Matt Garza to the Padres Could Add a Degree of Insult to Red Sox Offseason

Yesterday, the Cincinnati Reds and San Diego Padres completed a trade that had no direct impact on the Boston Red Sox.

That may be on the verge of changing though.

The deal that sent talented young starting pitcher Mat Latos from the Padres to the Reds was a four-for-one deal. The Padres got, as LeBron James might say " not one, not two, not three...," they got four talented players—only one of whom ( Edinson Volquez) has any sort of extensive major league experience.

The highest-profile minor league talent that the Padres got in return is a talented 24-year-old first baseman by the name of Yonder Alonso. Alonso got a little peek at the majors both in 2010 and 2011. He appeared over his head in 2010, but in 2011, Alonso got 88 at-bats and put up the type of numbers that would make one assume he was destined for a starting job in 2012. A .330 batting average, five home runs, 15 runs batted in and an ops of .943.

Alonso got most of that experience playing left field for the Reds, a position he's not all that suited to. He wasn't playing his natural first base position because the Reds have a guy named Joey Votto there and, for those unaware of who Votto is, he's pretty good.

How good?  He was the 2010 National League MVP and last season, his numbers—playing in a lineup with far less support surrounding him—he produced numbers nearly identical to those of Sox star Adrian Gonzalez.

That meant that Yonder Alonso was a man with a bat and no position. He's just not cut out to be an everyday left fielder. He's a first baseman and he's got a nice future at that position. That future wasn't going to happen in Cincinnati so Reds general manager Walt Jocketty did what any shrewd GM in his position would do. He packaged Alonso into a trade.The San Diego Padres' general manager Josh Byrnes is a recent hire. He was hired to replace outgoing general manager Jed Hoyer, who left San Diego in October of 2011 to take over the Cubs' general manager position. Hoyer was hired by his former boss and former Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein.

Both Byrnes and Hoyer were assistant general managers for the Red Sox under Epstein at one point.  

Last year in the offseason between the 2010 and 2011 baseball seasons, Hoyer made a major deal to bring a young, talented first baseman to the Padres. That was a trade in which San Diego dealt one very talented player in first baseman Adrian Gonzalez to the Boston Red Sox for three talented young minor league players.

The first baseman in that deal was a prospect by the name of Anthony Rizzo and now it's that very player, Anthony Rizzo, who may have an impact of the pitching rotation of the 2012 Boston Red Sox.

How could that happen?

Well, the Padres now have two very well regarded young first base prospects in Rizzo and Alonso and that makes one of them expendable. Clearly, new Padres GM Byrnes prefers Alonso to Rizzo so who would he deal Rizzo to? How about the guy who traded All-Star first baseman Adrian Gonzalez for him in the first place?

Jed Hoyer, who of course is now working for the general manager who made Rizzo the Red Sox's sixth-round pick in the 2007 amateur draft (Theo Epstein).

The player Byrnes wants as part of a package for Rizzo is none other than starting pitcher Matt Garza—yes, that Matt Garza.

The same Matt Garza who the Red Sox initially wanted as part of the as-yet-unresolved compensation from the Cubs when they were negotiating Theo's exit from Boston this past October. The same Matt Garza who ended the 2008 Boston Red Sox's quest to become repeat World Series Champs when he shut them down in game 7 of that season's ALCS. The Cubs have an open major league first base position. They've been linked to Prince Fielder, but the emergence of Rizzo as an attainable commodity has now spurned a lot of interest in his availability. The Cubs seem to be one of the more interested teams. 

Could two former Red Sox employees, one of whom works for the former Red Sox general manager, consummate a trade that eliminates one of Boston's primary trade targets from the market? 

Of course they could. In addition, it looks like a former Red Sox prospect could be the trigger for the deal as well.

It's little stories like this that make baseball and its offseason fun or agonizing—depending on how you look at it. It's also a reminder of why, in this modern age where everyone seems to want to make a snap judgement of a trade or anything else for that matter, the final results and analysis are often hard to assess for several years.

How could the Red Sox have known that by acquiring Adrian Gonzalez they were possibly setting the stage to not acquire Matt Garza? Clearly, that wasn't something anyone could have predicted but it may be on the verge of becoming reality.

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