Saw on SOSH. Will post link when available.

That's ridiculous.

Jan 19, 2006: Signed by the Chicago White Sox to a minor league contract.
Apr 14, 2005: Claimed off waivers by the Arizona Diamondbacks from the Colorado Rockies.
Mar 18, 2003: Boston Red Sox traded Javier Lopez to the Colorado Rockies for a player to be named later (Ryan Cameron).
Dec 16, 2002: Selected by the Boston Red Sox from the Arizona Diamondbacks in the Rule 5 major league draft.
Jun 2, 1998: Drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 4th round in 1998.

Gee Theo, why sign a guy to a minor league contract when you can trade a useful reliever for him? Theo's sucky bullpen aquisitions continue.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, June 15, 2006


RED SOX ACQUIRE LEFTHANDED PITCHER JAVIER LOPEZ FROM CHICAGO WHITE SOX FOR RIGHTHANDER DAVID RISKE

BOSTON, MA – The Boston Red Sox today acquired lefthanded pitcher Javier Lopez from the Chicago White Sox in exchange for righthanded pitcher David Riske. Executive Vice President/General Manager Theo Epstein made the announcement.

Lopez, who is 2-1 with a 0.55 earned run average with 12 saves in 26 appearances for Triple-A Charlotte of the International League, will be in uniform for tonight’s game with the Twins in Minnesota. He will wear uniform #48.

The 28-year-old lefthander, who has pitched in 171 major league games with Colorado and Arizona, is tied for fourth in the International League in saves and is tied for eighth in appearances. He has held lefthanded hitters to a .171 (6-35) batting average and has a groundball/flyball ratio of 64/25 (72%), the latter ranking second best in the International League and fourth best in all of professional baseball (MLB and minors) among pitchers with at least 30 innings pitched.

Lopez has not allowed a run in his last 9.1 innings over eight appearances with the Knights beginning May 25 and has earned saves in his last five and six of seven appearances.

Signed by the White Sox as a free agent in December 2005, Lopez is 6-4, 6.09 with three saves in his major league career with Colorado (2003-05) and Arizona (2005). In his big league career, he has allowed just 22% (26 of 118) of inherited runners to score while holding lefthanded batters to a .246 batting average.

The lefthander was 4-1 with a 3.70 ERA in a career best and club rookie record 75 appearances with the Rockies in his rookie season in 2003. He issued just two earned runs in his first 30 appearances that season. Lopez appeared in 64 games with Colorado in 2004 and last season was 1-1 in 32 contests with the Rockies and Diaamondbacks while also pitching in 27 games at Triple-A Tucson.

A fourth round selection of Arizona in the 1998 First-Year Player Draft, Lopez was picked by Boston in the Rule 5 Major League Draft in December 2002. The Red Sox traded Lopez to Colorado in March 2003.

Riske is 0-1 with a 3.72 ERA in eight relief appearances with the Red Sox this season. He was on the disabled list from April 12-May 22 with a lower back strain. The righthander had been acquired from Cleveland in a six-player trade on January 27, 2006.



JAVIER LOPEZ—2006 AND MAJOR LEAGUE CAREER STATISTICS







--- RED SOX ---

Ugh.

couldn't we have thrown in Tavarez?

I was not a big fan of Riske and didn't think it was likely he'd contribute much, but I also hate LOOGYs. I suspect this means they're not expecting Foulke back any time soon, since he was the designated guy to get out lefties (despite the fact that he wasn't doing it well).

Meh.

This feels like a reaction to not having a LHP for Mourneau last night. I wonder if Francona's been making a stink about that.

Lopez is an interesting guy. I don't think this is the end of the world, personally.

Wow, little bit of a panic move maybe? It would have been nice to see Riske pitch a couple of times before shipping him out of town. Well I guess now that we have a lefty in the bullpen all our troubles are gone......

Definitely a puzzler. They must have something they really didn't like about Riske and really needed a lefty killer. They did give up grand slams on consecutive nights to lefties.

