Red Sox Leave too Many Eggs in the Oswalt Basket

When news broke earlier this month that the Red Sox traded Marco Scutaro to the Rockies for a virtually unknown pitcher. the prevailing sentiment across Red Sox nation was disappointment. It was somewhat sweetened only by the widespread presumption that this was a salary cap move that would allow the Sox to sign Roy Oswalt.

Guess what? ESPN is reporting that Oswalt is closer to getting things done with the World Series Champs than he is to joining the enigma that is the 2012 Boston Red Sox. At the moment nothing is final, but let the hindsight begin.

First of all, lets get one thing straight. Marco Scutaro is a solid player, who was out injured quite often in 2011 and essentially shared time with Jed Lowire at SS. His star shone brighter than it realistically should have this offseason, mainly because he had a good September, in stark contrast to most of this teammates. However, trading him seems strange when taking into account that Lowire is gone as well. The Red Sox grand strategy of entrusting the SS position in the hands of Mike Aviles till Jose Iglesias is ready to join the big league club seems off, as Aviles was a very late season addition. There wasn’t really that much time to evaluate how he would do in an everyday role. Maybe the signing of Nick Punto could help, but if shared duty is the solution the Sox have in mind than the’ve once again created instability in the middle of the infield.

But that actually isn’t the main issue. More to the point is the insistences of going hard at Oswalt. Oswalt is a great pitcher but also one that didn’t have a winning record the past couple of years, has issues with his back and, oh, has never pitched for an American League team. Signing Oswalt would have been a good move for the Sox, but they would have likely over-paid him and wouldn’t have achieved anywhere near what other AL teams achieved this offseason.

So with “pitchers and catchers” around the corner, seems the Sox are shaping up as follows: Closer all set, 3 certain starters (probably joined by former relievers Aceves and Bard), maybe Daisuke enters the mix at some point, maybe not, shared role at SS.

For a team badly needing to rebound from all that it has been through, seems like the Sox haven’t changed a bit.

Oswalt probably not the answer anyway…

[Photo by dbking on Flickr  [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons]