Yankees Beware, Mets Rejoice: Beckett’s Only Getting Better

It’s rare these days that a genuinely unfair trade is made. Teams win trades and lose them, but the ever-increasing availability of scouting and statistical information, combined with the increased savviness of fans and the press, means you see many fewer outright heists and more mutually beneficial deals.The reported trade between the Red Sox and Marlins – which will send two prospects and, more important, salary relief to Miami with former World Series MVP Josh Beckett and 2005 Gold Glove third baseman Mike Lowell making their way to Boston – is such a deal. Yankees fans should be terrified at the strengthening of their competition; Mets fans should exult at the weakening of theirs.For the Marlins, this deal has nothing to do with baseball talent and everything to do with the fact that Floridians have repeatedly refused to build them a taxpayer-funded ballpark. The team, which yesterday claimed it will try to relocate to a more hospitable town, has somewhat conveniently found that with its chances of becoming a welfare recipient dead, it can no longer afford its pricier players.Now it wants to cut payroll from $65 million to about $40 million. Lowell is due $18 million over the next two seasons, and the team wants to be rid of his salary. Beckett, one of the most promising young pitchers in the game (and one up for salary arbitration for the next two years),is the prize the Red Sox get for taking on the supposed albatross contract.Any claims that this is an even tolerable baseball deal for the Marlins are outrageous. Hanley Ramirez and Anibal Sanchez, the prospects in the deal, are frauds who are overhyped simply because they had the good luck to be signed into the Boston system.Twenty-one-year-old Ramirez, for instance, hit .271 BA/.335 OBA/.385 SLG with 26 steals while playing shortstop reasonably well in Double-A last year. Jose Reyes, who’s all of six months older, hit .273/.300/.386, with 60 steals and reasonable shortstop defense in the National League. That’s the difference between a true future star and a possible future major league regular.Sanchez, another 21-year-old, is a much better prospect, a right-handed starter who’s excelled at every level despite being young for his leagues. Sanchez strikes out tons of hitters, doesn’t walk many or give up home runs, throws four pitches,and,by all accounts, grasps the finer points of the game.Of course, Sanchez is still just a prospect, the finest of which sometimes never make the majors. The ratio of pitching prospects of Sanchez’s caliber to consistently good major league pitchers like Josh Beckett is about 3-1.Jesus Delgado, the rumored third prospect in the deal, is a non-entity, a reliever who’s never pitched above Aball. Best of luck to him and anyone who has a bet out on him ever making the majors.For nothing more than money and this collection of magic beans, the Red Sox picked up two excellent players. Why Lowell is considered an albatross is beyond me. This year, in 500 at-bats, he hit .236/.298/.360 with only eight home runs, and had to be benched down the stretch. In the two years before that, though, he hit as well as Scott Rolen does in a typical year; in the two years before that, he was quite a solid hitter. He also plays excellent defense and has a reputation as a team leader.It’s understandable that a cashstrapped team would want to avoid paying him, but he’s hardly so undesirable that a Josh Beckett has to be thrown in to make him go away. Splitting the difference between this year and the last four, it seems likely that Lowell will be a league-average hitter and a good defender next year. That’s pretty valuable.Beckett,though,is obviously the prize here. There’s no reason not to love him. He has a classic pitcher’s build, three tremendous pitches, and is a bull on the mound, as anyone who saw him throw a complete game shutout on short rest in Game 6 of the 2003 World Series knows. He’s also consistently healthy – his low innings totals during the last few years have been due to mild blister problems which have caused him to miss a handful of starts every year, not serious arm problems. If he doesn’t improve a lick, he’ll be one of the better no.3 starters in the league, and a massive improvement on Wade Miller, whom he’ll essentially be replacing.Beckett’s going to improve, though. He’ll will be 26 next year and possesses, in addition to all his intangible attributes, the best indicators of future success: He strikes batters out (8.97 per 9 innings over his career),doesn’t walk them (he’s whiffed 2.72 men for everyone he’s walked), and makes hitters beat the ball into the ground (his career groundballto-flyball ratio is 1.14,and has been higher than that over the last two years).If you were to work backward from a checklist of every reason to think a young pitcher is about to bloom into a full-blown ace, you’d have Beckett. He hasn’t been overworked in his career, he’s succeeded on the biggest stage of all,he has tremendous pure stuff, and his numbers through age 25 are right there with anyone you’d care to name. He has yet to pitch 33 games in a season, and he has yet to make that subtle improvement that turns a 3.30 ERA into a 2.50. The Red Sox are gambling that he will, and they’re doing it with house money. The Yankees have work to do.tmarchman@nysun.com

Yankees Beware, Mets Rejoice: Beckett’s Only Getting Better

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