The Red Sox reached a deal with the Texas Rangers today - just before the trade deadline - to acquire reliever Eric Gagne for starting pitcher Kason Gabbard and two minor leaguers, including prospect David Murphy.

This sets the Red Sox up with the best deep relief in baseball with Gagne added to All-stars Jonathan Papelbon and Hideki Okajima. How the assignments will change remains to be seen, but I expect Gagne to fill for some middle relief and the occasional hold or save opportunity during winning streaks.

Either way, this really elevates our pen and keeps Gagne out of the hands of the Yankees (and Tigers too), so it was pretty much a preventative move but will help us nevertheless. I personally would have rather picked up Jermaine Dye from the Chi-Sox, but I won’t complain…

The Red Sox also parted ways with much-maligned reliever Joel Pinero. Pinero was dealt to the Cardinals for cash considerations and a player to be named later (He had been reassigned to triple-A a couple of weeks ago).

I’m not expecting the Sox to pick up anyone through waivers, but there could be some more interesting moves made in the couple of weeks.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Baseball, Red Sox, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.