Did Red Sox rob Yankees in Adam Ottavino trade? Boston exec is fired up

Adam Ottavino

Adam Ottavino pitched to a 5.89 ERA for the Yankees last season, but it would have been 1.53 if not for two horrific outings.AP

The sorry state of the Boston Red Sox probably had a lot to do with Yankees GM Brian Cashman being willing to trade current and future assets to a hated rival just for salary relief. After all, the Red Sox stunk going 24-36 during the shortened 2020 season and probably won’t be very good this year.

And so, we had a first Yankees-Red Sox trade in more than six years Monday when reliever Adam Ottavino and pitching prospect Frank German were dealt to Boston for cash considerations or a player to be named.

Don’t get your hopes up, Yankees fans. Boston will not be giving up anything of significance, but Cashman did subtract Ottavino’s $9 million luxury-tax figure, and that’ll help the organization stay under the $210 million threshold and probably re-sign outfielder Brett Gardner. The Yanks might be able to afford a cheap free agent reliever, too, to make up for Ottavino.

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As for Boston, Ottavino could be the best weapon in its weak bullpen next season, while German is a promising young righty who may be in the big leagues by 2022 or 2023 as a starter or reliever.

The Red Sox are fired up about getting Ottavino for next to nothing.

“This was a move where we felt we were able to address a number of different objectives,” Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said in a video call with Boston media. “We acquired Adam Ottavino, who is a veteran reliever who has had a lot of success, success in our division, has swing-and-miss stuff that plays against everyone and especially right-handed hitters. There’s a lot of right-handed hitters in our division.”

Note: The Yankees have a mostly right-handed lineup, so Aaron Judge and Co., could be dealing with Ottavino’s wipeout slider a lot next season in tight games if the 35-year-old pitches like he did in 2019 when posting a 1.90 ERA over 73 games. That means he’ll have to throw more sliders for strikes next season, do a decent job against lefties and stop allowing opponents to steal bases so easily.

But there’s a misconception that Ottavino was terrible last season after being lights out in 2019, his first year with the Yankees. His 5.89 ERA over 24 outings last year looks bad, but subtract two terrible outings in which he allowed nine runs over two-thirds of an inning, and he pitched to a 1.53 ERA in the other 22.


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A red flag was Ottavino’s .375 batting average against on balls in play, his highest since his rookie season in 2010, but the Red Sox weren’t scared off after watching game film and studying other analytics.

“We dug into that a good bit,” Bloom said. “Especially when guys start getting up into their 30s, obviously it’s something you want to pay attention to. Really, under the hood, everything looked very similar to 2019. I think you could see that in a lot of his peripheral numbers. The ERA is inflated by a couple bad outings, and one really, really bad outing in particular against Toronto.

“In a nine-week season, if you’re a reliever and you have a blow-up outing, your ERA is not going to recover from that, but that doesn’t mean that one game should make us look at somebody any differently. The stuff was still in place. A lot of things in terms of stuff, in terms of execution, in terms of a lot of the outcomes you would predict, those were all still in place. That’s all very encouraging as we look ahead to 2021.”

Nothing’s decided yet, but Ottavino could end up being a setup reliever to Matt Barnes, who is expected to be the closer this year.

“Bottom line, we think we just acquired someone who’s really capable of pitching in any late-inning situation,” Bloom said.

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Randy Miller may be reached at rmiller@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @RandyJMiller. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.

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