Adrian Beltre and other Red Sox "What-ifs"

Ain't that the truth. Quick peek at active bWAR leaders, Beltre is behind only A-Rod and Pujols and the gap between Beltre and 4th is as big as the gap between 4th and 11th.

Beltre will be a Hall of Famer if I had to guess. Over the past couple of years more and more people have noticed this as well.

You have no idea. And I bet you're not thinking of what I'm thinking of, which is why I FIFY.

I'm pretty sure that the Mariners did not make the largest offer to Beltre the first time he was a free agent. What I do know is that Theo "tried really hard" to sign him ... Theo did not add "but we got outbid," hence I believe we had a larger offer.

We wanted him to play SS in 2005 and then move back to 3B when Bill Mueller's contract was up. I'm not sure whether Beltre balked at that, or whether he just wanted to stay on the West Coast.

Imagine Beltre's career with 5 years of him hitting in Fenway replacing the 5 years in Seattle. We wouldn't be talking about whether he belongs in the Hall. We'd be debating him versus Mike Schmidt.

The ripple impact on the Sox is pretty straightforward. They don't sign Edgar Renteria, which means they need to send someone other than Andy Marte to Cleveland in the Coco Crisp trade.

And if they make the same Beckett deal, they give away Mike Lowell after taking on his contract -- something they tried to do, so that Youkilis could play 3B, but none of the offers were more attractive than keeping Lowell and seeing what he'd do. It's also possible that the deal is structured differently, with more going to Florida, but at the time I was comfortable with the idea of giving Lowell away.*

*True story: before the trade we were looking for a 1B, and my first recommendation was to deal for a fading top prospect named Adrian Gonzalez, whom I was convinced was the real deal. I remember Josh Byrnes e-mailing me and asking for a version of my rationale in a nutshell*, so I know they took the idea seriously (they also later took a flier on my second choice, Carlos Pena). The Rangers traded him to the Padres six weeks after the Beckett trade; I spent the whole time in between hoping we could unload Lowell and get AGon. So there's another irony in the whole "Which Adrian?" dilemma from 2010 and 2011: the Sox might have had Beltre in 2005 or Gonzalez in 2006.

*I thought his year in the PCL at age 23 was still very promising -- and in retrospect, Davenport has him at a .298 Peak Translation, so my rough calculations were in a similar range.

I think we hated this out a bit after the Nick Punto trade. I was of the mind that if they resigned Beltre and made the trade for Gonzalez, there would've never been a Carl Crawford acquisition and perhaps not even a melt down in 2011. You would've also had peak minor league Will Middlebrooks as an additional trade chip, the Crawford money and opportunity therein that came from his non-acquisition, and the bargain price (in retrospect) Texas signed Beltre for. Also, of course, no Panda and likely no Hanley. It was a real domino effect decision.

Then again, there are no random events in history.

This is basically what OOTP was created for. Anyone want to spend about a dozen hours with it and report back?

One of the biggest what ifs in Red Sox history is what if the Red Sox had signed Jackie Robinson when they had a chance?

What if they hadn't traded Bagwell?

What if they HAD traded for Arod?

A few of these what-ifs are pretty unlikely. The Jackie Robinson tryout was for show; there was no chance of signing him. Their racism did very possibly cost them Mays, though.

My favorite as yet unmentioned one: what if they had taken the advice of the scout who had found him, and kept Ken Brett as an OFer? I find it very credible that he was as at least as good a hitter as his brother. George always said Ken was better.

When George Brett got to 172 pro PA at age 18, he was in the middle of a .291 / .369 / .419 season in advanced rookie ball.

When Ken got to the same point in his experience seeing professional pitching, at age 21, he had a .314 / .364 / .569 line ... in MLB.

While there's almost certainly some SSS air in that figure, when he stopped getting regular PA as a pitcher, he still had a 101 career OPS+ ... and he had had 464 total pro PA over 10 years. George has seen that many pro pitches by the middle of his second year in the minors. We think of Mookie as a fast-learning prodigy, but he hit that number of PA on May 18 of his year with Greenville.

This is pretty much it, in that offseason I was convinced we needed to sign Beltre and Matt Holliday. That means we would/could have had Beltre and Rizzo manning the corners and avoided the Crawford/Fried Chicken saga as well as the Sandoval debacle. AND we'd still have a load of prospects coming up through the system. Holliday wouldn't be looking good in these later years, but he was a force for a while.

Speaking of what ifs.....when Duquette had the following players agree to terms: Sammy Sosa, Kevin Appier and John Wetteland.

Unfortunately I think we can answer the what if on this one.  If they hadn't traded Speaker in 1916, then he would have kept hitting well for them, but then Harry Frazee would have sold him to the Yankees a couple of years later like he did with everyone else on that team.

Here's another one. What if they hadn't listened to Pedro and never signed David Ortiz after he was released by the Twins?

Imagine how many RBIs prime Ruth would have had hitting behind Speaker in the early 1920s (if they had kept that squad together).