What About This One for Cespedes?

Can these winter meetings start already? Right now we have rumors going every direction, which is great and all but mean as much as kissing your sister.

Ran across this good piece though from Antony Castrovince at Sports On Earth and thought I would lend my two cents, particularly on the #7 Prediction of Yoenis Cespedes and Will Middlebrooks to the Padres for Ian Kennedy and someone else. 

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Though similar in principle to the trade co-writer Devin Sparks and I pulled off in the Fansided Faux Winter Meetings – this one actually makes MORE financial sense and the Padres don’t have to give up Cashner, which of course though could also be why it WON’T happen.

The Padres signed Clint Barmes yes, but in reality he essentially becomes the utility man that Alexi Amarista was because now we need to use Amarista as the starting shortstop. Yongervis Solarte is still slotted to be the third base starter, but should the Red Sox just give up the man who kicked Kevin Youklis out of town just a couple of years ago because they signed Hanley Ramirez?

Or could the smaller lights of San Diego be the perfect place for a powerful man like Middlebrooks to regain the power stroke. Can’t you see Middlebrooks and Jedd Gyorko developing some sort of forearm handshake together?

What I like about this trade is that for the key components (Kennedy and Cespedes) you are talking the difference of about $4M and 1 year to 1 year left on their current contracts. Middlebrooks is up the upside, and of course whoever the Padres would have to give up as well in the trade is the Red Sox upside, say two AA prospects.

The Red Sox gain a reliable veteran in their rotation, a market that is picking up considerably given all of the arm injuries in recent years. Pretty soon pitching over 200 innings for 15 seasons will get you in the Hall of Fame like 300 wins used to. The Red Sox struggled mightily last season just keeping pitchers healthy, and Kennedy seems to fit that bill. It would be interesting to see what the Petco Park anti-effect does though as well. He has pitched great baseball since coming to San Diego after one dominant and 1.5 bad seasons in Arizona, it would be interesting to see what going back to the AL East would do to him and that Green Monster in left field.

I also appreciate how as the article points out we can have all these rampant speculations about what we think will happen at the Winter Meetings and chances are only a small percentage of it will happen, or we’ll all get really happy when our team nabs David Ross. Yip-pee.