It’s tough to defend one of the most unpopular trades of the past 10 years, but when Mookie Betts got traded to the Dodgers in 2020, some people tried. One of the most commonly grasped straws involved the centerpiece of the deal, Alex Verdugo. Nobody worth listening to said Verdugo was as good as Betts, who was at that point an MVP, the best player on the best team of the 2010s, and on a bullet train to Cooperstown. But Verdugo was a good player, of a similar type to Betts. He’s also three and a half years younger than Betts, and at the time of the trade had five seasons of team control left to Betts’ one.

And if you squint hard enough, you can see it. Verdugo, at his best, has the same strengths as Betts: hitting for contact, defense in right field, doubles power. Where the comparison falls apart is that Verdugo is merely good at those things, and an average regular overall, while Betts is among the best in the game at defense and contact hitting. And while Verdugo is good for about a dozen home runs a year, Betts averages 32 home runs and 22 stolen bases per 162 games played. Snatch is a pretty good gangster movie, but anyone who tells you it’s as good as The Godfather is trying to get one over on you.

Now, Verdugo does have something more concrete in common with Betts: He’s one year from free agency, and the Red Sox are shopping him.

There are plenty of teams with a need for a reliable right fielder, and Verdugo, by virtue of playing his entire career for the Dodgers and Red Sox, is definitely a name. With more than 2,500 major league plate appearances under his belt, he probably is what he is as a player by this point, but he’s also only 27 (he turns 28 next May). That makes him positively youthful as one-year rentals go, and eliminates some of the downside risk associated with other possible alternatives.

Which brings up an important issue: If the Red Sox want to trade Verdugo, they must think he’s more valuable than other corner outfielders who are available in free agency. We shall see.

This isn’t a great free agent class for corner outfielders. There is obviously no Aaron Judge on the market this year. Even if there were, any team that seriously pursued a player like Judge would be disappointed to have to settle for giving up a prospect to acquire Verdugo. MLB Trade Rumors projects that Verdugo will make $9.2 million in arbitration this offseason; let’s go with that number. What would a team be willing to trade in order to acquire an average right fielder making $9.2 million?

Maybe less than you’d think.

Before the start of free agency, the Brewers were prepared to decline Mark Canha’s $11.5 million team option. The Tigers swooped in and picked Canha up for the low cost of a 25-year-old minor league pitcher who might eventually turn into a decent middle reliever.

On balance, I think Verdugo is a better player than Canha at this point in time. He’s a better defender, and while Canha was the better offensive player last year, Verdugo has been a better hitter in recent years, both for average and power. He’s also seven years younger and (if the projection comes good) is due to make a couple million dollars less. Canha, on the other hand, walks more and gets on base by getting hit by pitches. He also didn’t demonstrate the troubling platoon split that dogged Verdugo last year.

Here’s how Verdugo stacks up against Canha, as well as six corner outfielders listed on this year’s Top 50 Free Agent rankings. The listed stats are from 2023, and the listed age is for 2024:

These players (as well as Whit Merrifield, Joc Pederson, and a few others whom I left off this chart) are all very different, so a team that’s interested in paying around $10 million for an average corner outfielder might be interested in Verdugo, but not Duvall, for instance. But even if you want a good defensive right fielder who might need to be protected against left-handed pitching for about $10 million, Heyward is out there. How much would a GM be willing to part with, in terms of prospects, in order to get the younger Verdugo? Probably more than the Brewers got for Canha, but probably less than you’d think based on name recognition.

Then, the Red Sox would have to go out and find a replacement. That would cost money and/or trade capital. Trading Verdugo before he leaves in free agency sounds like a smart thing to do, but it might create more problems than it solves.

There are three scenarios in which it would make sense to pursue trading Verdugo. The first is a challenge trade: Verdugo for a similar player (pretty good but not great, might benefit from a change of scenery) at a different position. A pitcher, perhaps, or maybe a middle infielder. These trades aren’t as common as I’d like, but it’s a possibility. There’s some scuttlebutt around a potential Verdugo-for-Gleyber Torres swap, which would fit this model.

Second: Verdugo turns out to be worth more than I’m projecting. Looking at that list of potential free agent outfielders, one thing most of them have in common is that they have a glaring weakness that would require some kind of crutch. Either a platoon partner, or regular baserunning or defensive help. Even with Verdugo’s platoon splits, I’d still be comfortable running him out there every day, in almost every scenario. I’d say the same for Gurriel and maybe Duvall, but after that it gets a little dicey.

Maybe a potential trade partner values only needing to spend one roster spot on right field, enough so that they’re willing to send over a better prospect in return. Or maybe a team with a desperate need for corner outfield help ends up without a chair when the music stops, and the Red Sox suddenly find some leverage.

The third scenario: Boston gives up on 2024 and decides that Verdugo is not in the team’s long-term plans. In that case, trade him for whatever you can get, and hand right field over to whichever reclamation project or non-roster invite feels like heading northeast. (Perhaps Joey Gallo might like to play his home games flanked by the Pesky Pole and the Green Monster.) This wouldn’t send a great message to fans who already expect more than the Red Sox have delivered over the past five years. But most of the damage has already been done on that front; barring a hell of a first offseason from Craig Breslow, the Sox will head into 2024 as the likely fifth-place finisher in the AL East.

All of which is a bit of a disappointing note to end on, I realize. But what the Red Sox do with Verdugo — if anything — will be instructive as to the direction Breslow intends to take the team.

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