I was just thinking the other day how we had won the Riske-Mota portion of that trade; Mota has been brutal. I think this at least signals the Sox have gone into "fix the team" mode.

I've seen enough of Riske, so I'm OK with taking a flyer on Lopez.

Hmm would have been nice to keep Myers this offseason instead of letting him go to the Yankees for nothing. Then trading another RP for a LHP who is probably worse, was traded from the Sox before, and was signed to a MLC this offseason.

who knows enough about Lopez?

Is he a LOOGY? Is he a solid lefty reliever? I mean, those AAA numbers are solid, but did he put them up situationally or no?

This is just another name to add to the ever growing list of relievers to pass though our bullpen.

Everyone is qualified so step up and take your turn.

Stay a week or two and then off you go to pitch much better for another team.

I do not care what their stats are before coming here they immediatly start to suck with the exception of Foulkes first year. He waited to year 2 before pulling a vacuum.

I really liked Lopez when he was at ST with the Sox in 2003 after he was selected in the Rule 5 draft. I was disappointed when he was traded to Colorado, and I followed him there. He pitched well in his first season, but seems to have run into difficulties.

Lopez

I always thought Riske wasn't completely healthy because he wasn't used often, but the few times I saw him, wasn't he much better than Julian "givethegameaway" Tavarez. Why deal a "fairly" effective reliever for a minor league cast-off. He was even more handsome than Julian..then agaion anybody is.

I am a bit confused. We are trading away a major league relief pitcher with a decent 3.72ERA who is one of the few pitchers in the bullpen who can get outs this season.

In return we get a player who we aquired and traded away once in his career already (for a player to be traded later, of course) and who was available via free agency this past winter?

And the player we are getting back isn't even playing for the White Sox right now, but for their AAA affiliate?

Sure, what's not to love about this trade? [/sarcasm]

I liked this trade better when my eyes read "Javier Vazquez."

But, eh, whatever. Riske had about as many pages in my "Big Book of Red Sox Memories" as Juan Gonzalez. Judging from all the work he's been getting, I don't think he was in any real danger of passing Juan Gone anytime soon.

So if it works out well, great. If not, then...I don't know, Tony Fossas only put about 12 innings on his arm in his entire career. Yeah, he's probably 63 by now, but the arm is young. He's probably available. He gets lefties out.

Jeez guys. Your crying over a freakin' middle reliever. Get a grip.

My reaction exactly. Yawn.

I understand the motivation to get a LOOGY, especially after the last two losses. I understand the motivation to get rid of one of the underachieving RHPs in the bullpen. So based on those, this move is logical.

However, based on ARP, the wrong reliever got traded:

[codebox]
-8.0 Tavarez
-2.1 Holtz
-1.8 MDC
-1.4 Alvarez
-1.1 Riske
-0.6 JVB
-0.4 Hansen
-0.1 Dinardo
-0.1 Seanez
0.2 Foulke
9.0 Timlin
20.4 Papelbon
[/codebox]

Now, it's a frightening thing that the Sox have had essentially only two relievers make a positive contribution over a 2.5 month stretch. But it's also irksome that Tavarez is still on the roster...Riske is no big loss, but he wasn't the crux of the problem either.

The trade doesn't make too much sense to me. Tavarez is the guy who needs to go, although I am guessing the WSox wanted no part of him. I guess it will be worth it IF the guy can get some tough lefties out down the stretch ...

No, because Theo came up with $3.35 million a year as a fair salary for Tavarez, and he will continue to hit Tito over the head with him.

I have the feeling that Theo called Ken Williams and offered Tavarez for Lopez. After Williams stopped laughing, Theo said, "Well, how about Riske?"

People are upset because we already had this guy, and we could have aquired him for penny's on the dollar this offseason but instead we are trading the one vetran reliever on this team who was effective to aquire a left handed specialist who was pitching in AAA.

If we had a plethora of pitching, than I don't think anyone would be upset but instead this looks like just another name to add to Theo's Book of Relievers. In all honesty, the one place Theo has had trouble is aquiring quality pitchers to come out of the pen.

