DALLAS – There are very few legitimate No. 1 starters in Major League Baseball, and for those few teams lucky enough to have one, convincing them to give up one in a trade is a nearly impossible task. Top-of-the-rotation arms are not readily available.
That means the Red Sox would have to get creative in identifying someone who can fill that role. The Detroit Tigers, for example, wouldn’t be interested in dealing Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal at all. But the Red Sox could do well to find someone willing to make the kind of jump that Skubal made from the 2023 season to the 2024 season.
Doing so requires teams to rely heavily on their scouts and data analysts, who are tasked with predicting which young pitcher might be in a position to grow into the ace role, as Skubal did.
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“You take it on a case-by-case basis,” Red Sox baseball manager Craig Breslow said. “If you’re always trading for the bona fide ace, the established guy, then you’re going to take a very significant hit on your future. One thing baseball front offices have gotten pretty good at is recognizing the underlying statistics and metrics, especially in pitching (pitching data and performance data) and being able to project who is likely to become a top rotation pitcher.
“Our goal is to create that internal development pipeline that we can supplement through free agency or trade so that we have that consistent, re-opened talent that allows us to not only be successful in 2025 and 2026, but over a five-to-seven period years. runs.”
Forget, for a minute, the huge acquisition costs associated with dealing with a pitcher capable of performing like a true ace. There is also the enormous uncertainty involved in choosing the right target.
Of the names available on the starting pitching front, Garrett Crochet of the Chicago White Sox is considered the most talented. But even in Crochet’s case, a team has to have faith that it continues to progress and reach the ace level. So far, for all the understandable interest in Crochet and the quality of his stuff, he’s thrown just 146 innings in the starting role.
Others in that category include Seattle’s Bryan Woo (40 big league starts) and Bryce Miller (311.2 innings), Pittsburgh’s Jered Jones (121.2 innings) and Miami’s Edward Cabrera, who has yet to reach the 100-inning mark in each of his four major leagues. seasons
Of course, there’s always the free agent route, led by Max Fried and Corbin Burnes. But as pitchers who have already turned 30, there are risks of a different kind: the potential to break even with long, expensive nine-figure deals.