Tampa Bay Rays Trade James Shields To Kansas City For Wil Myers

Dayton Moore has done it again, and while the Royals fans are, as per usual, the primary victims of his ineptitude, today the Yankees, Blue Jays, Orioles, and of course us Red Sox fans are feeling the sting too.

In a deal finalized in the late hours of Sunday night, the Kansas City Royals agreed to send Wil Myers, Mike Montgomery, Jake Odorizzi, and Patrick Leonard to Tampa Bay in exchange for James Shields and Wade Davis. Now, before you get too angry at Moore for offering up Myers on a silver platter like that, it's really important that we're clear about the fact that Odorizzi was ranked as a top-100 prospect last year before putting up a 2.98 ERA in Triple-A as a 22-year-old, and while Mike Montgomery just had by far his worst season as a pro, he entered 2012 as baseball's 23rd best prospect according to Baseball America.

That's right, the Rays didn't simply come away as the winners of a Myers - Shields trade, but stole all the cows and chickens too before burning down the barn on their way out. Kansas City, for all that they have a shiny new (old) pitcher are left a smoldering ruin.

What will really grate on Red Sox fans as they watch Wil Myers and co. find their way to the majors is the memory of that rumored Lester - Myers trade. It's possible that the Red Sox heard the Royals were trying to deal Myers and made themselves available, but were turned down. We have to hope that's it. Because if it was the Sox who backed away here, we're talking about an unbelievable amount of value they left sitting on the table.

Of course, Jon Lester is not James Shields right now. He isn't. 2012 saw to that, and so any deal the Royals worked with Shields may not have been acceptable to them with Lester in his place. For our own sanity, it's probably best to believe that's true until proven otherwise.

Hopefully the prospects bust and the Rays never see an ounce of value out of this, but that's a really hard outcome to see. Either way, just a terrible, terrible job by Dayton Moore, who has traded his team's best hope for future contention to add a 4 WAR pitcher to a 72-90 team.