It's Crazy Season: Red Sox Sign Rich Hill; Trade Hunter Renfroe For JBJ!
Hill joins James Paxton as new Red Sox starters added in the last day. New info on their salaries, plus Renfroe's exit, JBJ's return, and the two prospects who came to Boston with him!
The CBA officially expired at midnight of December 1st. Moments before the owners locked the players out (which they didn’t have to do but did anyway), teams were very busy doing teamy-type things, and the Red Sox were no exception. Boston got two pieces of business done as the clock struck midnight and the CBA turned into a pumpkin. The first was signing starting pitcher and old (ha ha) friend Rich Hill to a one year, $5 million contract. That plus the recent signing of James Paxton should solidify Boston’s rotation for the season ahead. The second piece of business was the doozy: the Red Sox traded outfielder Hunter Renfroe to Milwaukee for outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr and two prospects, David Hamilton and Alex Binelas.
So. How was your evening?
Obviously there’s a ton to talk about here, even excluding the CBA negotiations which seemed less like negotiations and more like quick, leading questions (“You gonna give us everything we want and maybe a little more? Nope? OK, lockout time!”). So, in short: Hello to Rich Hill, JBJ, and two prospects, and goodbye to Hunter Renfroe. We’ll get into it all, but before that, another quick hello.
Hello! I’m Matt Kory and this is Sox Outsider, my Red Sox newsletter. I used to write at The Athletic, FanGraphs, and Vice Sports, among other places, and now I’m covering the Red Sox right here. If you like good Red Sox analysis with a bit of humor, well, good luck, but for the rest of us, there’s Sox Outsider. On the other hand, it is free to read and free to subscribe, so if you haven’t already, there’s no time like the present. It’s super easy. Just click this little button right here. Thanks.
Let’s start with Rich Hill because it’s easier. Hill is a 42 year old starting pitcher who has pitched for 11 teams. The Red Sox are, somewhat surprisingly, the team he’s pitched the most for. I say surprisingly because Hill hasn’t pitched for Boston since 2015. Even more surprisingly, this will be the seventh time Hill has signed with the Red Sox as a free agent in his career. Seven! I’m not going to detail them all because, well, seven (!) but feel free to check my math at Baseball Reference. It’s truly mind-blowing stuff.
Perhaps more pertinently, yesterday, the most recent free agent signing with Boston, Hill signed a one year, $5 million contract. With the news that reports were initially a bit high on James Paxton’s 2022 salary, we can now say with some accuracy that the Red Sox have dropped $11 million on both Hill and Paxton for next season.
Hill should easily slot into the Boston rotation at the start of the season and hopefully beyond, though truthfully if they get a full season out of a 42-year-old starter whom they’re paying a relative pittance, Chaim Bloom will get my vote for executive of the year, narrowly edging out the person who came up with this. Simply put, they’re paying two guys to fill one spot: Hill in the beginning of the season and Paxton at the end. If Paxton comes back early or Hill stays healthy and effective, hey, bonus.
Though maybe a full season of productivity from Hill isn’t that crazy. The last time Hill posted an ERA under 4.00 was in 2013 when he threw 38.2 innings for Cleveland with an ERA over 6.00. Since then every season and even every partial season (and there have been a lot of partial seasons!) has been under 4.00, and most comfortably so. Hill is a very good pitcher. He pitched well for the Dodgers from 2016 through 2019 (remember he shut down the Red Sox in the 2018 World Series?), he pitched well for the Twins in 2020, and he pitched well for the Rays and Mets in 2021. Yes he’s crazy old for a major leaguer, but there’s nothing in his numbers that says he’s done. There are a few red flags though.
Last season Hill’s strikeout percentage dipped to a low not seen since he spent time with the Cubs, Orioles, and Red Sox back in 2008-10. His walks were up a bit last season as well. Hill threw more innings (158) than he’d thrown in a season since 2007, so maybe he was a bit tired by the end? Age comes for all of us eventually and it comes for most pitchers far earlier than this, so expecting a bit of regression from Hill is probably a reasonable expectation and likely one the team has adopted as well.
That said Hill’s curve is still one of the more beautiful pitches in baseball.
Curveball, age, Boston connections… add it all up and Hill is one of those players who it’s just fun to root for, so it’s pretty cool to see him back with the Red Sox. Again. Again again. Again again again you get the point.
But the signing of Hill wasn’t the only thing the Red Sox did yesterday before the lockout became official. On no! They also made a pretty big trade, sending Hunter Renfroe to Milwaukee for another old friend, Jackie Bradley, Jr., and two prospects, David Hamilton and Alex Binelas.
