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December 2, 2008

Transaction Analysis

Picking Over the Bones

by Christina Kahrl

BOSTON RED SOX Team Audit | DT Cards | PECOTA Cards | Depth Chart

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Acquired RHP Wes Littleton from the Rangers for a PTBNL or cash. [11/28]

Churned out of the pitching charnel house in Texas, the real question with Littleton is whether or not there's all that much there that makes it worth using a 40-man slot on him. I'd liken grabbing him to past exercises with Kyle Snyder, or even the early bit of grabbiness that brought Dewon Day and Virgil Vasquez into the organization earlier this winter, or Marcus McBeth late in the summer. Where Day and McBeth and Snyder make for much more direct comps—big guys who throw hard—Littleton generates plenty of grounders with lower-velocity stuff from a side-arm delivery. That can be useful if the right combination of differing talents winds up in the first five or six slots in the pen ahead of him. There's not really any hidden gold with any of these guys, but they're playable in low-leverage roles: emergency starter, last guy in the pen, extra arm to bring up from Pawtucket after Terry Francona had to lean on the pen heavily in a particular stretch. Whether or not the Sox can keep Littleton and Day and Vasquez on the 40-man all winter strikes as relatively improbable; the Sox are at 38 now, and they just offered arbitration to Paul Byrd and Jason Varitek. Regardless of the outcome of those offers, and given the almost absolute certainty that they're going to end up signing somebody at some point this winter, this is the group from which Theo Epstein will find roster space. As semi-interesting fill in the meantime, it works. And as the decision to outright McBeth earlier this offseason proved, sometimes other people aren't interested in taking a guy who nevertheless might prove useful at some point.