The Red Sox agreed to send Kevin Youkilis and cash to the White Sox for Zach Stewart and Brent Lillibridge in a deal that was announced earlier today. The trade provides the White Sox with much needed stability at the hot corner and gives the Red Sox the opportunity to play Will Middlebrooks on a daily basis. Here are some reactions to the deal:
- The emergence of Middlebrooks as a legitimate Rookie of the Year candidate made a struggling Youkilis expendable in the eyes of the Red Sox front office, writes Brian MacPherson of The Providence Journal.
- Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington told reporters, including MacPherson, that it was pretty clear Middlebrooks needed to be in the lineup every day (via Twitter).
- The White Sox are getting a player in Youkilis who was an All-Star third baseman last season in exchange for cash and two replaceable players, tweets Jon Paul Morosi of FOXSports.com.
- The legacy of Youkilis was built upon his ability to will himself into a player who far exceeded his natural talents, says Scott Miller of CBSSports.com.
- The Indians, Dodgers and White Sox were the finalists for Youkilis as of Saturday evening, reports Rob Bradford of WEEI.com. The White Sox separated themselves Sunday morning with the inclusion of Stewart in the trade.
- By acquiring Youkilis, the White Sox are making the statement that the Tigers are vulnerable and not a guarantee to win the division, tweets Joel Sherman of the New York Post.
- White Sox manager Robin Ventura expects Youkilis to be a strong fit with Chicago given how the veteran plays hard and has a reputation as a good teammate (video link).
- A change of scenery for Youkilis may prove to benefit the former All-Star considering his strained relationship with manager Bobby Valentine and the series of injuries that kept him off the field, writes Scott Lauber of the Boston Herald.
I’m so nervous about what will happen the first time Middlebrooks falls into a slump (when his babip and or K/BB rate catch up to him for a period of time). I think he has the talent to be great long-term, but getting past that first slump, as the guy who the team has put all its faith in, might be very difficult. Not to mention that the media will have a field day with him.
There’s nothing new in this. The same could have been said when the Sox let a proven veteran walk and gave the 2B job to Pedrioa. The same is true whenever a team moves on from a proven veteran to an unproven rookie.
the same could not be said then at all. pedroia walked twice as often as he struck out in the minors. for all his talent, middlebrooks walks less and strikes out 3 to 5 times more often than pedroia did
the concern with middlebrooks is very specific: he has no discipline. his success has been driven by flukey BABIP results and power. the power is legitimate, but he will not be the league’s first .390 BABIP player
“he will not be the league’s first .390 BABIP player”
Oh ye of little faith!
dood what ah you sayin. this kid hits BABIPs or whateva you said all day!
He BABIPed that one right ovah the wall yestiday guy!
Bada-bing-BABIP!
Duhhhh, he’d be like the 26th or something.
I don’t disagree, but at this point, I doubt that WMB is going to suddenly turn into a super-patient OBP machine. He is what he is, and we’ll just have to live with it I suspect.
There’s a difference between a “rookie slump” and ” BB/K numbers in miguel olivo and alex gonzalez territory” with a hyper-high BABIP.
Proven veteran? Mark Loretta and his one season with an 80 OPS+? Alex Cora, who stayed with the team for another whole season after Pedroia took over the starting role? Who are we even talking about here?
forget a slump. worry about when his BABIP comes back down around .300 – or even .330. it’s gonna take a lot of power & defense to make a .300 OBP tolerable
Yeah, that’s also a concern, although I really want to see some of the math about regressing to the babip mean because I always feel so shaky talking about it without being able to math about it xD
I feel like there must be a more robust means of reasoning about this beyond just saying “Yeah he’s probably going to regress toward the mean because there’s a mean.” Then again in 2010 the standard deviation was .022 (purportedly), so that does provide a much stronger case, I guess.
