Lester for Porcello?

By foxsports
Published

It does, in retrospect, seem a strange way to go about things:

Two games last Wednesday underscored the folly of the Boston Red Sox' handling of Jon Lester last season. Boston made a below-market bid to re-sign Lester last spring (four years, $70 million), then traded him to Oakland on July 31 for Yoenis Cespedes. The Red Sox flipped Cespedes to Detroit in the winter for starter Rick Porcello, and signed him in April to a wildly above-market contract (four years, $82.5 million) through 2019.

Essentially, then, the Red Sox replaced Lester with Porcello. At 26, Porcello is five years younger than Lester. But he has not been a better fit.

Porcello is a ground-ball pitcher, and the Red Sox expected him to thrive with strong defense behind him.

I'm a little behind in my reading, so "last Wednesday" actually means two Wednesdays ago, when Porcello got hammered (again!) and Lester racked up 14 strikeouts, both episodes beautifully epitomizing these two hurlers' seasons.

It's worth mentioning, I think, that we hardly have perfect knowlege yet, and won't for quite some time. Lester wound up signing with the Cubs for six years and $155 million. As Kepner notes, that's more than twice as much money as the Red Sox offered him. So it's a great deal for Lester! But of course we don't yet know much at all about the Cubs' side of things, considering we're only about 12 percent into Lester's contract (not including Octobers).

Was Porcello's contract really "wildly above-market" when he signed it? I don't know. Maybe. But I suspect the Red Sox wouldn't have offered him something wild. Unless they were somehow bidding against himself, in which case we should send psychic kudos to his agent. According to FanGraphs, Porcello was "worth" upwards of $20 million both 2013 and '14, though.

This season, his strikeout and walk rates have both been fine. Biggest problem? Porcello has not been a ground-ball pitcher this season; at 43.2 percent, his ground-ball rate is easily the lowest of his career and ranks just 56th among 92 qualifying major leaguers. Which has led to more home runs than usual, and bad luck has only made things worse.

But Porcello's still throwing as hard as he used to, and it shouldn't be shocking if he rediscovers his ground-balling ways and posts an ERA below 4 next season.

The other good news, I guess, is that the Red Sox would be terrible even if Porcello were pitching well.