I think I'd time to make excuses, bro, we're standing making moves and I'll run again, even when they've been the rules, I pay very close attention after that I pay my dues and I'll excuse me, may I be excused, cause I gave this shit my all, ain't got nothing left to lose

Hello and welcome to episode 926 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus presented by our Patreon supporters and the play index at baseballreference.com

I am Ben Lindbergh of 538, joined on the phone today by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus, hello, yoh, we are also joined by Ben Carzley, who is writer for Baseball Perspectus, managing editor of Baseball Perspectus Boston

and that potentially tips you off to what we're talking about today, namely the Red Sox, hello Ben.

Hi Ben, hi Sam, thanks for having me on again.

Happy to, we'll have you on every time David and Braski makes a trade, so stay by your phone for the next 10 days or so.

So, David and Braski has been busy, the most recent trade that went down yesterday, Red Sox acquired Drupalm Rens and traded away, Anderson Espinoza to the Padres.

He was ranked in BP's recent top 50 at number 24, the number 5 pitching prospect, the Red Sox top pitching prospect and fourth overall prospect.

So, tell us, I guess first about how Drupalm Rens became a player that we would do part of a podcast episode about and then also about what the Red Sox gave up here.

So, I think that the Red Sox is attractive to the Red Sox solely because they have really failed at every single level to develop and retain any quality starting pitching.

You know, I wrote in the transaction analysis today that pretty much over the past decade, the only three starters the Red Sox have successfully developed our John Lester Clay Buckles and Justin Masterson.

And that's going back quite a few years now. So, the reason Palmer and is attractive even though he is probably not someone that we would have started the year guessing the Red Sox would go after is because the other options the Red Sox have are pretty terrible.

Sean O'Sullivan is probably or was the Red Sox for the starter before this trade was made and it's 2016. So, I think that is probably the best way I can sum up why they would feel it need to go after someone like Palmer and we actually got a question from a listener who wrote in with the Red Sox dealing Espinoza got me wondering about the team success over the last 30 years drafting and developing pitching talent, which is what you were just alluding to.

Clemens and Lester is all I can think of you mentioned a couple others but since this spans different ownership groups executives etc. I was curious if there are larger factors at play that contribute to this minor league affiliates geography who knows why are they so consistently bad and some teams like the Metz so randomly good.

Is it just random or do you attribute it to something the Red Sox have done badly?

I think when it's this consistent I'm hesitant to call it random anymore. Especially with this most current crop they had arms that people did think would at least be able to slot into the middle or the back of a rotation.

It's not as if they haven't had the raw material to work with. Even heading into last year this was a group that included Matt Barr and Brandon Workman and Henry Owens and Brian Johnson maybe no one thought there was a savior among that group but those are all fairly well respected and well established arms in the upper minors with a little bit of major league experience.

It wouldn't have been crazy to think that at least one of those four or five arms would be able to give the Red Sox 100 or 150 decent innings by this season but it just hasn't happened and I don't know if Tom Browski has come into this organization and has decided that there's something wrong and that this is not a good time to be grooming arms.

If that's the case you can certainly understand why it'd be less hesitant to deal with Spanosa or I don't know if it's just Tom Browski hating all of your prospects that you still famously does and not really having a problem shipping off a guy that might not make the majors for the next three or four years.

But I think there's definitely some sort of systematic failure somewhere along the line in Boston but pinpointing where that is is a lot more difficult.

Well everybody knows all Red Sox prospects are overhyped by the national media too.

Exactly. Vander and Mookie and Jackie will be very, very overhyped.

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