NEWS FLASH - Red Sox know what they're doing

Published Aug. 1, 2014 12:18 p.m. ET

foxsports

As Tim Brown points out, the Red Sox are merely doing what their circumstances dictate.

But, and this may stick in the throats of the Fenway folks, the alternative was to plow onward, to throw more money at it, to pretend this was an organizational window meant to remain open for any longer than it did. By looking honestly at who they had become, at how ridiculously fortunate they'd been last summer, at how unlikely it was they'd revert to anything quite so heroic, they would not become the Philadelphia Phillies. Or, for that matter, the Yankees.

If I've got one tiny quibble with the narrative, it's related to Yoenis Cespedes. Yes, he's exciting. Yes, he's got a bunch of nifty tools. Yes, he's really great at Home Run Derby. He's just not really great at baseball, with a sub-.300 on-base percentage over these last two seasons. Cespedes looks to me like a good player whose career peak came two years ago, when he was 26. Which is not an uncommon thing.

Still, he's immediately the Red Sox' best outfielder and they're presumably thrilled to have him. I just won't be terribly surprised if he's traded to another team that has a greater appreciation for tools. The Phillies, for instance.