Sorry, I’m just sort of rambling now because I’m really tired. STATISTICS.
most of the abuse of BABIP comes in the form of equating it to luck. i’m not saying middlebrooks has merely been lucky; i’m saying there is no precedent for a guy staying this good – or lucky
maybe he’s a career .330 guy. that’d help. but if he’s not and he doesn’t substitute a little discipline, it’s gon’ get ugly
One encouraging thing I’ve noticed about him is his BB and K numbers have gotten better as the season has gone on. In has first 20 games he was 3.5 BB% and 32% K%, and in his last 20 games he’s gone 5.9% BB% and 18% K%. Obviously his BABIP is still going to come crashing down, which is going to be bad, and obviously we are dealing with tiny sample sizes, so this could just be noise in the sample, but it is an encouraging sign.
i think the most skeptical among us hopes he figures it out as he goes. it’s not impossible, he just has a long way to go
Absolutely, and as you know, I said from the beginning that the best thing might be to send him back to AAA and hang on to Youkilis, and I still feel that might have been the best option. I just happened to see that the other day and thought it was an encouraging sign that he actually can correct those issues (whether in MLB or AAA).
Why are you getting your optimism in my Boston sports.
We can agree that he’s got the power, yes? So, if his BABIP of .380 is flukey (which I agree it obviously is), can we agree that the majority of it results in singles? I.e., when he barrels up the baseball, he drives it for XBH, and it’s not a fluke that he’s getting on base.
He’s got a .380 BABIP right now. The denominator (AB – K – HR + SF) is 100. He’s had 47 hits, 9 of which are HR, resulting in an obvious numerator of 38. Considering that his BABIP in the minors was .353, let’s assume he’ll be around a .320 BABIP guy. That shaves off 6 knocks off his Avg and OBP, resulting in an average of .285 and an OBP of .327. Of those 6 knocks, lets say he would have gotten 8 TB. That takes his SLG down to .528, and his overall line down to .285/.327/.528, .855 OPS. Even normalized, his numbers still are very good, especially for a 23 year old kid with a current 23% K rate. Plus, he’s seeing 3.81 P/PA, so he’s actually working the count, getting ahead, fouling off bad pitches (See: Miami Marlins at
Boston Red Sox) and hitting his pitch.
we can agree that he’s got good power, yes. but not .260 ISO good. i’d bet a lot of money against that. .200-.225 is a likelier range
that ~50 point drop is significant, though. suddenly that shiny OPS isn’t so shiny. and again it all hangs by the thin threads of his ability to drive the ball. any prolonged slump, any considerable inconsistency will more or less send a season into mediocrity
the hope is that he will improve. it’s not impossible, he’s just in the most difficult place imaginable to make those improvements. there’s no net, now. so don’t hold it against him when he comes back to earth
Just enjoy watching your good young player play! For God’s sake, people analyze things to death in this day in age and barely watch games as a fan. Quit waiting for him to fall into a slump, his K/BB rates are bad but not horrible, many players have succeeded with worse.
I know it’s easy to overanalyze players in baseball more than any other sport, and I do the same thing too, but he was performing light years better than Youk this season and will be around cheaply for many more years, it’s okay. The Boston media is harsh, but management has proven they are behind Middlebrooks 100% so he should have a lot of leeway in terms of how he plays.
The 3B situation in Pittsburgh is crazy as well, Alvarez is a hall-of-famer one week and an A-ball scrub the next. At least Middlebrooks has been more consistent than that.
the only two players with K/BB ratios similar to middlebrooks last year were alex gonzalez and miguel olivo. in case anyone has forgotten, they were both horrible hitters
the only three players over the last few years with similar ratios are chris johnson, humberto quintero, and again, miguel olivo
i don’t think anyone is worried about the media or management. the concern here is that for all his early success, middlebrooks isn’t anywhere near as ready as he seems. the numbers spell that out pretty clearly
and yes, we too watch da gamezzzz
The only thing with the Olivo/Gonzalez comparisons is that they are in “old dog” territory where new tricks are concerned. Middlebrooks still has plenty of time to fix it. (Although I agree with what you’ve been saying, that AAA is a great place for that. It’s almost a shame his bat has just exploded because it might hurt him somewhat in the future.)
