The Red Sox have traded Kelly Johnson and Michael Almanzar to the Baltimore Orioles for Jemile Weeks and Ivan DeJesus.
The circle of unwanted infielders continues unbroken.
The Red Sox received Kelly Johnson from the New York Yankees at the trade deadline in a last-minute deal for Stephen Drew. It was a bizarre trade at the time, with the Yankees maybe betting on a second-half resurgence from Drew (it hasn't happened) and the Red Sox probably just trying to get the fans to forget about the contract they gave him mid-season.
Jemile Weeks is a former first-round pick who has never managed to make good on his potential. It might be optimistic to even call Weeks a reclamation project, but if you're going to go deep for value, any tiny chance that Weeks makes something of himself is worth more to the Red Sox than Johnson, who would not have been long for Boston one way or another.
The other two names involved are what makes this trade downright silly. The Red Sox send Michael Almanzar to Baltimore, where he started this season after being selected by the Orioles in the Rule 5 draft, ultimately being returned to Boston when they couldn't hide him on the disabled list any longer. The Orioles, on the other hand, send Ivan DeJesus to Boston, where he finished the 2012 season before being sent to Pittsburgh in the ill-fated Joel Hanrahan trade.
To make a long story short: the Red Sox and Orioles pulled off a four-player swap that will have greater implications for baseball Six Degrees of Separation than for baseball itself.