Lackey/Littrell/cash to STL for Kelly/Craig

Jenifer Langosch ?@langoschmlb 4m
Lackey reaffirms that he will honor contract and pitch next season for ML minimum. Said his decision partially hinged on where he landed.

I could see him being a good LHRP but that sounds like a stretch to me

More on Kelly's BABIP skill ...

If you look at the 24 base-out situations, his K rate correlates nicely with his BABIP -- the higher the K rate, the worse the BABIP. And his BB rate correlates nicely with his HR/Contact -- the worse the walk rate, the fewer HR he allows. This is precisely what we saw with the splits by batting order position: when he challenges guys, he gives up harder contact, and when he pitches around them, weaker. (This is, BTW, precisely the relationship Buchholz had in 2011 when you looked at K rate, BB rate, and BABIP on a start-by-start basis: once you eliminated his few games when he had no command at all and got destroyed (very clear outliers), he was actually at his best when his K/W was lowest. Furthermore, he seemed to discover this as the season progressed: all the high K/W games where it backfired on him because his BABIP soared were earlier in the season.)

However ... when you use the K rate to BABIP correlation to predict his BABIP for each base-out situation, and assume the overall BABIP is for real, it reveals that he's given up 13 extra base hits without RISP, and 13 fewer than expected with RISP. Is that a further skill? Toss in whether or not there's RISP into the regression, and the result becomes less significant. So no, it seems to be luck.

The 13 extra hits in RISP, if all singles, would have knocked in 14 runs. The 13 fewer hits without RISP would have put fewer guys on base and resulted in 4 fewer runs. So he appears to have had about 10 runs worth of RISP BABIP luck.

That puts his career ERA at 3.59 instead of 3.25, still lower than his 4.00 FIP. In fact, if you'd guessed that half of his ERA-FIP was skill and half was luck, that's pretty much the same thing.

There's no question in my mind that he has a BABIP skill. The reason why he throws hard but doesn't "miss bats" is that he doesn't need to, as much as most pitchers do. I think that if healthy he can be very close to what Lackey was for us, at least for 2015.

Now, the big question is whether such a skill is sustainable in the long run. But if hitters adjust, there's always the possibility that he can, too.

I think dismal failure is a bit strong. Four and 1/3 years of a solid low-cost back-end starter isn't worth that much less than 1 1/3 years (and maybe only 1/3 year) of Lackey. However I do agree there should have been better offers given the contract.

I wonder how much of this was revenge on Lackey's part. Lackey took one for the team in 2011-- pitching through an injury to cover for Theo's mistakes with the rotation. Nobody associated with the FO ever stood up for him while he was lambasted in the press and made something of a scapegoat in beer-and-chicken gate.

I suspect he tied the Red Sox hands at least to some degree, limiting the return.

What I'd like is for people to acknowledge the human element. The idea that this is strictly a value proposition is ridiculous. Use the search tools and go back through this board to get an idea of what the buzz about Lackey was. The contempt and disdain in those posts only mirror the crap that was floating around in the press. Why should he want to stay here? So that he could take minimal money and watch the people who wrote that stuff floating around the clubhouse?

The Sox treated him a lot better than most of us did. They sent him into the playoffs with a good team. Moreover, that trade got the Sox a cost-controlled starter, and a guy whose a lottery ticket but who also has a proven track record and with little in the way of a cap hit. On its face it pencils out. That's before we take into account the fact that Lackey didn't want to stay here. He'd had it with Boston "fans" and the media.

The people who complain that we should have held Lackey seem to forget that he's 36 years old in 2 days. Sure he might be just as good next year, but maybe he's not even as good as Kelly next year. That plus the reported desire to leave makes it not that agonizing of a decision.

I am not crazy about Craig though, but he might have been the only way we got Kelly, who I think both the Red Sox and Cardinals value more than most think.  Craig was probably a salary dump to make room for Taveras who offers possible significant upside to the Red Sox if he returns to 2013 form and not much downside risk in just having to eat his easily afforded salary.

mgoetze I think you bring a lot of valuable content to this site, but I simply don't understand your complete disdain with this trade. The only way I could align my views with yours are if Allen Craig really was just a throw in that Boston had to take in order to complete the trade due to the fact that STL doesn't see him ever rediscovering his offensive stroke. I just can't see that being the case. Kelly's FIP w/ Boston sat at 4.62 while Lackey's w/ STL was 4.27. STL gets one year of John Lackey at $500K, while Boston gets one year of Joe Kelly for ~$500K, too, and 3 arbitration eligible years. Kelly is entering his prime years, and has boasted a high 90's fastball that, with improved command, will most certainly allow him to blossom into a #3 SP for the next 4 seasons. So unless you're ridiculously down on Kelly for whatever reason, 1.5 years of aging Lackey for 4.5 years of a cost controlled young arm in Kelly should easily be worth it by itself.

