ARROYO TRADE SEEMS OUT OF EPSTEIN MOLD

It is no surprise that the Red Sox traded pitcher Bronson Arroyo.  One, he is at best a serviceable major league starting pitcher.  Two - although GM Theo Epstein denies there is such a thing - the Sox have excess pitching.  Three, the club was not enthused about Arroyo’s intense focus on his music career.  They’ll deny that too, but trust me – they thought he overdid it.

What is surprising is that the Red Sox traded Arroyo for a player – Reds outfielder Wily Mo Pena - that seems to stand for everything Bill James, Epstein and company loathe – a guy that looks the part, but does not produce.

Indeed, on WEEI yesterday Epstein sounded positively Dan Duquette-like, raving about Pena’s physique, power, potential and “tools.”  Anytime you hear talk about a player’s “tools” your alarm bells had better ring, because chances are the word is being employed to justify either acquiring, or hanging onto, a player that hasn’t put up numbers worth mentioning. 

One recalls the excess praise Duquette heaped upon the Adonis-like Wes Chamberlain when the club acquired him back in the ‘90’s.  Chamberlain looked like a guy that should have been a perennial All-Star.  Big, strong, Dave Winfield-like.  Problem was he couldn’t hit before he showed up in Fenway, and couldn’t hit once he got there.  He was out of baseball shortly thereafter.

Pena’s career numbers are as curious as they are unimpressive.  His on base percentage is just over .300 (.303), which is remarkably bad.  Certainly in the bottom five percent of outfielders.  And although his raw power produced 45 home runs in his last 647 at bats, he accumulated only 27 doubles during that time and struck out 224 times, or more than once every three at bats.  That sounds like a guy who rarely makes contact, but is strong enough to muscle one out when he does.  And it also looks like a major departure from the club's philosophy of acquiring players that have good strike zone discipline - Bellhorn, Mueller, Loretta - regardless of their physical attributes.

So what does Pena have going for him?  Well, he’s big, strong and young – just 24. And as Epstein points out in his defense, Pena was drafted in his teens and has spent little time in the minors learning the game from the ground up.  The theory is there is still a lot of room for him to grow.

Nice try, Theo, but I am not sure how we solve that problem now.  After all, Pena supposedly is slated to make the big club and platoon with Trot Nixon, which means Pena will get maybe 200 or so at bats, all of them in the Fenway pressure cooker.  Hardly a minor league training experience.  And although his best years could be ahead of him (the whole late twenties thing), getting to those years may prove difficult if his production stays near the level it has reached to date.

David Ortiz recently played with Pena in winter ball, and he raves about his power and work ethic.  That’s good.  But I just can’t think of too many guys that significantly turned their games around like Pena needs to in order to succeed with the Red Sox.  The bottom line is this – I don’t think this is John Tudor for Mike Easler, but it could be one of those unnecessary gambles the Sox regret a year or two down the road.