Looks like the Red Sox are indeed being devious.

Thanks to Alex Hayes for pointing that out in the comments.

5 thoughts on “Lester for Cespedes

  1. James Crabtree

    I think Bean can only claim for so long that it doesn’t matter to him that they never win in the post-season and that the playoffs are just a crap shoot and that he builds his team for the regular season. I’ve heard him say that numerous times. At some point I think he’d want to win the thing and I think the moves this month prove that.

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  2. James

    James Crabtree: yep, for sure.

    I assume this is the best deal the Sox could get for Lester, and it’s definitely better than not trading him at all. But it’s *great* for Oakland.

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  3. Devon

    Back in May/June when Cespedes was gettin’ a lot of attention for all his outfield assists, I took a look at his stats & noticed his OBP wasn’t so good. I immediately thought Beane would probably put him on the market come July ’cause of the OBP and the attention made Cespedes an attractive catch for other teams. I’m kinda surprised I was right about that, ’cause I usually don’t nail that kind of stuff.

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  4. Casey Abell

    I look at this as a “talent for name” deal. The talent is Lester, who may well help the A’s win the Series. The name is Cespedes, who is maybe the most overrated out-machine, er, player in the game. But he does have a big rep, which might help sell a few of those $140 tickets at Fenway.

    The “we’ll re-sign Lester later” meme strikes me as pure p.r. baloney. If the Red Sox really wanted to sign Lester long-term, they could have wrapped up a deal long ago. I doubt they’ll make him a competitive offer – or maybe any offer – in the off-season.

    Meanwhile, my “typical 2014 baseball game of the day” is the 1-0 epic at Baltimore. Four-and-a-half hours, 28 whiffs, 1 (one) run. It’s like baseball is trying to drive people away from the ballparks. They’re certainly succeeding in that goal, as a glance at the Baseball Reference attendance tracker shows.

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