Sean McAdam of the Boston Herald wrote a good article today about the Red Sox’s rotation plans heading into the offseason, noting that this season’s low-risk, high-reward deals for John Smoltz and Brad Penny working out poorly won’t stop general manager Theo Epstein from pursuing other pitchers with injury issues. Here’s what Epstein had to say about Smoltz, Penny, and his offseason plans:
Epstein went on to say that the Red Sox will likely pursue another buy-low starter to pair with Tim Wakefield at the back of a rotation fronted by Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and Clay Buchholz. McAdam mentions Ben Sheets as an option and calls Brandon Webb “the most interesting of those pitchers” if the Diamondbacks decline his $8.5 million option for 2010, but speculates that Rich Harden is a more likely target for the Red Sox. Harden had a mediocre 9-9 record and 4.06 ERA for the Cubs, but led baseball with 10.9 strikeouts per nine innings and has a 3.39 career ERA. Of course, he hasn’t thrown 150 innings in a season since 2004 and has never logged 200 innings. He’s an ideal buy-low target, but my guess is that Harden is young enough and dominant enough when healthy that some team will take a multi-year, big-money gamble on him. And it won’t be Boston.
There’s a tendency on the heels of some of those buy-low, one-year deals not working out to go in the other direction, and say we’re not going to do that, we’re going to avoid anyone who’s coming off a bad season or anyone who’s got health concerns. But the reality is, you sign one-year, buy-low deals for a reason because a lot of them don’t work out.
But they provide you flexibility. So when they do work out, hopefully you have an option and you can keep that player for next year. If they don’t work out, you move on and you have flexibility both during that season and in future years to address needs.