By Tony Massarotti, 98.5 The Sports Hub
Honestly, you shouldn’t be upset because the Red Sox dealt Andrew Benintendi. But you must be furious at what they found, because it certainly looks like an offer.
Last night, in case you lost, the Red Sox sent Benintendi to the Kansas City Royals in a three-team exchange that earned them Royals outfielder Franchy Cordero and New York Mets pitcher Josh Winckowski. Winckowski is a 16th round pick who never drew over Single-A. Cordero is an athletic specimen that supposedly has the baseball instincts of a hockey puck.
And look: the Red Sox are sending $ 2.8 million for the Royals to cover almost half of her $ 6.6 million salary this season.
Here’s what ESPN’s David Schoenfield wrote about Cordero just after midnight:
I don’t think you ever know, but the chances seem slim that the tools will one day work. Perhaps the Red Sox see something they believe they can fix, but Cordero’s patrol reports have always mentioned that he simply scores low on his natural baseball instincts.
To be fair to the Red Sox, Winckowski seems to have a chance. And let me emphasize – a CHANCE. He won’t be 23 until June. He is 1.80m and 202 pounds. In 54 career secondary league games – 53 games – he has an ERA of 3.35 with 237 eliminations and 86 walks in 263 entries. But it has also been traded twice.
The real issues here concern the overall values and direction of the Red Sox organization as a whole, especially when general manager Chaim Bloom seemed to apologize after the deal, which does not exactly inspire confidence.
Bloom said: ““ I know from our fans, this is not the first time last year – in addition, they have seen a player who is important to them and important for the organization to leave. I know it’s hard. I know it is painful. We are obviously doing what we think is right for the organization. (…) We felt that we could meet a number of needs. This puts us in such a good position that it was worth swallowing and taking that painful step of changing a player who is really important to us and very talented. “
Let’s say it again: the point was not to negotiate with Benintendi, which has been a disappointment in recent years. The question concerns what the Red Sox are building. Cordero doesn’t look like a baseball player much. When I read your profile, the first name I came up with was Wily Mo Pena, a powerful physically imposing hitter that the Red Sox acquired in 2006. He basically lasted a year here before they became the second team to give up their “potential,” Which is a dirty word in sports. It is an understatement for “poor performance”. There is nothing worse than a great athlete who does not have the skills to play baseball. And Cordero doesn’t feel very well.
Look, Chaim Bloom deserves a chance. Between the mess he inherited and the pandemic, he really started to rebuild the Red Sox. But since the 2020 season negotiation deadline, it certainly looks like the Red Sox have become Tampa Bay North – albeit without Tom Brady – which is a good way to say that they’ve added a collection of misfits and rejects from other organizations. I’m not making fun of Bloom. I’m just saying that it doesn’t look like the Sox are building a champion organization, but just throwing things against the wall.
All of this takes us back to Benintendi and to a very simple question: what the hell happened here? His regression was so acute over the past two years that it seemed like an organizational failure in the player’s development. In 2018, he was a well-balanced and real baseball player, with 41 doubles, 103 scheduled runs, an OPS of 0.830, 16 homers and 21 steals while playing good defense. He has done nothing but make it worse since then. Did the Red Sox try to turn you into a home run hitter, preaching the pitch and power? Is a guy like him no longer suitable for the modern bastardized, analysis-oriented game? Was there a personality conflict with the instructors? Something went wrong here. Something worrisome.
And then there’s this: from 2013-2016, the Red Sox had a draft where they chose the seventh, seventh and 12th. With those choices, they got Trey Ball, Benintendi and Jay Groome. All of that was before Bloom got here, so it’s not his fault. But it speaks for the great organizational failure.
This year, as we all know, the Red Sox have the fourth choice in the draft, their highest draft position since 1960. Hopefully they will make good use of it. If they don’t, well, it can take a lot longer than anyone ever imagined.
You can listen to Tony Massarotti on weekdays from 2 pm to 6 pm EST on the Felger & Massarotti program. Follow him on Twitter @TonyMassarotti.