I don’t anymore; now that fangraphs has live updates I just sit there with the stats pages open and watch their stat lines change.
Neither of those two have any hitting skills whatsoever. While it’s a bad approach at the plate and can lend to extended slumps, there are some guys this year with bad k/bb ratios who are doing ok:
Corey Hart, Nelson Cruz, BJ Upton, Chris Davis, Jarrod Salty, Pedro Alvarez, Dayan Viciedo, Ian Desmond, Wilin Rosario, Ryan Sweeney.
They don’t have the exact same K/BB ratios but have similar profiles and also guys like Michael Young and Robinson Cano when he first broke in have been bad discipline/high BABIP players. Mark Trumbo’s discipline was pathetic last year and it’s been steadily improving, there’s no reason to believe this is the finished product of Will Middlebrooks.
I don’t think he will be a rookie of the year caliber player all season long, but hopefully be will be better than league average and healthier and much cheaper than Youkilis which also comes into play.
you said: “his K/BB rates are bad but not horrible”. but they are. objectively
you said: “many players have succeeded with worse”. but no, they have not. objectively
now, if you want to expand the list to guys who have bad-but-not-as-bad-as-middlebrooks ratios, that’s fine. but then we’re not talking about middlebrooks anymore. and that’s not the same claim at all as your original one
you’re also operating on the too-common assumption that a player will get better simply because he is young. i like middlebrooks, but that’s hardly a given
he’s fun to watch. i like him. yay baseball. but this was a bad move and the middlebrooks bandwagon is going to get mighty light when his peripherals catch up to him
i’ll still like him when that time comes. will you? (not you specifically, but the “woohoo new kid!” group in general). there’s a reasonable chance that people will be missing youkilis by the end of the year
It’s funny but it’s true. The same exact people who are cautioning people against all the hype around him are going to be the people sticking up for him when it all comes crashing down.
I’ll admit you are right and I flip flopped by not being able to find any good players with worse K/BB rates, but I stand by the fact that there are guys who have had success with a “similar” approach and I’m not just expecting Middlebrooks to turn into a pumpkin in a few weeks because he seems too talented to just become a bad player like Olivo or Alex Gonzales.
The thing where we differ is I believe that peripherals are not set in stone and the Will Middlebrooks we see right now with the 4%BB/29%K may not finish the season with those same rates, and will not carry them his whole career. I have no statistical evidence to prove this, and I know not every young player naturally progresses, but he hasn’t been in the league for a long time and there’s not reason to believe his career path is destined to be that of a player with a 4/29 K/BB%. It can improve or even get worse depending on his comfort level, a streak of bad/great pitchers, adjustments made by opposing pitchers, etc.
I just feel like before we sit back and wait for this guy to collapse, there is some hope of a less harsh regression to the mean. It wouldn’t be unrealistic for him to finish the year with a .350 BABIP and somewhat improve on his K/BB rates and put up a very productive season.
I do statistical nonsense for a living. I am literally incapable of not overanalyzing this stuff 😛
I am less concerned about him slumping as i am dreading having to listen to the boston media over analyse the trade to death every time he goes 0-4 or commits a few errors.
What happens if Middlebrooks doesn’t work out..i mean as the fox people said last night players are gonna figure him out and he will have to adapt to that
You’ve got to find out at some point. Obviously, the front office believes enough in his ability or they wouldn’t have dealt Youkilis.
Youk wasn’t going to be around forever.
ya…it is good he is going to an AL team his career will last longer because he can DH
Exactly. Given how well Middlebrooks has played thus far, it was HIGHLY unlikely that the Red Sox would have picked up Youk’s option for next year, so he was almost certainly going to be gone after this season regardless. WMB’s success just forced the Red Sox to push up their time table a few months.
