Reboot 2.0: How yesterday's moves affected this year and beyond
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| Photo from NESN |
Contributing Writer
For the 2nd time in his tenure, Ben Cherington pressed the "Reset" button by making several trades yesterday, the biggest of which was trading Jon Lester to the Oakland Athletics for Yoenis Cespedes. With 54 games left, it remains to be seen whether the Sox can actually accomplish anything this year. I'm always an optimist, but their season was done in my eyes when they couldn't keep up the winning streak they started around and shortly after the All-Star Break. There's still an outside chance they could go on a tear, but my hopes are not high.
BUT they could be set up quite nicely for 2015. The Lester trade could be better than Sox fans imagine - the Sox are saying that they'll make a "huge push" for Lester in the off-season. Only time will tell, but if they do re-sign Lester, you'd have him anchoring a relatively young rotation and your heart of the order would look something like this: Cespedes-Ortiz-Napoli.
Let's let that sink in for a second. While David Ortiz's average isn't quite the same as past years, the power is still very much there (25 home runs). Throw in Cespedes' 17 home runs this season and Napoli's power potential (12 this year, 23 last year) and you could have a dangerous 3-4-5 combo. Throw that in with Brock Holt at the top of the order and the young guns with a full year of big league experience under their belt and the Red Sox could get back to the offense that saw them lead the majors in runs scored last year. Again, we'd have to see how everything plays out in the off-season, but this could be a team to watch out for next season.
Thoughts? Let me know on Twitter or leave a comment.
