Red Sox trade Travis Lakins to the Cubs

The Red Sox have been working a lot over the last few weeks to remake the bottom of their 40-man roster, churning a lot of new names in and old names out. Recently, that included acquisitions of pitchers Matt Hall and Jeffrey Springs, which in turn resulted in Travis Lakins and Bobby Poyner being designated for assignment. The latter made it through waivers and has been outrighted to Pawtucket while the former was traded to the Cubs for a player to be named later or cash.

We’ll start with the Lakins one, because that is actually the big one. It’s hard to really judge the move on its own since we don’t know the exact return, but considering he had just been DFA’d it’s probably not very big. I don’t feel great about this one. As I said when the Red Sox first acquired Hall, I like Lakins and think he can be a productive major leaguer. There were other pitchers I would have designated before him, and admittedly without having a ton of knowledge of Hall I would probably prefer Lakins when just comparing those two. Perhaps it’s close enough that it was worth the risk of trying to sneak him through and keep him as depth not on the 40-man, but I would probably disagree there as well.

That being said, it’s certainly not the end of the world. While I like Lakins, I don’t see him being the kind of piece they were gravely regret giving up in the future. There’s a sold reliever in there who can serve as a fifth or sixth arm in a good bullpen and can go multiple innings at times, but I don’t see a difference-maker. Maybe Chicago will prove me wrong there, and I’d be happy for him if they did.

As for Poyner, well, there’s not a lot to say here. He stays in the organization and can be called back up during the season if he’s needed, but he’ll need to prove himself again in Pawtucket before getting that call. More depth is always better than less.