This has been one of my issues with dealing Youkilis from the beginning. It doesn’t even have to be him struggling, what if Gonzalez or Middlebrooks get hurt? Are you really going to have Nick Punto play 1B or 3B every day?
If Nick Punto ever becomes our everyday first baseman I’m just going to go cry until 2013.
That’s basically the option if Gonzalez goes down now that Youkilis is gone. Maybe they call up Anderson, but that might not be a considerably better option.
Anderson or Gomez would cover 1st .. Aviles could slide to third with iglesias (or spears) call up and juggle them with punto .. or they could trade for a fill in .. not the end of the world either way
Anderson and Gomez are nobodies, and Aviles at third with Iglesias at SS would be a temporary solution at best.
Lavarnway needs to grab a 1b mitt..
Yeah, I think he defense would be below average, even for a first baseman though.
Granted. Still prefer him over a Gomez/Anderson and if they move Shoppach also? Gives him more use,
Yeah, I don’t think it’s a bad idea, I just don’t think he’ll be very good there.
And what if the sky falls…And what if locusts devour Cleveland…You can’t make decisions based on what if’s only what you have today…WM is the real deal who will probably hit .280 / 25 / 90 at least every year and is still young…
That’s exactly how you’re supposed to make decisions, “what ifs” are the reason teams worry about depth. And what Middlebrooks has done so far is not the real deal; he’s hitting over his head right now. There are significant issues he needs to work on if he wants to maintain his offensive success, and the best place for him to do that would have been AAA, so sending him to AAA would have solved two problems – the depth problem, and the problem of getting him to where he needs to be at the plate.
Cherington manages once again to bring back no upside in a trade. Very weak GM.
What was he supposed to get? Chris Sale?
all of his trades this season has had no upside…trade away young players (Lowrie and Reddick) and get nothing good back ( other than Sweeney he is a double machine)….then he puts us in a hole at shortstop after trading Scutaro for a guy who barely has been playing this year even though Aviles has been playing well…they better make some moves for good players especially when you have a ownership group willing to spend and take in big players because it will draw in a crowd…also that sellout streak is a lie….
Now I’m no huge Cherington fan, but to be fair, Reddick is doing absurdly well. And Lowrie has never been healthy for a full season. So at the time the deals didn’t seem as questionable as they do now.
And what Reddick is doing is 100% unsustainable. He’s always been a good power hitter, so it’s not like he isn’t going to hit for considerable power, but his HR/FB is twice as high as his previous career high and he’s in a much worse HR hitting park. He’s not going to keep hitting home runs at anywhere near this rate.
Middlebrooks a legitimate ROY candidate?
Mike Trout laughs at your assertions.
Since when did the definition of “candidate” get changed to “award winner”?
He didn’t say frontrunner, he said candidate.
Trout is a lock though baring an injury that keeps him out for the rest of the year.
we all love trout, but many of us also love being able to read
he is a legit candidate….look at his numbers and it is through much fewer games
Jose quintaña should win Roy .
Let the Boston media and Red Sox FO vilification of Youkilis campaign commence!
So happy for Youk. Chicago will love the way he plays. I think he’s going to have a lot of weight off his shoulders and have a big 2nd half. He will be appreciated again.
i was thrilled that fenway gave him a good send-off. hope he tears it up in chicago
I was watching on TBS. It was pretty cool. Very glad both sides departed with class and hopefully it works for the best for both sides.
Like really…Youk really isn’t a third baseman… up until last year…he played 1st his whole career and not resigning Beltre was a big mistake
…He was drafted by us as a third baseman and was converted to first full time after the Sox traded for Beckett and Lowell.
It doesnt matter what the Red Sox got back for Youkilis.. they are getting two all star caliber all stars in Crawford and Ellsbury this deal was made to have Middlebrooks play third base regularly .. and thats the important thing..Youkilis isnt the Youkilis off 06 to 11 .. he was injury prone and getting long in the tooth.. Tks for the memories youk . G L in Chicago.
