Red Sox acquire Thornburg for Shaw, Dubon, Pennington

Dave Dombrowski continues to prove my hypothesis that is he just flat out awful at his job. 

Trade value aside (which I think is, generally, fair but riskier than I love), the projected backup middle infielder right now is Deven Marrero. Dubon was important depth.

I don't believe they needed to add Pennington. I echo they previous sentiments that they should have got a lottery ticket back aswell. This does open up a huge chunk of money that they were going to allot to a FA RP to go elsewhere.

I wonder if this puts them in the 3B market now. Do they truly trust Sandoval? I wonder if they'll go after a Luis Valbuena type player now. He doesn't seem to have a huge market for him at this point and has had 3 solid years of offensive production to go along with solid defense and defensive versatility. Thoughts?

I like the trade overall. The Red Sox got a potentially dominant late-inning arm in exchange for a few fringe MLB players. However, as has been pointed out, the Red Sox lately have been trading multiple prospects for one piece. They aren't getting those "throw-in" players. With all the talent the Red Sox have traded over the last year (Margot, Guerra, Espinosa), it's puzzling that they haven't gotten a solid utility player out of it. As Chris Hatfield pointed out in the last podcast, sometimes the throw-in guy turns into Brock Holt.

Like I said, I'm not losing sleep over the trade or anything...but these three-for-one or four-for-one trades make me scratch my head sometimes...

We will see. I wouldn't write off Panda yet. This is shaping up to have the potential to work out like the Lackey signing did. The good news is he did have an injury and he's not old so a decent bounce back isn't out of the question. Won't take a lot to replace Shaw.

I'm not concerned about who they gave up as much as I am about who they got.

Three for one seems a lot, but elite relief pitching is an expensive market these days and arguably this is a favorable trade for Boston. We've lost a little depth but gained a top tier 7th inning guy.

Wouldn't Marco Hernandez and even Holt count as backup middle infield options? Or even Moncada, if we're talking second base?

I dislike trades of multiple assets for relievers -- the Sox always seem to lose these deals -- but the Sox clearly needed another shutdown guy and are apparently under cost constraints. Thornburg had a monster year last year and has three years of control remaining. How much does any reliever striking out over 12 per nine innings with that many years of control left fetch on the trade market at the deadline?

If we assume DD can't really spend any money, then he's done a good job putting together a shutdown 8-9 combination without sacrificing anything terribly important to our present or our future. The big risk here is that Shaw figures it out and becomes a 30-homer third baseman, but he probably wasn't going to get that shot here anyway.

Definitely somewhat of an overpay, and it's weird that we had to give up Pennington and/or couldn't get a second intriguing piece back from MIL, but I'm cool with the deal all and all.

Look at Thornburg's track record.
Poor control (3.7 BB/9), extreme flyball pitcher (36 GB%), and moderate strikeout #'s (9K/9).
And another exclusively 1 inning reliever.
In short, he's a poor-man's Kimbrel (which is no compliment).
Sure, he had an impressive spike in K's last year (12/9); maybe that's sustainable, maybe it's not.
This is not an elite relief pitcher.
It's not hard to see where this goes wrong.
Dombrowski has traded no less than 7 players for 2 poor-control, 1 inning relievers.
It's sickening.

Stop. Remember the saying it's better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool then to open your mouth and remove all doubt. At least explain yourself.

There were 326 pitchers who threw 50 innings in 2016. Thornberg had the 17th-best K-BB%.

Sox gave up a little too much here, but not much based on the market. A platoon CI, a second division ss or ut. and a light prospect. For a cost controlled 8th inning guy in his prime that is all the rage currently. If he can stay healthy and come close to what he was last yr for the next 3 years then it is a win.
Love the future look of the pen. Thornburg, Kelly and Smith healthy going into the playoffs next yr could be dominating. Or it could just implode like most of the time the Sox load up in the pen.

 Now DD has to go out and get another platoon guy for the corners.