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You know how sometimes you’re just enjoying your night, eating a little lemon pepper chicken, watching some Wheel of Fortune, wondering what you’re plans will be in the coming weekend? Just living in a momentary state of bliss? And then all of a sudden a beat writer from San Diego puts a tweet into your timeline that makes you meltdown on the internet? We’ve all been there. Anyway, funny story. Dennis Lin of the Athletic reported Thursday night that the Red Sox and Padres have discussed a deal centering around Mookie Betts.
Now, before we get any further, I am going to quote a very important part of this report.
Multiple people familiar with the discussions characterized an agreement as unlikely, and the industry consensus is that Betts will be in a Red Sox uniform on Opening Day.
Okay, we can breath a little bit now. I will also note that the next sentence after that is:
Yet both sides appear to have legitimate interest.
And I’m sad again. We’ve talked all winter about the potential of trading Mookie Betts and we all pretty much have chosen sides here. There’s little reason to get back into that philosophical debate about, I don’t know, why it’s dumb to say anything about potentially losing him for nothing. Or, and I’m just spitballing here, about why it would make no sense to make a trade with the idea of getting under the luxury tax while bringing back a bad contract.
Okay, so that second link was more about David Price, but it applies here because Lin’s report includes the framework of at least one deal that was discussed. In said framework, the Red Sox would be bringing back Wil Myers, which baffles me. Myers is not particularly good — he hasn’t finished a season with a wRC+ of at least 110 in four years and the last time he was worth at least 2 fWAR (a rough estimate for an average regular) was 2016 — the average annual value on his contract is $13 million less than Betts’ and his contract runs for two more guaranteed years after 2020. Not only that, but Lin sort of implies the Padres three top prospects — MacKenzie Gore, Luis Patiño and C.J. Abrams — could be off the table.
Similarly, the Padres could decide that the prospect cost for one season of Betts is excessive, even if top talents such as MacKenzie Gore, Luis Patiño and CJ Abrams are off the table.
The idea of trading Mookie Betts, taking on Wil Myers’ bad contract and not getting one of those prospects is legitimately causing me to lose it.
Anyway, it doesn’t seem like we are in panic mode here quite yet as there’s no indication that any sort of deal is close to done. That said, this is out in the universe, and that alone is enough for, well, I’ll let Piers Morgan tell you.
I want to die.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) September 2, 2012