Anyone notice what Youk is doing with Chicago. .347, 3 Hrs and 14 RBIs in 13 games. He's not dead yet. The White Sox win this deal hands down at least so far. Also Jed Lowrie has become a power hitting short stop for Houston. 14 Hrs, 36 RBIs and finally Josh Reddick has become a star in Oakland. 20 Hrs and 43 RBIs. In return for all of these players, the only one that has contributed so far is Ryan Sweeney, who although he is hitting .283, has 0 Hrs and 14 RBI's. Bad luck or bad deals?
I'd say more like good luck for the other teams considering that Lowrie and Reddick are oft injured. Youk...he just wasn't going to work out for the Sox. Too much friction with Bobby V and Bobby V is the guy in charge. Of course he wasn't dead, but he was to the Red Sox. Can't fault anyone for moving him.
If you look at Reddick's numbers a little more closely, he does have an impressive slugging percentage, but also has 11 GIDP (which is a lot for 83 games) and is only putting up a measly 2.9 oWAR, which is just above the typical threshold for a starter. I think it's impressive to look and say, wow! 20 home runs! But the matter of the fact is, he hurts his team in other ways. By the way, he's also committed 4 errors on the season which is drastically lowering his dWAR to 0.4. He would have been gobbled up in Fenway's RF.
Same can be said for Jed Lowrie whose oWAR is just 2.2 and dWAR is 0.2. Basically, these are numbers that are pretty low for a starter. However, it would behoove the Astros to trade him while he looks impressive. They could get a lot of value back for him. I'm not sure the Red Sox wanted to gamble and see if he would hold up for a full season at SS. Truth is, Mike Aviles has a slightly better combined WAR than Lowrie (oWAR = 0.7, dWAR = 1.8) and has been less of a gamble in terms of health, not to mention he's only making $1.2m (Lowrie is making $1.15m).
Hindsight is 20/20 but I think these were all moves that the Red Sox had to make.