Red Sox To Designate Jackie Bradley Jr. For Assignment

His worst wRC+ from 2015-2020 was 89. Did you think his bat was cooked a couple of years ago in the "demanding Boston fan" sense or in the "his next two seasons will have wRC+ values of 35 and 58" sense? I do agree that getting another starting caliber outfielder would have made a lot of sense, although we should acknowledge we're seeing just about the worst possible outcome here

I'm sure the logic was 1) JBJ is a bounce back candidate with the bat, and his defense should provide reasonable value even if he doesn't hit much, 2) If JBJ sucks, keeping him as a fourth OF and giving Duran some run - which would probably need to happen at some point if he wasn't traded - is fine until reinforcements could be added at the deadline, and 3) his option for 2023 could be a nice potential value. His least valuable season from 2015-2020, in terms of a $/WAR conversion, was $13.2 million. If his glove and bat could just get to normal wrong-side-of-30 decline levels, a $4 million luxury tax hit could be very useful in 2023, especially given the relative rarity of playable defensive CFs in the majors. Best case, he's the same old JBJ, and he's good enough to be Kiké insurance in CF for 2023. I also wouldn't be surprised if the Sox were hoping to bring in another solid OF a la Seiya Suzuki before the Cubs made their hefty offer, so even having to apply this logic may have been a bit of a backup plan.

On the other hand, Renfroe was one season removed from being DFA'd by the Rays and was a poor defender on a poor defensive team for the Sox in 2021. He put up 2.1 fWAR last year (144 games), compared to 4.7 fWAR for his entire five-year career to that point (432 games). In terms of fWAR per game, then he was about 34% more valuable in 2021 than he was for his career. He was also about to turn 30, and his projected arbitration pay increase looked like it was going to make him a mediocre value in 2022 and even worse in 2023 and beyond. In a sentence, he looked like a sub-optimal defensive fit for the Sox (given the size and importance of RF in Fenway) coming off of a career year. He looked like a classic sell high candidate.

And, of course, there are the prospects. Bloom was clearly interested enough in Binelas and/or Hamilton to roll the dice on this one. Even with regressions to the mean on both sides I doubt Bloom was expecting JBJ and Renfroe to have comparable value in 2022.

Then of course what actually happened was:

• Renfroe basically picked up where he left off
• JBJ bounced back a bit with the bat, but was still a shadow of his 2015-2020 self. He wasn't even valuable enough to be a bench OF down the stretch, even if that meant passing on what was effectively a $4 million option for 2023.
  
• Kiké Hernandez picked up a long-term injury which forced JBJ to play much more often than he otherwise would have. A Duran/Hernandez/Verdugo outfield (left to right) would not have been nearly as catastrophic as the actual starting outfield (Verdugo/Duran/[JBJ or wild card])
  
• Contingency plans in Arroyo (injured and bad defense) and Cordero (mega slump and bad defense) didn't do much to fill the OF hole.
• The Sox didn't sign another starting caliber OF until Pham at the deadline
  

So, in terms of impact to the major league team, this was about the worst possible outcome. The 2022 fWAR difference between JBJ and Renfroe is at 1.7 so far.

My takeaways:

• Taken in a vacuum I liked the deal and even with hindsight I think it was a fair gamble. Not signing another outfielder past JBJ didn't even terrify me at the start of the year. Given the injury plague and that we didn't get under the luxury tax, though, it ended up backfiring in a huge way. The impact of this deal on the 2022 team has clearly been negative.
  

• I've made this point many times on here, but I don't think what happens to Binelas and Hamilton should factor into the evaluation of the deal. If the Sox miss the playoffs by one game this will be an easy scapegoat, but I also don't think it's reasonable to blame this trade in that case either. In the offseason there is no way of knowing whether one additional marginal win will matter more this year or next year. For offseason deals in particular, we should be focusing on overall value in versus overall value out. This is hard to do for mere mortals like most (all?) of us since we don't have the Sox' internal evaluations of prospects, but that's the right approach. I think it's best to trust the FO's evaluation of talent for now, pending a comprehensive analysis of prospect outcomes from a large sample of players.
  
• I love JBJ and I'm happy I got to see him play for the Sox again this year. Is that worth 1.7 fWAR? No. But I'm happy about it.