Since We Can't Argue on The Radio...

My esteemed colleague yesterday suggested that the Red Sox should trade future #1 starter Clay Buccholz to the Cleveland Indians for C.C. Sabathia. I'm here to tell you why he's wrong. 

Ignoring Sabathia's impending free-agency this winter, not to mention the money he's likely to command, the Sox have in Buccholz a young (23 years old), cost-controlled starter with the potential to supplant Josh Beckett as the team's ace for perhaps the next decade. 

Buchholz, who's thrown just 65 big-league innings in his short career, mixes in a 93 MPH fastball -- widely considered his 3rd best pitch -- with a knee-buckling, 12-6 curveball and one of the best right-handed change-ups in the game. Although it involves a particularly small sample of innings, Buccholz' 9.0 K/9 in the big leagues portends success for his future. He has walked a few too many batters, made evident by his 4.15 BB/9, but much like power for young hitters, control is historically the last tool pitchers develop. 

Sabathia is enjoying an excellent half-season after a horrendous April, during which he posted an astronomical 7.76 ERA and walked 14 batters in 26 innings, despite issuing just 37 free-passes in all of 2007 (241 innings). 

But Sabathia, 27, the reigning Cy Young award winner, is a free-agent at season's end and will likely garner Johan Santana money, somewhere in the vicinity of 6 years and $120 million. Given the Red Sox organizational philosophy of avoiding long-term contracts with pitchers, it's safe to assume they won't re-sign, or even pursue, Sabathia, unless it's to drive up the price once the Yankees predictably involve themselves in the bidding. 

Which means Sabathia is likely a 3-month rental, and the Red Sox are far too smart, rational and dedicated to a long-term plan to sacrifice such a valuable commodity in Buccholz for a short-term gain. The Red Sox do have a deep farm system, and Bowden and Masterson are nice prospects, but they have limited ceilings, and mid-rotation starters -- which they could wind up being -- aren't hard to find. 

But Buccholz is a horse of an entirely different color. He represents the most valuable and rarest of big league commodities -- a bona-fide, top-of-the-rotation starter. Sometimes the return isn't worth the price. And that's certainly the case here.