It’s bad because wow, yuck, that’s bad! But it’s good because it’s an easy fix, at least as far as these things tend to go. Get one guy and you’re done. That’s as easy as fixes get.

First we’ll set the stage by saying this: By just about any standard you choose, the Red Sox have one of the worst third base problems in all of baseball. At the All-Star break, Red Sox third basemen are slashing a cumulative .236/.292/.331 with seven home runs (somehow only the Yankees have fewer). That’s both bad and good. It’s bad because wow, yuck, that’s bad! But it’s good because it’s an easy fix, at least as far as these things tend to go. Get one guy and you’re done. That’s as easy as fixes get.

If we look at that slash line, and recall it comes with overall mediocre-to-bad defense too, and recall who is in charge of the team, it’s not a stretch to say the Red Sox will acquire someone to play third base before the July 31st trade deadline expires.

Before I get into specific trade targets though, I should mention that there is the possibility, slight though it may be, that the Red Sox stand pat with what they have a third base. The platoon of Deven Marrero and Tzu-Wei Lin has been shockingly good, especially Lin’s part of it. If those guys can hold together through, say, August, third base super-prospect Rafael Devers might be ready and then the rosters expand and away we go! That sounds promising and possible and even inexpensive. But if you examine those last few sentences you can start to see the potential problems in that plan. There’s a lot of “maybe” and “could be” and “might” in there, and for a team trying to win right now there’s really very little reason to take chances and not to get a sure thing (or something closer to it) on the trade market. I’m guessing Dave Dombrowski would agree with that.

So, with all that out of the way, here are some third basemen around the league who may be available or whose names have already entered the rumor mill.

Todd Frazier

Frazier, 31, plays for the White Sox, who have been in sell-mode since before the season started. So he’s available. He’s a free agent after this season so the price shouldn’t be prohibitive and while he’s not a great defensive third baseman, he can handle the position. Frazier’s best skill is his power. He has 16 homers and 14 doubles on the season, and while his batting average is way down (.213), his walk rate has taken a big jump this season and brought his on-base percentage with it (.335). He’s a perfectly cromulent player and likely to be worth a win or so over the next half season.

Martin Prado

Unlike Frazier, Prado, 33, isn’t a free agent after this season. In fact, he’s signed for two more years for $28 million total after 2017. This makes him more difficult because you’re taking on significant salary and effectively blocking Devers. Prado is having a tough season, with little power and a bad on-base percentage. If you got Prado you’d be betting on his career averages which are fine.

Mike Moustakas

Moustakas is probably the big get of the players whose names have been prominently mentioned in rumors. He’s a free agent after this year, and has picked this year to blossom into the power that was always expected of him. He’s at 25 homers so far which is already three above his career best, and we’ve got 80 games still to go. Moose isn’t a great defensive third baseman, but he’s been around average during his career so it seems that’s what’s fair to expect. Mostly though he’s the rich man’s Frazier and he’s likely to cost a pretty penny. That all said, the Royals have moved themselves into contention (or some reasonable facsimile there of) and as of this moment have stated they aren’t looking to trade anyone.

Jed Lowrie

Our old friend Jed. Lowrie isn’t actually a third baseman having played mostly second base this year. In fact, his last year playing any third was 2015 when he was with Houston. Still, he’s done it before and is likely better than anything the Red Sox have (short of Devers) and he’s on the A’s so he can be had, if, you know, that’s anything you’d actually want to do.

Josh Harrison

Harrison would be an interesting get. He’s coming off two down seasons and his contract which runs through next season was looking like a lost cause, but he’s rebounded this season with a .361 on-base percentage and a .436 slugging. That’s above average production if he can keep it up, and if he can do anything like what he did three years ago with Pittsburgh (.837 OPS) then that’s something to be excited about. Thing is though, he’s done that once in seven seasons and the more I think about it, the less the Red Sox need anyone signed beyond this year.

Josh Donaldson

This is the great white whale. The Blue Jays might sell but they probably won’t. And yet they might. And they probably won’t trade Donaldson. But they might. Even if they did though, it probably wouldn’t be in division, and if they did the cost would be astronomical, even though Donaldson has had injury issues this year and isn’t performing up to his peak and has entered his 30s. Still though, it’s Josh F’n Donaldson. And Dave Dombrowski is the Red Sox GM. So. You know.

Adrian Beltre

Ah, what might have been… *sigh*. Beltre’s one shining season in Boston leaves me with a happy glow that is perhaps best left alone. He is 38 and signed for a season beyond this one, after all. But I’ll be damned if the old flame isn’t putting up a .900 OPS this year and with his typically spectacular defense and insanely spectacular personality to boot. Are the Rangers even sellers though? They’re under .500 and 16.5 games behind Houston, but only three back of the second Wild Card spot. This is probably a pipe dream, but oh what a beautiful pipe dream it is.

Nick Castellanos

Nobody has mentioned Castellanos in rumors, not that I’ve heard of anyway. But the Tigers are out of it, they need to sell JD Martinez, and they’re probably not far from flinging whatever isn’t nailed down out the door. Castellanos is sort of nailed down, but maybe. He’s a former first round draft pick, selected by none other than Dave Dombrowski, and he’s the toolsy sort of guy you’d expect based on the first part of this sentence. He’s not a great fielder, but he’s under team control through the 2020 season and, here’s the kicker, he’s crushing the ball. According to FanGraphs, Castellanos is making hard contact 49.6 percent of the time! That’s insane and way above what he’s done in the past. Yet, his BABIP hasn’t shown it yet. Part of the problem is his 41 percent ground ball rate, but if he starts hitting the ball in the air with that kind of contact, this is a guy you would want in the lineup. So maybe the Sox take a shot with a guy like this hoping the improvement shows up sometime upon reaching Fenway.

