The line of thinking seemed natural.
Padres All-Star first baseman Adrian Gonzalez represents everything that could be on the Red Sox’ wish list. He is a slugger who can mash (40 homers in 2009) and control the strike zone (119 walks). He has produced middle-of-the-order numbers in OBP, slugging and homers while playing half his games in one of the worst offensive environments in baseball.
“He was kind of overshadowed by the ballpark. He’d be a superstar in a lot of other cities,” former teammate Scott Hairston said this summer. “I think he’d be an MVP candidate if he were in a different park.”
That claim might ring particularly true in Boston. Gonzalez has a great opposite-field stroke — evidenced once in a Caribbean Series game in which he stroked three homers to left field — that would suggest an ability to post huge numbers in Fenway Park.
Gonzalez also is a well-rounded player who is an above-average defender at first base. If the Sox were to acquire him — something they explored doing this year at the trade deadline — he would allow Kevin Youkilis to move to third, in one fell swoop giving the Sox a significant upgrade from their 2008 team in terms of defense (an area that Boston general manager Theo Epstein has labeled a top priority) and lineup production.
With the move of Jed Hoyer from being an assistant GM with the Sox to the general manager of the Padres, many suggested that the likelihood of a deal would only increase. Hoyer’s familiarity with the Sox farm system, it was suggested, could help to facilitate a deal.
Or not.
It would seem premature to suggest that the GM meetings that begin today in Chicago will inevitably move the Sox and Padres closer to a Gonzalez deal. Familiarity between Hoyer and his former club, as Epstein pointed out, is a double-edged sword in any potential talks.
“He knows all my tricks, and I know his,” Epstein said last week. “It makes it easier to have discussions because the relationship is so good. But ultimately, it can be harder to make a deal because I think the way we’ve come to value players is pretty similar. When you value players the same way, sometimes it’s hard to make a deal than with an organization that emphasizes different attributes of players. If you have different evaluations, you can get a deal done quicker.”
One need look no further than the Sox’ history with the Diamondbacks since former Sox assistant GM Josh Byrnes took over as Arizona’s head of baseball operations. Here are all the major league transactions involving those two teams:
-- April 9, 2007 — Sox claimed J.D. Durbin off waivers from Arizona. (The Sox subsequently would make an unsuccessful attempt to pass Durbin through waivers; he was claimed by the Phillies.)
-- Aug. 31, 2006 — The Sox, desperate for a warm body to take the mound, received Kevin Jarvis as part of a conditional deal.
That’s it. The two teams have talked about other players — notably including the conversations about a possible Miguel Montero deal last offseason, when the Diamondbacks asked for Michael Bowden and the Sox balked — but they typically have viewed players too similarly to consummate a deal.
Stalemate is a natural outcome: the D-backs at times have been interested in the players whom the Sox value highly, uninterested in those whom the team is willing to move. The same might well prove true with Hoyer and the Padres — unless the Sox and Epstein become desperate to make a deal. And, of course, Epstein made clear last year that he feels the Sox should not operate according to a model in which they act out of desperation to acquire a player.
“It doesn’t work that way. In baseball, if you convince yourself you need a certain player, you’ve already lost,” Epstein said at last year’s GM meetings. “One player doesn’t have that much impact. It’s about building organizations. It’s not about adding players. There’s no player you can have to make up for an inherent weakness in the organization — a foundational weakness.
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