DCRi wrote:

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Well, if I were Epstein I would want the latter. I really do not understand why anyone would propose trading Beckett. The Sox could use another top-flight starter and if they got one why then would they give up one? Not much would have been accomplished.

Sure, Beckett is only elite part of the time, but he still has one of the best records in baseball. There just are not very many truly elite players in baseball right now. So maybe the ones we rank as Very Good, like Beckett, are, when compared to their peers, better than we think.

Furthermore, with Beckett in his walk year his value will be down. It is the worst time to be trading him. I would prefer than he perform for his next contract for the Sox.

These are all good points. I am just quoting you as a segue into something I've been looking at. I unfortunately don't really have the time to do an end-to-end dataset collection and analysis but figured I'd put it up and if it gets a life I'll contribute further as I can. Perhaps it needs a thread or perhaps it is just background for this discussion.

Fangraphs has (and I am not sure exactly how this is calculated or how exact/predictive it is, appears to be derivative of Cameron's win values?) created a statistic that measures value by pitch type. I wanted to look at fastball performance for the Sox pitchers this year, because anecdotally and from my own observations (which are notoriously untrustworthy) it appears that the Sox are being killed by fastball overuse. But of course, there is also fastball execution. I wanted to see if there were some way to shed a little light on this. I think everyone gets it, so without further ado:

wFB Stats - Red Sox Pitchers
	2007	2008	2009	Notes
Paps	23.3	18.7	13.7	SPF values: 2007: 1.1 | 2008: -3.4| 2009: -1.1
Lester	-3.6	14.8	4.6	CT values: 2007: -2.6 | 2008: 5 | 2009: 13 (FB/CT values flipping for 08/09)
Beckett	17.8	18.7	2	Ugly.
Penny	24.9	-16.8	4.6	CB values: 2007: 1.1 | 2008: 0.8 | 2009: -11.9
DiceK	-2.8	3.1	-14.4	16-pt. drop in the SL also - bad all around
Buchholz	n/a	-18.5	0.6	Significant improvement, as we might expect
Delcarmen	6	11.3	-8	Biggest fall-off.
Okajima	4	3.8	4	CH values: 2007: 15.5 | 2008: 4.1 | 2009: 0
Saito	20.3	7.9	4.3	Age = noise
Ramirez	-3	6.5	-3.7	Only 17 IP in 2007
Smoltz	3.2	-4.9	-16.9	SPF values: 2007: 0.9 | 2008: 1.2 | 2009: -4.2
Masterson	n/a	7.2	-0.8	Scouting probably a factor ("lay off the breking stuff")
Averages	7.51	4.32	-0.83

Again, there are a lot of contiguous arguments in here, and there is a lot of noise inherent in this set. Some items I noted, such as Lester's FB value drop-off being balanced by his improvement with the cutter. Nevertheless, all things being equal, that is a pretty damning trend. And it seems a bit unlikely that an entire group of pitchers could suddenly lose effective fastballs. This leads me to believe that opposing hitters are sitting red, or perhaps sign-stealing has become more prevalent/effective. No doubt there are other answers. If anyone has any more insight into this I would love to see it and discuss.

That said, and keeping it relevant; if one were to argue that these numbers are representative of a pitcher's effectiveness with the pitch that the Sox view as paramount in importance, one might argue that Beckett is tradeable. One might also make the argument that Papelbon is absolutely headed in the wrong direction and should be dealt while his reputation is as good as it is.