Anybody know what's in this guy's repertoire? I wonder what kind of stuff he's got.

Yeah this is HORRIBLE. I hate it. What the hell are they thinking.

What would posess Theo to wake up today and say "I know! Let's trade the one reliable middle reliever we actually have for a minor league LOOGY. Yeah!"

It makes NO SENSE. I swear, Riske must have been caught bopping Francona's daughter or something. They must hate him. They never used him, even when they should have, and they trade him for a guy with a 6.09 era?

As for this not mattering, I disagree...anybody who watched the game before last should care. These guys are how games are won and lost. Other than Timlin and Papelbon, we have jack that i feel comfortable with. This team cannot and will not win a championship if that continues.

Well, there's this guy named Matt Clement, although getting Schilling for 2004 I suppose gives Theo a free pass in the SP area for awhile.

This makes it even more critical that one of the Seanez-Delcarmen-Vanburen trio steps it up. Lopez was bad at the major league level the past 2 years. Hopefully they saw something in his tripleA preformances to justify this.

The way Chicago looks, to me, it will take a lot more than a couple relievers to get up to their level. Jermaine Dye, are you kidding me, slugging at a level with Konerko and Thome!

A big complaint I keep hearing is that "Theo can't find quality relievers", as if there were quality relievers to be had for cheap all over the place. If you have 2 quality relievers, you have a good bullpen, if you have 3, you have one of the better ones in the league. The best you can hope for going in to a season is having one or two guys you know you can rely on, and having some middle relievers with some upside. We have Papelbon closing and Timlin setting up, and we took chances that one or two of Foulke, Seanez, Tavarez, Riske and our cadre of young arms would pan out well. Unfortunately, our bullpen has been underacheiving.

This especially applies to Tavarez. I really don't know what folks were expecting this offseason. Given the market for quality relievers, and given Tavarez's history, the deal made absolute sense at the time. The fact he hasn't performed up to expectations is on Tavarez, not Theo. Hindsight is great and all, but I really don't know what could have been done much better this past offseason.

As for this deal, meh. It's nice to have a lefty, but like the rest of the pen not named Papelbon, he needs to step up and perform if we have any hope of improving our relief corps. Whether or not he will be able to is debateable, but I don't think his chances of succeeding are significantly different than Riske's. I'd rather have shipped Tavarez as well, but I'd rather trade Clement for Carlos Zambrano too, that doesn't mean that deal is feasible.

I thought the same thing for the first two seconds I saw this thread, and was pretty suped. Now, not so much.

I see where they're coming from with this trade, especially since Tito wasn't going to use Riske in any mid to high leverage situations. I think Tito just likes having a lefthander who can get lefties out in the pen. I think Riske is the better reliever and will have a better year based upon his three year splits, but I can see why they did this. Still a bit of a panic move.

Theo acquired two reasonably good relievers this off-season. Their names are Julian Tavarez and Rudy Seanez. Unfortunately, they've pitched like crap. I lay no blame on Theo because a month into the season, the Sox BP looked stellar. I don't know what more he could have done in between acquiring a front-line starter, 3B, and a new CF.

This move is bizarre though. Did Riske ask out of Boston? Who knows. But before I overreact, I'm going to pause because perhaps.... just perhaps.... this is the first move of a small handful. Let's wait it out, people. There could be more to come.

Several things probably contributed to this:

*Foulke is going to be out a long time and we need someone to negate lefties (he might be done.)
*One of the three of Seanez, Tavarez and Riske needed to be moved to clear the spot for Hansen, and Riske wasn't a FA so it was easier to move him. I suspect Hansen is down for a quick tuneup and will soon join Timlin in setting up Papelbon. Seanez has value in getting a K, Tavarez a ground ball (in theory), Riske was just sort of meh.

Basically this cleared Hansen's spot AND got us a LOOGY. Just my take.

fyi, the White Sox needed a LOOGY too in spring training and auditioned a few guys, including Lopez.
a few days later, they traded for Matt Thornton.
they also tried a minor-leaguer named Boone Logan.

