PAWTUCKET—The PawSox fell victim to a deadline deal. The first-place Triple-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox will be without the team’s Left Fielder and number-three hitter Brandon Moss.
The International League All-Star was traded along with Red Sox reliever and former first-round pick Craig Hansen, and Third Baseman Andy LaRoche and Class A pitching prospect Bryan Morris from the LA Dodgers to the Pittsburgh Pirates as a part of a three-way trade that sent Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers, and Jason Bay to the Red Sox.
Pawtucket Manager Ron Johnson, who is no stranger to losing his players to the Big League Club is in the middle of an International League pennant race, but he fully understands this part of the job.
“I’m really glad we’re winning, but there’s one place we want to win,” Johnson reasoned in his office after a thrilling 7-6 walk-off win over Rochester on Thursday night. “We want to make sure these guys are prepared to help Tito in the big leagues. So Mossy gets traded, Hansen gets traded, well, they’re our guys, we love ‘em, but the bottom line is that we had a need. Those guys were a part of the puzzle to help [bring in Bay]. They were marketable enough to be guys that someone else would take and put in the big leagues, so that we can acquire [Bay].”
Johnson was without Moss while the outfielder appeared in thirty-four games for Boston this year. He hit .295 and, perhaps most notably, played for an injured J.D. Drew in the Red Sox season opener in Japan where he homered off A’s closer Huston Street to tie the game in ninth.
He was the everyday Left Fielder for Johnson and hit third in the PawSox batting order. He totaled 16 homeruns and 78 RBIs while hitting .282 in 43 games for Pawtucket in 2008.
Although Johnson isn’t asking anyone to come in a replace what most considered a Major League hitter in Moss, PawSox reliever Jon Switzer, a former Tampa Bay Devil Ray, is confident that players will step up.
“I think any time you move a player like him there are spots that open up. It’s great for the guys here,” said Switzer, the winning pitcher in the game Moss was pulled from some three hours before the first pitch. “And the team does it for a reason, they know those spots can be filled. That’s one of the things about this game, the more spots that can be filled, then the better the organization is, and this organization is really deep.”
Switzer is right, all you have to do is take a look at the box scores to see which former Red Sox farm hands are contributing: Dustin Pedroia is fifth in the American League with a .317 batting average, Jacoby Ellsbury’s 35 stolen bases lead the AL, Jon Lester just received the League’s Pitcher of the Month award for the month of July, and their closer is All-Star Jon Papelbon. And this was also the same organization that National Superstar Hanley Ramirez came up in.
To say that Moss has big shoes to fill might be an understatement, but his old teammates in Pawtucket certainly have high hopes for him. “We’re all excited for Mossy to get the opportunity to play in the Big Leagues,” Fellow All-Star Joe Thurston said. And Switzer added, “I think it’s exciting for him, he’s going to go over there and be an everyday player, it looks like, and he deserves it, he’s a great player."
Moss packed his bags and left McCoy Stadium around 5:30pm when he learned of his future. He boarded a flight for Chicago to join his new team as they begin a three-game set at Wrigley Field.
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