Red Sox further screwed up trade market for Tigers in deal with Pirates

Things don't happen in a vacuum in baseball, and the strange trade between the Boston Red Sox and Pittsburgh Pirates will have far-reaching implications for the league at large. One of the team's most impacted will be the Detroit Tigers.

Boston is sending their No. 3 prospect (and the No. 85 prospect on MLB Pipeline's Top 100) in outfielder Jhostynxon Garcia to Pittsburgh in exchange for starter Johan Oviedo. In all, it's a five-player deal, but this is about Boston coveting Oviedo and paying a high price in Garcia to obtain him.

It would be one thing if Oviedo, entering his age-28 season, was a bonafide top-of-the-rotation arm, but the right-hander has made just nine starts over the last two years thanks to a variety of injuries. He has only pitched more than 62 1/3 innings in a single season once, and that came in 2023 when he needed Tommy John surgery after tossing 177 2/3 frames.

Meanwhile, Oviedo hasn't been very good. He walks too many batters and strikes out too few, especially given the elevated walk rate. For his career, he owns a 4.61 FIP, making him a fringy back-end starter.

It's a bad move for Boston, but the ripple effects have some serious consequences for the Tigers as well.

The Jhostynxon Garcia-Johan Oviedo trade between the Red Sox and Pirates complicates matters for the Tigers

This is the kind of deal that screws up the trade market for everyone. The massive overpay for a starter has a double impact for the Tigers, however.

First, there's the elephant in the room. Tarik Skubal may or may not get traded this winter, but if he does, how in the world is Detroit going to receive equal value? That was a sticking point before, but if a guy who might not even make the Red Sox's rotation is worth a back-end top-100 prospect, what is Skubal's value? Some team's entire farm system? It might seem like an exaggeration, but it's not.

Furthermore, the Tigers are in the market for a rotation upgrade of their own, and while paying for one in free agency is always an option, trading from their deep farm system to acquire a cost-controlled arm for the rotation might have been the better play. It would at least save some money on future payrolls for Detroit to try and re-sign Skubal next offseason.

But this deal blows that plan out of the water. We've already seen Scott Harris's reticence to part with top prospects, famously foregoing key upgrades in favor of prospect-hugging at the trade deadline. This move, jacking up the prices for arms like Freddy Peralta, Hunter Green, and even lower-tier options like Brady Singer, makes it highly unlikely he pursues this route moving forward.

It just goes to show you that you can have a great offseason plan that ultimately means nothing if a rival club resets the market with a foolish move. We don't know what Harris's plan is yet, but one thing is for sure: the trade market for starters just got a whole lot more expensive.