What could have been

SPORTING GOODS

Always hurts to think back on the trade that saw the Red Sox let Jeff Bagwell go, which I'll rank as a bigger blunder than leaving Buckner in for the 10th inning in 1986.

But throw a new wrinkle in with this interesting Rob Neyer article - if only the Sox had someone like current employee Bill James working for them, it never would have happened. Bill James's comments and calculations from 1991 are impressive to say the least, and certainly painful to read 15 years later.

"You never know exactly how good a young player will be, but with some luck (for Bagwell) Lou Gorman will hear about the Bagwell trade until the day he dies. It could be one of those deals, like Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio, Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi and Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, that haunts the man who made it."-- Bill James, The Baseball Book 1991