The evident way to view the three-sided trade between the Boston Red Sox, Kansas City Royals and New York Mets that sends outfielder Andrew Benintendi to Kansas City is that the Red Sox don't believe Benintendi will return to the heights he reached in 2018, while the Royals are willing to spend more than $6 million because they believe he can.
The other parts in the trade are not of zero value -- the Red Sox get tooled-up outfielder Franchy Cordero from the Royals and minor league pitcher Josh Winckowski from the Mets, and there are some players to be named later going to Boston and the Mets -- but this is mostly about the Red Sox trading Benintendi's $6.6 million salary.
Benintendi was second in rookie of the year voting in 2017, when he hit .271 with 20 home runs. He was even better in 2018, when he hit .290/.366/.465 with 16 home runs, 41 doubles and 103 runs, to go with above-average defense in left field. He looked like a rising star. But Benintendi stumbled from a 4.5-WAR season to 1.8 in 2019. In 2020, he went 4-for-39 (.103) and then missed the rest of the season with a rib cage injury.
Put it this way: If Chaim Bloom and the rest of Boston's front office think Benintendi is going to bounce back, you wait to trade him, right? The Red Sox aren't getting their full potential return in trading him now. Or maybe they really love Cordero. I suspect they love his $800,000 salary a little more. Keep in mind this could be an ownership-driven trade to push down the team payroll.
On the other hand, if it is purely salary-driven, why sign Garrett Richards for $8.5 million or Enrique Hernandez for $14 million over two years? Or if the payroll had to be at a certain level -- this trade gets Boston's total under $200 million -- then the Red Sox believe Richards and Hernandez are worth the money and Benintendi is not.
So what happened to Benintendi that led the Red Sox to sour on him? In 2018, he displayed a nice, line-drive stroke, spraying the ball all over the field. He had good plate discipline (71 walks, 106 strikeouts and placing in the top 25th percentile in both categories) and swiped 21 bases in 24 attempts. That's a nice all-around season, and he was a key performer at the top of the lineup as the Red Sox won the World Series.
Benintendi isn't what I would call a physical player -- he is listed at 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds -- but the feeling in 2019 was that he tried too hard to hit home runs and got away from the things that worked for him. His swing rate increased from 45.9% to 51.2%, but all it led to was a higher chase rate and more strikeouts (from 16.0% of his plate appearances to 22.8%). As a rookie, Benintendi swung at the first pitch just 19% of the time; that had increased to 39% in 2019. He got away from the patient approach that had worked for him.
That would seem correctable.
But there's another issue here that perhaps worries the Red Sox. Benintendi appears to be losing his athleticism. When he debuted in 2016, his top sprint speed via Statcast put him 74th in the majors, in the 89th percentile. In 2019, he had fallen to the 54th percentile, and he topped at the 43rd percentile in 2020. That decline in speed is going to negatively affect his defense and baserunning, two tools that made him so valuable in 2018.
On the other hand, it's a reasonable roll of the dice for the Royals. Cordero was the on-paper starting left fielder, and while he displays an impressive combination of raw power and speed, he isn't a very good major league baseball player: He has hit .236/.304/.433 in 95 games, with below-average defense and too many strikeouts. He also has had trouble staying healthy, playing just 25 games in the majors over the past two seasons.
I guess you never know, but the odds seem slim that the tools will ever come together. Maybe the Red Sox see something they believe they can fix, but the scouting reports on Cordero have always mentioned that he simply scores low in his natural baseball instincts.
If the Royals can get Benintendi back to hitting singles, doubles and the occasional home run -- Kauffman Stadium might actually help force him back to that style since it's a tough home run park -- maybe he can be the hitter he was in 2018. It would certainly be odd that a player so productive at age 23 would be washed up at 26. Benintendi thrived when the Red Sox were winning in 2018 but then struggled as the team struggled, so the Royals also will have keep him motivated and focused. Getting away from the pressures of playing in Boston also could be a good thing.
The 2018 Red Sox outfield with Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Benintendi combined for a lot of terrific defense and 17.3 WAR. The starting outfield for the 2021 Red Sox of Cordero, Alex Verdugo and Hunter Renfroe projects to a combined 4.1 WAR via ZiPS. Red Sox fans might want to dig out those 2018 highlight videos.