Regarding Craig, his remaining salary is 2015: $5.5mil, 2016: $9mil, 2017: $11mil, 2018: $13mil team option. Assuming they don't exercise the option, that's an AAV of $8.5mil, around the same AAV commanded by the likes of Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Carlos Ruiz, Omar Infante, Mike Morse, and James Loney this offseason. Estimating 1 win above replacement at ~$7 mil, Craig really doesn't have to do much to live up to the 3/$25.5mil contract we're handing him. Worst case scenario, he continues playing like garbage and we have 3/25.5 on our hands, but I and most others here doubt that he doesn't rebound at least in some way. Most likely, Craig rebounds next season and turns that contract into a complete bargain.

So is 1.5 years of 35-year old John Lackey worth Craig & Kelly? Yes, very much.

Eric argued somewhere that about half of Kelly's FIP-ERA difference in his career so far was based on real skill. Eric is a smart guy and he might be right but the argument just didn't really convince me, what I saw was a guy who's been pretty lucky in his career so far and is likely to regress towards being a #5 starter. Steamer has them as follows for 2015: Lackey 3.65 ERA / 2.5 fWAR, Kelly 4.76 ERA / 1.6 fWAR (giving Kelly a 10 IP advantage despite worse performance, however that is absolutely reasonable given their respective ages).

Now if those Steamer numbers are correct, then in a vacuum, Kelly-for-Lackey is perhaps a fair deal due to the additional years of control. The reason I hate this is because if there's one thing the Red Sox do not need, it's #5 starters. While we're going with Steamer projections, they project Brandon Workman at 4.60 ERA (better than Kelly). I personally am convinced that both RDLR and Steven Wright are at least #5 starters, both with considerable upside to be better than that.

Meanwhile, what the Red Sox do need is a proven #2-#3 starter. Yes, John Lackey is very old. But James Shields is pretty old too, and people are clamoring to sign him to a 4-year deal. And hey presto, their Steamer ERA projections differ by only 0.04. I think Lackey for 2 years is safer than Shields for 4 years, and human element or not, you can't convince me that if Lackey were ultimately faced with a decision between pitching for 2yrs/$20m or sitting out for a year that he would prefer the latter, even if the 2yrs/$20m would be in Boston.

So the disconnect is twofold: Others see upside in Kelly that I don't, and I am more confident than others that we can fill the back of our rotation from our farm system.


Sure, it's possible. Here's my problem: the rhetoric from the FO was that we were taking Kelly and Craig because we want to compete right away in 2015. You know what you get when you're hoping for a player to rebound while trying to compete right away? Grady Sizemore.

I think it's well possible that Grady Sizemore will have a nice rebound in 2015. I also think it's possible that Allen Craig will have a nice rebound in 2016. What do these two hypotheticals have in common? They're both a year too late for the Red Sox.

Now of course the cases of Sizemore and Craig are not the same. On the contrary, they are both very unique. The problem is that I personally am not qualified to discern between them in terms of potential outcomes, and can very well imagine a situation where Craig becomes a problem (to an extent that Sizemore never was due to differences in contract), incidentally taking away playing time from two players I am probably higher on than most others: Shane Victorino and Jackie Bradley Jr.

Wow, I just don't any connection between Sizemore and Craig and their injuries and their careers. None. Why would Craig bounce back in 2016 and not next year - other than to fit your narrative?

Because there are tons of players who have a bunch of great years, have a down year, and bounce back to previous levels, while there are almost no players who haven't been good in 5 years and bounce back to previous levels

Maybe we could dump Craig and sign Sizemore again. Sizemore had a better season.

I'm not optimistic about Craig, but recognize the upside. I just don't want to waste 200 ABs waiting to see if he's going to bounce back or not like we did with Sizemore. Too many guys like that and you end up with 2014 again. Personally, I can't see Craig in anything other than the Mike Carp role, which is probably going to make it impossible for him to bounce back. Who's plate appearances are you taking away for him? No one's, unless they're hurt or need rest.

Something has got to give with how many outfielders we have. We could probably get something for him if we threw in $10 million.