Royals are Coo Coo for Coco Crisp

The Red Sox traded CF Coco Crisp today to the Royals in exchange for right-handed reliever Ramon Ramirez. The Red Sox slash some payroll and in return get a pretty darn good reliever. Ramirez has a solid year in '06 3.46 ERA in Colorado, then did terrible in '07 8.31 ERA, but at only 26 with no injury the Royals picked him up and he did really well under the radar in KC posting a 2.64 ERA in the AL stirking out 70 in 71 innings pitched. The Sox pen was good not great last year even though with Papelbon and Okajima people just assumed it was amazing. Epstein knows what he's doing. Coco Crisp with Ellsbury the obvious future CF was seemingly expandable since last year and he was finally traded. I guess they are ready to give Ellsbury the reigns and Coco can't replace Manny in LF anymore.

On the Royals side, I'm not sure what they're doing. They have Dejesus in CF (along with Teahen and Guillen on the corners) and neither him or Crisp are long time fixtures in Center for the Royals. The Royals have said they need to get better in OBP, but they have traded for Mike Jacobs and his .290 OBP and now Crisp and his pretty good .344 OBP. I'll assume with rumors of David Dejesus trades that there will be more moves on the way, but Crisp is a player that can help out an already established team that needs some defense in center field. Crisp makes sense for the Yankees, not that the Sox would ever swap with them, but you never know.

So to recap, the Red Sox are slashing some payroll early in the offseason and Mark Teixeira is still waiting to receive an offer. I think we know where this will lead, probably days after Sabathia signs with the Yanks.