Next week, if Dombrowski doesn’t beat me to it, we’ll take a look at some relievers who the Red Sox might reasonably be expected to look at.

Photo by Jasen Vinlove – USA TODAY Sports

Now we’ll get into a few slightly less declarative statements. The Red Sox have, depending on how you view it, one of the worst situations at third base in baseball this season. The exact level of awfulness is hard to pin down thanks to Pablo Sandoval. His batting line is bad (.213/.269/.377) and he’s only played in 17 of the team’s 46 games so far. He has made four errors in those 17 games and hasn’t shown much in the way of range, though his improved conditioning has made him at least look like he could be a major league third baseman, in theory. Considering he makes $17.6 million this year, and $18.6 million in both 2018 and 2019, the Red Sox are stuck with him. And when I say “stuck with him” I mean stuck with his salary; they’ll pay it even if they cut him.

Beyond Sandoval the Red Sox have employed Deven Marrero at third, who, home run last night not withstanding, isn’t a major league-caliber hitter. Only 40 games into the season, the Red Sox have used three other players at the position, for a total of five. All have been bad, though the levels of badness have varied depending on what you happen to be measuring at the time.

The point is though that the Red Sox have a vacancy at third base, as they have since before signing Sandoval three years ago. They also have their best prospect, a third baseman, raking in the minors. So the obvious solution is to bring up said prospect, wipe your hands, and call it a day. Except no.

There are several problems with this plan, starting with Sandoval himself. At age 30, with his history as an above-average player, and with his salary, Sandoval deserves another chance to be the starting third baseman. He may not be successful in his venture, but there are reasons to think he might be. His batted ball data looks shockingly good, way out of line with his lousy slash line. If he keeps hitting the ball as he did when he was healthy, he’ll have more success. As for his defense, many of the problems he presented were based on his throwing. That’s never been a particular problem before and is pretty easily attributed to rust. That’s not to dismiss the errors outright, but to say that there’s a fair chance this was a cluster of mistakes in what would be a larger sample of decency, as opposed to a warning sign of more bad defense to come.

Then there’s his contract, which essentially means the Red Sox are wedded to him for three more seasons. If Devers were 23 or 24 and destroying in Triple-A, that might be something you apologize to Sandoval for as you push him out the back door, but Devers is 20 and in Double-A. He might be ready for the majors, but there’s a more than reasonable chance that he isn’t. Sandoval’s contract is Sandoval’s contract. It’s not going anywhere, nobody is going to take it on, and unless the Red Sox are presented with a sure thing in Devers or someone else, there’s no sense in ridding themselves of someone in Sandoval who could solve their third base problem, even temporarily.

There’s another issue with Sandoval’s contract. Since the Red Sox are going to be paying him whether he’s on the roster or not, it makes it difficult to go out on the trade market and acquire anyone. There are some third basemen who aren’t making much money and are very good, but the Orioles aren’t likely to deal Manny Machado to the Red Sox ever, and especially not as long as they’re looking down at Boston in the standings. Similarly the Blue Jays, even if they decide to blow it up and deal Josh Donaldson, aren’t likely to want to help the Red Sox raise another World Series banner.

Since Sandoval will be paid by the Red Sox, and since the Red Sox don’t have anyone else who can stand in and provide certainty – defined as league-average production at the position – they’re better off sticking with Sandoval. It’s hardly an ideal situation, but it’s the one Dave Dombrowski and company have set themselves up for by depending on a player coming off a lost season that followed a season featuring utter offensive and defensive ineptitude. The Red Sox have hitched their horse to Sandoval’s wagon, for better or worse.

Okay, Matt, you might say, but what about Devers? If they’re going to pay Sandoval, fine, they’ve made that bed and can’t go back, but just bring Devers up and the problem is fixed. Well, maybe and no. Devers might be able to hit major league pitching, maybe. But we don’t know that. Dombrowski has a history of bringing hitters up from Double-A and sometimes they can handle it, like Andrew Benintendi, and sometimes they can’t, like Yoan Moncada, or Nick Castellanos. There’s a danger to it, as it’s possible to do serious damage to the psyche of prospect who might not be ready to face major league pitching.

Devers might be able to handle it, but he might not, and looking where the Red Sox are with respect to third base, they need him to be able to handle it when he does get the call. That might be later this year, after Sandoval gets another shot to show he can be some smaller version of the guy the Red Sox gave $90 million to, or it might be next season, or even the one beyond that (hard to see them waiting that long though).

In the end, the Red Sox have what appears to be a gem on their hands with Devers, and that gem looks like it’ll fit perfectly into the one spot in the Red Sox lineup that has plagued them for years. Maybe Devers can be the short-term solution. Maybe Sandoval can. Maybe they need to explore the trade market for short term solutions. The one declarative sentence we can make is this: Rafael Devers is the future. What we don’t know is when that future begins. Sandoval is set to come back from the DL sometime in about a week. If you’re looking for declarative sentences on this topic, that’ll be your first clue.

Photo by Jonathan Dyer – USA TODAY Sports