If that was the best offer I can just imagine what the others were…
as a Cub fan I’m a little baffled by this. Over the past 6-8 years the Sox minor league system has been consistently ranked by multiple siurces as being worse than the Cubs’ – and presently roundly derided as the worst in baseball. We cub fans have been fed a steady diet of “patience, rebuilding from the ground up, rebuilding the system the right way, aquire controllable assets….” and we sit quietly watching a rubbish product, waiting for 2015 or whenever. Yet Kenny Williams seems to laught at this approach, and always seems to put a competetive team on the field. He doesn’t seem to care that the Sox are a team full of good players that are old, and young players that are mostly bad or mediocre. All logic dictates that he should be looking for prospects in return for Peavy, Pierzinsky and Konerko, but instead he takes on a 33 yr old guy with an injury history.
Personally, I’m fed up with Theo’s preaching patience and the godlike reverence some people give him. Gimme someone like Kenny that plays to win.
“Gimme someone like Kenny”
Oh god.
… You do realize no one actually thinks Theo is a god in the sense that he would snap his fingers and the Cubs would win it all this year.
I think you need to be more than a god to do that.
The White Sox will be in the same boat as the Cubs before you know it.
Unless you realistically believe that team isn’t vastly overachieving in ’12
I don’t see how the White Sox are vastly overachieving…
Adam Dunn had possibly the worst season of all time last year coming off 40 HR seasons every year with the same approach. Rios is historically up and down, and AJ and Konerko are two of the most consistent vets in the league. Peavy is finally healthy and is pitching like he used to, and if Danks and Humber ever come around, the team has the potential to be even better as the season goes along.
They might not be good in a year or two, but I see no reason why they won’t be in the running for the division by the final week of the season. Games are NOT won and lost on paper no matter how often all the talking heads try to force us into believing the Tigers are just playing around with the opposition and waiting to run away with the division.
Please elaborate – other than DeAza, who is performing vastly out of their norm? Konerko’s average is high but his OPS is right in line.
You call yourself a Cubs fan yet you forgot Hendry ran the Cubs franchise so deep underground it’s impossible to field a competitive team for at least 3-4 years?
Kenny isn’t doing a great job as a GM either. AL is arguably the weakest division in the AL yet they have not done much, if anything, since 2005 with a pretty decent payroll.
the minor league system does not win major league games, otherwise the Padres would be running away with their division and the white sox would be in last place. Hendry was way too generous with free agents – too much money, too many years, too many no-trade clauses – but his trades were mostly phenomenal. Theo thinks he has a crystal ball on his computer that reveals hidden talent in players that, well, just isn’t there. Exhibit A and B: Chris Volstad, Ian Stewart.
Did he give up anything of value for either Volstad or Stewart? No. No risk, small reward type things for a team that nobody expected to compete
The difference between the Cubs and the Sox is that one team is 15 games out of a playoff spot and the other is currently in first place. If the Sox were 15 games out, they’d be selling too.
If you are already fed up with Theo, that’s unfortunate. The Cubs are already in MUCH better shape than the day he was hired. If a “fan” can’t give the new president and GM and couple years after living with Hendry for almost a decade, that’s pretty sad.
but they’re NOT 15 games out, that’s the whole point of what I’m saying – KW goes out and gets the guys he needs to win MLB games today, not maybe possibly with luck 5 years from now.
Seriously, there is no way you can actually know if the Cubs are in better shape right now with Theo. You’re just trusting that it is so.
