The Red Sox didn’t just make a move on Saturday night. They rolled the dice.
By sending left-hander Connelly Early to Washington for Curtis Mead, Boston bet on a bat that has finally flashed after a rough start to his big league career. Mead has looked like a different hitter this season, but the price tag still comes with plenty of danger attached.
That’s because the version of Mead Boston is getting is not the one he was for most of his major league life. Before this year, he had produced negative-0.2 bWAR and a .617 OPS across 152 big league games.
He had already been traded twice, and now he’s on the move again before turning 25. For a player with that kind of track record, the Nationals were clearly selling high.
Still, Boston is buying the breakout. Mead has posted an .852 OPS with 17 home runs in 87 games this season, giving the Red Sox a much more dangerous option in the lineup if that production holds. Craig Breslow’s view was straightforward enough: Early was on the injured list, and he had been outpitched by fellow rookie lefties Payton Tolle and Jake Bennett, so the trade was framed as a way to help the club right now.
There’s also a pretty obvious Fenway fit here. Mead has sent all 17 of his homers this year to the left of dead center field, and his 22.5% air pull percentage sits nearly 6% above league average. The power profile isn’t built on elite exit velocity - he’s in the 30th percentile there - but his 69th percentile barrel rate suggests he knows how to turn that contact into damage.
The catch is on the other side of the ball. Mead has been worth negative-9 outs above average at third base, which leaves Boston with a real question about where he plays. The simplest answer may be to move him back to second, where he’s only negative-1 in his career, and let Caleb Durbin keep handling third.
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The change came because of his injury-related time on the injured list, which altered the structure of the agreement in Bostons favor. For the Red Sox, it means Crochet is no longer just a short-term piece to monitor, but a pitcher whose place in the organizations long-range plans is now much more firmly established. [Read more 🡒]