If you squint. But it's not as crazy as it sounds on the surface.
Matt Kemp used to be Yasiel Puig, you know. There weren't as many bees in his pants, and he didn't make old people yell at as many clouds, but the combination of speed, power, and natural gifts were the toast of baseball. He should have won the MVP in 2011, but he settled for a second-place finish, a Gold Glove, and a Silver Slugger. He was 26 years old, and he was going to be good forever ... forever ... forever ...
Cut to three years later. Kemp is oft-injured, and the advanced metrics hate him. Baseball-Reference.com has him worth -1 win, and FanGraphs has him at just under replacement. This is the second straight year he hasn't cracked a single win, and he's owed $107 million after this season. Baseball is forever pulling the wings off houseflies. If you can't trust the career path of a five-tool, 26-year-old MVP candidate, what can you trust? Certainly not baseball.
This comes up now because we have a sexy rumor that doesn't make a lot of sense on the surface. Gordon Edes reported that the Red Sox were considering a deal for Kemp that would include Jon Lester. Nick Cafardo tweeted there weren't any major talks, but that doesn't mean there aren't discussions. Which means it's time to figure out what the hell the Red Sox might be thinking in a segment I like to call: "What the hell are the Red Sox thinking?"
I'll lay out the Red Sox'xs case for acquiring Kemp as best I can:
Assume the injuries are both responsible for the decline and unlikely to linger
The first part is easy. Yes, the injuries are responsible for turning a lightning bolt into a flickering night light, and if the injuries are gone, the player will return. The second part, the one about lingering, is much harder to ignore. A list of maladies that have put Kemp on the DL or required offseason surgery since his MVP-caliber season:
- Hamstring strain
- Hamstring strain
- Detached labrum
- Hamstring strain
- AC joint debridement
- Microfracture surgery on left ankle
Again, that's just since 2012. If you're looking for an injury that's almost guaranteed to linger, look for the word "microfracture." I don't think the Red Sox would want Kemp because they think he's a major bounce-back candidate; they would want him because they feel he can still be productive in a diminished capacity, especially in a corner outfield spot, which brings us to point #2:
The Dodgers will eat a lot of money
They're paying Kemp the money anyway, and he's kind of a grumble-grouser. The Dodgers don't just have the name-brand outfielders like Puig, Andre Ethier, and Carl Crawford clogging up the works, but they'll have top prospect Joc Pederson and the platoon stylings of Scott Van Slyke looking for at-bats in the next year. Kemp is (relatively) healthy right now and (relatively) productive with the bat, so waiting to deal him until Pederson's ready is risking another freaky surgery that makes any deal impossible. They'll eat money.
The Red Sox have to decide what kind of contract would make Kemp a good idea, then. Matt Kemp at the minimum salary is something every team would jump at, whereas Matt Kemp at $107 million over the next five years is poison. The trick is finding where the practical midpoint is. If the Dodgers ate $57 million, to pull a number from my backside, that means Kemp would essentially be on a five year, $50 million deal for the Red Sox. Is his potential as a left fielder or DH worth the gamble at that price?
Maybe. $10 million for an almost-30 player suffering from a crumbling everything would still make me nervous. His numbers over his last 162 games, home and road, are tempting:
Home: 269 AB, .257/.305/.387, 6 HR
Road: 310 AB, .300/.372/.455. 8 HR
You can see the attraction. Get him out of Dodger Stadium, watch him blossom. What if the Dodgers will eat $60 million? What about $80 million? Keep sliding that thing to the right, and you'll eventually find a gamble worth taking.
Of course, the Dodgers are less interested in paying Kemp $80 million to play for another team, especially for anything less than a top prospect, which teams aren't going to give up for Kemp. So we're at a stalemate. Except, this brings us to point #3:
Jon Lester is somehow the perfect trade chip
Not straight up. But if you're looking for a way to make the Dodgers eat $80 million of Kemp's deal, dangling a short-term ace might do it. The Dodgers have repeatedly indicated they don't want to deal their top prospects -- Pederson, Corey Seager, and Julio Urias -- at the deadline. Which means they aren't getting a top-shelf starting pitcher. Except they know how nice it would be to slot a pitcher like David Price or Lester between Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke for a postseason series. But they won't trade Pederson, Seager, or Urias. Which means they aren't getting a top-shelf starting pitcher. Except they know how nice it would be to ...
Here's a way, then. All it takes is money and ... hold on, the Dodgers are checking their account and ... yes, yes, they have money. They can keep the prospects everyone else covets, and they can still get the deadline ace to make a Rotation of Postseason Doom. All they have to do is turn Matt Kemp from a contract disaster into a smart gamble for another team. With money. They have money.
It makes a touch less sense from the perspective of the Red Sox, considering they can get shiny prospects from elsewhere for Lester, but it still makes a little sense. There's a strong chance that Kemp alone outperforms an entire prospect haul for Lester over the next three or four years, when the Red Sox are ostensibly hoping to contend. Getting him at a hyper-reduced rate would almost make him like a majors-ready prospect, in a perverse way. The value of a prospect isn't necessarily the hope that they'll turn into an All-Star, but that they'll be valuable to a major league roster before they're expensive, allowing the team to spend more on the rest of the roster.
Get the Dodgers to throw in a couple of non-troika prospects, and the Red Sox would/could/should be quite interested in that deal. A pending free agent ace like Lester isn't just one of the possible ways to make the Dodgers eat enough of Kemp's salary to make him worthwhile; it might be the only way.
This deal won't happen. The interesting, freaky ones like this rarely do. But it's not as insane on the surface if you think of a $5 million, cost-controlled Kemp as being more like a majors-ready prospect. The Dodgers won't send enough cash with him to make that a reality unless they're getting something pretty sweet back. The only realistic "something" in baseball right now might be Lester. The Dodgers and Red Sox have a square peg and a rectangular hole. With a little violence and hard work, there might actually be a fit.
from SBNation.com - All Posts http://ift.tt/1lNK5Nu
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