Did you guys judge KW two and half months into his first season?
theo did two things very well in boston:
1) turned the organization into a “player development machine”. pedroia, lester, ellsbury, you know the big names. the year epstein left, the red sox fielded more homegrown talent (measured by WAR) than any other team in baseball – the rays included
2) won a world series within 2 years. this is what he’s best known for. and although it couldn’t have happened without several of the key signings and trades he pulled off, he was operating from a much better position than what hendry left you guys with. where is your manny ramirez? where is your pedro? where is your nomar? and by the way, you’d have to let him trade that last one away
the cubs are a mess. he was brought into build a sustainable winner, not a one-year wonder. you don’t have to be patient, but expecting a winning club already is less than impatient. it’s absurd
yeah young players over the years who are mostly bad or mediocre. Like Alexei, Dayan, Reed-Santiago-Jones, Sale, Quintana. You really are a shrewd judge of young talent, like all those a-clowns who bemoan the WHite Sox poor farm system, not realizing that Kenny goes about it a different way, realizing that prospects are largely a crap shoot and packaging the likes of Lance Broadway and Clayton Richard for a playoff series #1. Give you props for recognizing Kenny is a riverboat gambler who can often overstep— the Swisher deal in particular—but Kenny is a big believer in picking up guys with high ceilings who have failed elsewhere and giving them a new environment, or pairing them with Coop. You can only stockpile so many prospects. Few realize that a prospect coming through actually does resemble like a Gordon Beckham, everyday player who plays above-average defense. Most end up as AAAA who never cut it and end up as organization depth by the age of 28
Yea right. The White Sox have one Championship in over 90 years and have never been to the playoffs two years in a row. The Cubs aren’t the only team in Chicago who’s “plan” seems questionable.
Now, if the FO could only find a new home for Beckett….
Perhaps the Marlins again? or the Yankees?
They need Beckett if they want a chance at doing anything this year. Unless you can move him for someone like Grienke but that is not happening.
Beckett is 4-7…what has he done?
Hooray for winz!! Woo!!
he hasn’t scored enough runs, obviously
Using wins to judge a pitcher. haha
at least the guy is consistent… his ERA is 4.14 but could be better..but is not bad…the Red Sox should be scoring more than four runs on an everyday basis with there lineup and he hasn’t gotten much support
Should have just shipped him to the Dodgers for the lesser offer. This trade makes the Sox no better and now they just improved a team that may be competing for the WC with them. I mean Stewart pushed their offer over the top?? really? Very dumb.
Your forgetting the purpose of a trade- it’s supposed to benefit both teams. The W/S get a proven winner with pride that will help them in a multitude of ways. The R/S get freed up from all the drama that has taken place since Spring Training. Boston also avoids the off season drama of whether or not to pick up Youkilis’ option. Now,WMB can go out on a regular basis and not get caught up in the Youkilis vs WMB soap opera. They receive two bodies they can use, and with Bucholz out, Stewart is the ready replacement. While he’s not anywhere as good, he lessens the impact of the blow. This trade works for both parties in different ways, but it works.
Stewart is not going to be replacing Buchholz in the rotation..
Buchholz is on the DL, he meant Stewart can step in for a couple of starts.
That’s not gonna happen either. Buchholz is only gonna be out 2-3 weeks. Stewart is going to AAA. There are multiple spot starter options (both in the bullpen and in AAA) higher than Stewart on the depth chart that would get a chance before him..
agree with bosox. shouldve sent middlebrooks down for more seasoning and hoped youk turned it around by trade deadline or rest of season. Got nothing in return and paid almost all his salary. Next trade for red sox: Anyone want Valentine?
So tell me. What do you think Red Sox could get in a trade by waiting?
What type of players would other teams be offering, in your opinion?
Nice seeing a Yankee fan making a rational point on a Red Sox thread.
I can surely understand why diehard Red Sox fans are having a hard time coming to grips with this trade, anytime you lose a player who was a key part of organization’s success for so long, it hurts. To have it happen like this went down is even tougher to swallow. Hope it works out for both teams in the end, but I feel Bostons pain.
With all the junk being said about the Red Sox. I’m still amazed by their farm. Middlebrooks is a beast.