Hello Wily Mo Goodbye Arroyo

Add Bronson Arroyo to the list of 2004 Idiots who are now 2006 non-BoSox. I'm moderately excited about the arrival of Wily Mo Pena to the Sox. It seems that, like Coco Crisp in Cleveland, Wily Mo was a fan favorite in Cincy. So that's always nice.

Wily Mo sounds like a "one true outcome" type of hitter: it's either strikeouts or monster homeruns where Wily Mo is concerned. But he's young (24) and hopefully, with help from David Ortiz and Ron Jackson, he can develop some plate discipline and draw more walks. It's not unheard of--Sammy Sosa turned his career around when he learned not to swing at every single pitch at about the same age. And don't give me the knee-jerk complaint about Sosa and his alleged steroid use. The steroids probably changed a lot of Slammin' Sammy hits that would have stayed in the park into homeruns, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about plate discipline, being patient at the plate and making good decisions about whether a pitch was borderline strike or not. Say what you want about Sosa, but he made himself into a better hitter by improving his pitch selection and drawing more walks, and that has nothing to do with steroids. It sounds like Wily Mo has power to spare, so a bit of discipline could make him deadly.

Do I think it's likely that he'll magically be able to develop that kind of controlled hitting ability? I'm not certain. My most hopelessly optimistic guess is that he's got about a 60% chance of turning into a good OBP, moderately high BA hitter. That number's not based on anything, just a gut instinct guess on my part. (Take that, sabermetrics buffs!) So, I think we got a relatively decent player as is, and there's potential for him to become a star but it's not terribly likely.

Then again, on paper we didn't exactly give up a lot for him. Bronson Arroyo is a solid pitcher but probably no better than a 4/5 starter on a good team. What with the Sox' inability to trade David Wells or Matt Clement, Arroyo was the odd man out in a rotation with 7 starters and it was necessary to clear up some of the logjam there. I also suspect, based on some of Wells' recent comments, that if the situation wasn't a bit more cleared up Boomer might have just quit and the Sox would have lost a starter and gotten nothing in return. Given his age, his salary, and his place in the Sox staff (not good enough to be a regular starter, too valuable to waste away in the bullpen), dealing Arroyo was probably the right thing to do. We dealt from an excess of pitchers and added depth to our outfield in the form of a guy who can fill in at any position and make a great lefty/righty platoon mate with Trot. (And no matter how much I'd like to see a full season out of him, I put the over/under on Trot Nixon's games this season at 100--and sadly, I'm taking the under.)

But the problem with the whole deal, for me, is that it wasn't done completely on paper. I like Bronson Arroyo. He liked Boston and wanted to stay there. I'm not going to say that it's rare to find guys like that, but that has to be considered a pretty valuable, honorable intention in a player when he signs a below-market contract to stay in Boston. He was willing to do anything he could to stay with the Sox, whether that meant pitching as a starter, a reliever, or even tossing batting practice. He was friendly with the fans, of course. Basically he was just a really likeable guy, and I hate to see him go. Both the Sox front office and Arroyo himself have been more or less saying all the right things about the deal vis a vis the contract extension from January and whether that actually implied he wasn't going to be traded. In so many words, they're saying that it wasn't a complete sham, that there were no trades on the table at the time (and that was all he was guaranteed) but this thing came out of nowhere and it was a deal the Sox needed to make. Maybe so, but it still seems sketchy to me. I'm not questioning the deal on the baseball merits, but the way it happened and the guy it happened to? It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

So I'm going to miss Bronson Arroyo in a Red Sox uniform. I'll be cheering for him with the Reds, and I hope he has nothing but success over there.