Renfroe was picked up last off-season after he was DFA’d by the Rays, and he provided more than the Red Sox could’ve hoped for. He certainly provided more than I expected. The knock on Renfroe was that he couldn’t hit same-sided pitching, in his case right handers. He killed lefties but righties were a serious issue. He didn’t exactly solve that problem in 2021 so much as lessen it. Renfroe managed fine against righties, hitting 20 of his 31 homers against them. Getting on base was more of an issue, but combine that with his continued excellence against lefties and his throwing arm in right field and you get an above average right fielder in total package.
Renfroe was in some ways the poster child for the 2021 Red Sox, a player of whom not much was expected but who excelled well beyond those expectations to the point where he became much more than he was brought in to do. This is the Chaim Bloom way though. If Dave Dombrowski was still running the Red Sox and had had the good fortune to bring Renfroe in, he likely would’ve doubled down on him by signing him to a contract extension. Bloom works differently though, and saw not just productivity, but an opportunity in Renfroe’s 2021.
You can disagree with the degree to which this opportunity actually exists - Renfroe did legitimately have a good season for Boston in 2021 and he could've had another one similar to it in 2022 - but as a player with one year of team control at a higher dollar figure remaining and one with a bit of a checkered history of performance (recall he had been DFA’d by Tampa just a year earlier), Bloom saw the chance to move him for longer term assets in Hamilton and Binelas.
But first let’s get to the elephant in the room. The headliner in the Renfroe trade is undoubtedly Jackie Bradley Jr. Bradley is coming off a season that could maybe be politely described as the anti-Renfroe, a season where he not only failed to meet modest expectations, but he failed to come close to failing to meet them. His surface numbers are excruciating to look at, and so I beg you to turn away as I post them here: a sub-.500 OPS, a 30 percent strikeout rate for a guy with a .261 slugging percentage, equal ineptness against both righties and lefties, and well, just about every other stat. OK, you can turn back now. They were all bad.
Does that all mean Bradley is cooked? It doesn’t, buuuut... The good news, is, well, it’s JBJ and we love JBJ. But beyond that, Bradley’s defense is still great. It’s harder to put him in to play a lot because he can’t hit anymore (though he’ll certainly get a shot to prove that statement wrong), but as a fourth outfielder and defensive replacement he has value. And, if you’re looking for optimism, Bradley had never been so bad before in his career. In fact, in 2020, his surface stats say he was a very good hitter! And that was just a year ago, if only 55 games in a crazy, COVID-shortened season. So maybe there’s something left in his bat besides wood.
The likely real reason the deal was made though wasn’t for nostalgia, although, hey, I’ll take it. Instead, it was to move Renfroe while he has value and to acquire some prospects. The Red Sox got two in this deal. The most intriguing of the two is Alex Binelas, a third baseman drafted in the third round of the 2021 draft out of Louisville University. He had been mentioned as a possible first round pick leading up to the draft, but he slipped to the third round due to some bad play towards the end of the college season.
I asked friend and prospect guru Nick Faleris about Binelas on twitter and this is what he said.
(COF/DH means Corner Outfielder/DH.) That’s a promising profile, especially since the thing you might’ve been worried most about him was the thing he did well in A-ball after starting his pro career.
Just for fun, here’s some video of him crushing pitches.
So he’s a power bat with some contact issues, but a real chance to make an impact with that power and potentially even to stick at a position that isn’t defensive black hole. And he started his pro career off with a bang. MLB Pipeline has already slotted him in as the 14th best prospect in the Red Sox farm system, though I’m far more eager to hear what the guys at Sox Prospects say (always read them, they are the best). I’ll link to that here when ever they publish their thoughts on Binelas and Hamilton.
Speaking of, Hamilton is a less heralded prospect, a former eighth round a middle infielder who features speed and defense as his calling cards. I’ll pass the mic to Ian Cundall of Sox Prospects for the lowdown on Hamilton, which he posted to his twitter account.
And again, when ever Sox Prospects publishes new rankings with the two new guys included, I’ll link to it here.
So that was yesterday. And now the players are locked out, so you can be pretty sure the Red Sox won’t trade for Mike Trout or sign Clayton Kershaw today. But, if they do, it’ll happen at midnight. That much we know.
Thanks for reading Sox Outsider. If you don’t subscribe, now’s a great time to fix that. I’ll be back with more thoughts on where all this leaves the Red Sox soon.
Great article!
What do you make of the fact that ERods QO ($18.4mill) is approximately same annual cost for 2022 as Hill ($5) + Wacha ($7) + Paxton ($6)? Which would you rather have?