Tyler O’Neill was very good for the Boston Red Sox. And now, he’s gone.
In what turned out to be his lone season in Boston, O’Neill clubbed 31 home runs and had an .854 OPS in 114 games. He was easily worth the low price the Red Sox paid to get him from the St. Louis Cardinals, but that doesn’t do them any good going forward.
The outfield is a talented position group for the Red Sox, especially with the potential additions of top prospects Roman Anthony and Kristian Campbell. But you never want to count on too much from prospects in year one, and left field might be the easiest position to find a right-handed bat right now.
Could that righty slugger come in a blockbuster trade with the Chicago Cubs?
That was the suggestion of 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Tyler Milliken, who urged the Red Sox to make a trade for Cubs slugger Seiya Suzuki in a Thursday column.
Seiya Suzuki would be my first choice. It doesn’t seem like the Cubs are in a rush to move him after acquiring Kyle Tucker and shipping Cody Bellinger to the Yankees, but they have a full outfield, which means Suzuki would be doing a lot of DH work,” Milliken wrote.
“His agent Jim Wolfe has already told Jed Hoyer that he wasn’t interested in doing that, so I’d offer him a similar role to Tyler O’Neill a year ago, and see if that could get him to waive his no-trade clause.”
Suzuki, 30, is entering year four of a five-year, $85 million deal with the Cubs. Chicago’s acquisition of Tucker may have opened the door for Suzuki to be traded after his most productive MLB season, when he had an .848 OPS and 3.5 bWAR in 132 games.
Do the Red Sox have a realistic shot of trading for Suzuki? It depends on a few factors, like how badly the star wants to leave the Cubs and what sort of prospect capital Craig Breslow is willing to give up for a two-year stopgap.
There’s no doubt, though, that Suzuki’s pretty right-handed swing would look awfully nice at Fenway Park.