I wouldn't get too excited about Lopez.



he's a side-winder, kind of a minor-league version of Myers.
also had surgery a year or 2 ago, IIRC.

whatever problems the Sox pen has, this guy won't solve them.

June 15, 2006
Theo Talks About Trade
By Steve Silva, Boston.com Staff

You begin to wonder whether this organization has any kind of a handle of the pitching.Things seem to be out of control--in the words of the Globe this morning.
First, they unloaded Mike Myers, because they said they didn't need a lefty specialist.
Now, they are admitting their mistake, trading for a kid with little major league experience.
They lost their pitching coach, and didn't really replace him. That must have hurt, since so many of their pitchers are underachieving. (Their BP was bad last year, too, with Wallace, though they didn't have Pap closing.)
They traded one of their better starters last year, Arroyo, for a kid who is almost one-dimensional and who can't get the AAA experience he needs. Trading a weakness, pitching, for a strength, hitting.Hey, isn't it supposed to be the other way around?
They made an excellent deal for Beckett and Lowell--but Beckett has underachieved.
Clement? It seems they have been pitching that guy hurt--after all.
Wells? They should have known better.
Timlin? Can't rely on him for too many innings-obviously.
Seanez and Tavarez? Yech. Millions wasted.
Foulke? It doesn't look good--unfortunately for him.

The only bright spots: Schilling, Wake and Pap.
And Wake isn't exactly an ace.

Sorry for the ranting, but I don't like to see organizations shooting themselves in the foot. It's tough enough when you do all the right things.

P.S. Dave Pauley is a nice kid. We have the same sports doctor. Good luck to him. Wish him the best. Great start in NY.

An important point - Lopez has options. This makes room for Hansen on the 25-man roster when they want to bring him up again. I suspect that will be soon, after he has a couple more appearances with the PawSox. If Lopez makes an impact, then they can send Van Buren or Delcarmen down instead.

Actually, Ken said "That's a bit of a riske." And Theo said "sold!"

well at the time, they considered pitching a strength.
this was before Pap became the closer and I assume they felt Wells and Clement would be fine.

hey, they were wrong.

but people harping on Arroyo are wearing me out.
he's not Cy Young.
he's been a .500 pitcher his whole career and chances are excellent he'll be one for the rest of his career.

agree with many of your other points, especially the one about the lefty specialist in the pen.
remember last year they let Myers go and Francona fought to get him back.
That seems to be point of contention between Theo and Tito----do you need a LOOGY or not.

In 2004, Tavarez had an ERA+ of 176. Last year it was 125. Seanez was 129 and 143. Based on their numbers, Theo should reasonably expect them to pitch better. Signing them was not stupid; it did shore up the pen. It is not his fault that they are now sucking. He can't pitch for them. I really don't understand the blame game here.

That being said, I don't understand this move at all. Lopez looks like a LOOGY with extreme groundball tendencies, which is OK, I guess, but just as much a waste of bullpen space as Theo seems to think Riske was. Maybe Tito was pressuring him or something or this means Foulke is useless for awhile again, like last year. I guess my overall reaction is "Eh, wait and see." Not excited, but I'll see how it plays out. I'm so sick of the never-ending bullpen merry-go-round, though.

This is why the trade was done (outside of Lopez having an ERA under 1 in triple-AAA...pretty hard to fake that number in any professional league...plus he was decent with the Rockies his rookie year, which suggests he must be somewhat decent despite that 6.00 career ERA...there must be something else behind that awful ERA.

I wonder how many state police cruisers will escort him from the airport?

If what theo says is true than this is fantastic news. We get a LOOGY who could go a full inning plus we get to watch Hansen develop at the ML level.
Riske>Lopez
Riske<Lopez+Hansen.

I wonder if there was something behind that 1 ERA because as you have said, he performed his rookie season with the Colorado Rockies and has an ERA under 1 at the AAA level.

Yea man, there's no player who can do it at AAA but not in the majors. That stuff just doesn't happen. Obviously Abe Alvarez is an ace in waiting.

