Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Fascinating 'Trade Chains' Track Players On Sox Roster

An extremely enterprising contributor to the RedSoxReddit thread (Lilly Satou) has complied a 'trade chain' analysis that tracks the path of each member of this year's 40-man roster. For example, when the Red Sox signed Nomar Garciaparra on June 2, 1994, they could hardly have foreseen that he would "turn into" both Brock Holt and Chris Sale. That long chain was a winding road from Orlando Cabrera to Jacoby Ellsbury to Yoan Moncada (among several others). Some "chains" are more well known by most fans—like Adrian Beltre's free agency resulting in both Jackie Bradley, Jr. and Blake Swihart. Or, Andrew Miller's departure turning into Eduardo Rodriguez. But, it's the more circuitous ones that are really cool. For example, how wicked appropriate is it that Jonathan Papelbon "turned into" Fernando Abad? You can see the full listing of 'trade chains' HERE.