First, it's unlikely that Theo made this deal in a hurry after the two grand slams. I bet this has been in the works for a while.

While we are all down on Tavarez now, it is silly to think that we could include him in a deal to any other team.

Maybe they see something they really like in Lopez. His AAA numbers are awfully good. Maybe they think he can provide something in the pen that they currently don't have, whether as a LOOGY (a role that many of us aren't too thrilled about) or as a GWCAP (Guy Who Can Actually Pitch). Let's see the guy in a few games before we crucify him.

I do regret losing Riske. He didn't have time to show much, but I had some hopes for him, though admittedly without a lot of support from his recent numbers. The mere fact that his name isn't Julian Tavarez made me a fan of his.

Boy, I would love to have Arroyo around right now. I think we all would. But who could have foreseen the disasters that have befallen our pitching staff this year. Certainly, you could see Wells missing many of his games, and you could see Clement underachieving. But the hand fate has dealt us has been especially harsh, and given that Papelbon was a starting option at the time, Arroyo seemed expendable. And we all know it was more of a long-term deal.

Anyway, interesting point about the apparent divergence in philosophies of Theo and Tito regarding LOOGYs. My view is Francona is going to go to his veterans over and over again. If a guy like Riske is for the most part going to flounder in the pen, then you might as well have a LOOGY around so that sack of shit Tavarez won't pitch to lefthanders with the game on the line.

Tuesday night I dreamed that they traded Tavarez for Santana. I guess real life isn't quite that good.



hmmm...how about a conspiracy theory. Tito tells Theo he'll do something sensible like bat Youk in the leadoff spot if Theo gets him a LOOGY. If that weren't enough, he makes sure his worst reliever is pitching to lefthanded power hitters when the game is on the line, just to have something to point to as a reason why he needs a LOOGY when the game ending grand slam follows.

People should keep in mind that not only is an ERA a rough stat for a short reliever, its a useless stat for a short reliever who's spent most of his career in Colorado.

This just seems largely lateral, but makes Francona more comfortable getting a LHP.

This could easily be identifying an undervalued commodity and sacrificing something you have a ton of for it. Riske was, at the end of the day, redundant, and our guy-to-get-out-LHH (Foulke), looks gone for a while.

Matt Mantei, Jeremi Gonzalez, John Halama, Mike Remlinger, Alan Embree, Ramiro Mendoza, Terry Adams, Mark Malaska, Pedro Astacio, Chad Fox, Scott Saurbeck, Bruce Chen, Rudy Seanz (the first time), Rudy Seanz (the second time), Bobby Howry.

I could go on. A lot of these pitchers had some success in other cities. Yet they all seemed to post 4+ ERA's and grab a handful of losses when they put on the Red Sox jersey's. They also were all aquired by Theo. All I am saying is he is beginning to get a track record of getting a lot of pitchers who do great in the Tampa Bay's and St. Louis' of the world but can't get outs as often as they used to in Boston.

And I agree with the other poster that a great bullpen only has two or three really good pitchers, but this team has one (and maybe two when Timlin is healthy and pitching).

Maybe it's not Theo's fault, but their has to be a common link between pitchers coming in with good numbers and leaving with bad one's.

You know what this is? It's a four-letter word, and it rhymes with "duck."

Most of the pitchers you're listing also were never meant to be much more than filler, and it's telling that among them, Gonzalez likely threw the most amount of innings for us.

Guys like Ramiro Mendoza, Mike Timlin, Julian Tavarez, Keith Foulke, Rudy Seanez, BH Kim, Brandon Lyon, Scott Williamson- these were all very smart acquisitions, and due to the very, very fickle nature of relief pitchers in the modern era, his success rate is spotty. Some have failed, some have succeeded, some have done both. That's the name of the game, unless you're producing them within. Which, you'll notice, we've started to do.

The fringe guys are duct tape. All teams go through them. Not a single GM is markedly successful at building bullpens. It's all just risk management and securing the best bets. That's why, all things considered, anyone who's being honest about it would call Tavarez a smart signing in the offseason.