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

The White Sox acquired Frazier from the Cincinnati Reds before last season. At the time Frazier was coming off back-to-back 4+ WARP seasons, which was largely a function of his ability to frequently hit baseballs over the fence. Since landing with the Pale Hose, things have not gone as well:

The power has still (mostly) been there, but that is about it. He does not get on-base at an acceptable rate, strikes out a lot (24.1 K%) and his work with the glove, while better so far in 2017, was well below average last season (and for his career). This season has been standout ugly: .195/.289/.350 (.246 TAv). Frazier is on the wrong-side of 30, so his skills are most likely in decline. At this point, he really only provides the one skill (power), so once it goes, all of his value will too. It is tempting to explain away his 2017 numbers with his .217 batting average on balls in play (BABIP), but Frazier has tended to run a lower than typical BABIP (.275 for his career) and his current batted ball profile supports, at least to some extent, the really low mark. According to measures from StatCast, it seems like his power is already going, as Frazier is hitting the ball with less authority this year: his 2017 average exit velocity of 86.9 mph is down almost 2 mph from last year, which was down 0.5 mph from the year before that. Couple that with his lower average launch angle, and lower rate of barreling-up the ball and you have a decent explanation for his lack of production this season, and a reasonable case for projecting a lower home run total for him this year. Simply put, he is making more soft contact.

With all that said, it is still early, and you could hypothesize that his rough 2017 numbers are mostly a function of hitting in the cold air of Chicago in April and May, but at this time last year he was hitting .228/.319/.494 with 13 HRs, and his average exit velocity (87.9 mph) and launch angle (20.8) were not far off his end of season numbers. Taken together, the data suggest he is not the player he was a couple of years ago.

Maybe with all that I, or rather Todd Frazier’s recent performance, have convinced you that he is not going to come in and be the savior the Red Sox need at third base. As has been noted on this very website, the Red Sox have been a mess at third base for too long. To remind you how bad it has been lately, here are the numbers that all Red Sox third basemen not named Travis Shaw have posted the last two years:

Not great, fellas. With Pablo Sandoval working his way back from a knee injury, Brock Holt dealing with the frightening aftermath of a concussion, Marco Hernandez done for the year due to a shoulder injury, and the Josh Rutledge/Deven Marrero duo doing their level best, it is hard to see better production than Frazier could offer coming. Unless, of course, they promote top-prospect Rafael Devers.

Devers can flat-out hit. This year at Double-A Portland, he has posted a .320 TAv in 144 plate appearances. The Red Sox have stated they want to give Devers more time to develop, and that is a perfectly reasonable approach to hold. I am generally in favour of not rushing players to the big leagues, since not all 20/21-year olds can blast through the minor leagues to be productive at the major league level like Andrew Benintendi, Xander Bogaerts, and Mookie Betts. Alternatively, keeping Devers in Portland for another few weeks is a service time issue, and the Red Sox want to hold off on promoting him as long as they can in order to limit when he can be eligible for salary arbitration (and eventually free agency). The fuzzy date of the Super Two deadline, which is directly relevant for dictating how much service time a player will accumulate, should pass in two to three weeks. If Devers is still raking for the Sea Dogs by then, Sandoval and Holt are still not ready to play, and the Rutledge/Marrero stopgap has gone as expected, then it would not totally surprise me to see Devers in a Red Sox uniform.

Promoting Devers would be aggressive for sure, but the expected difference between him and Frazier is perhaps smaller than you think. Here are their median PECOTA projections (rest-of-season for Frazier; preseason forecast for Devers):

With this in mind, why give up any talent and/or take on any salary to get Frazier – I assume the White Sox will eat most of the remaining money Frazier is owed – when you have similar expected production in-house? Certainly, there is risk either way. Maybe Devers isn’t ready. Maybe Frazier’s 30+ home run days are behind him. For me, the critical issue is that taking on one of those risks does not involve relinquishing any more talent from an already depleted minor league system. Devers is possibly the future at third base. Give him a chance to show what he can do. What’s more is that if Devers were to be called up at the start of July and turns into a pumpkin over the course of two weeks, the Red Sox will still have time to explore a trade for a third baseman before the non-waiver trade deadline. Or who knows, maybe by then Sandoval and/or Holt could be ready to get back on the field everyday for the stretch run.

You don’t have to go too far back in history to find a Red Sox team that succeeded with ugliness at the hot corner. In 2013, the Red Sox won the division and the World Series while giving most of the playing time at third base to Will Middlebrooks, Jose Iglesias, Brock Holt, Pedro Ciriaco, and Brandon Snyder before some 20-year old kid named Xander Bogaerts came up and took over. This is obviously a cherry-picked example, but it is one that the team can and should follow. Todd Frazier does not make this team much better in the short term (relative to in-house options), but will affect the long term and/or the possibility of other acquisitions due to his cost. Give Devers a chance, and forget about Frazier.

Photo by Kirby Lee – USA TODAY Sports

So far in our series we’ve seen incredibly exciting offseason possibilitis (trade for Joey Votto, Paul Goldschmidt or Chris Sale) and the extraordinarily mundane (sign Carlos Beltran and Brett Cecil, call it a day). I present to you an option somewhere in between:

How will the Red Sox replace David Ortiz’s production?

I thought about this one a lot. It’s true that the Red Sox should still have a very good offense in 2017, but I think people are selling short just how dramatic the loss of Ortiz will be. He was one of the best hitters in the game last season, brought a much-needed lefty bat to a very right-handed lineup and was one of only three sources of big-time power for the Sox. Dombrowski can’t just say “the young guys will get better” and leave it at that. And I don’t think he will.

Edwin Encarnacion makes some sense, but he’s right-handed, will cost a draft pick and will probably require a lengthy contract. Jose Bautista fits, but there were some pretty troubling signs in terms of his production last year. I liked Jake Devereaux’s idea of trading for Joey Votto, but that means adding another huge contract and would also require trading substantial prospects. I mulled over a trade for Carlos Gonzalez, but the Rockies might sneaky flirt with a Wild Card spot next season. I thought about Ryan Braun, but he’s also right-handed and will cost a lot to acquire.

So I think the Red Sox fix this one of two ways. First, they sign Carlos Beltran to a two-year contract. He’s a switch-hitter, he won’t cost a draft pick and he won’t need a long commitment. The downside is he’s no longer an elite bat, but he’s good enough to add more depth and balance to the lineup, and he can DH 90% of the time in Boston.

Second, I think the Red Sox make a trade for the White Sox, but not for who you think. I think they trade for Todd Frazier.

Yes, he’s right-handed, and yes, his average sank big-time last year. But we know the White Sox are in sell mode, the Red Sox have no idea what to expect at third base and Frazier is still good and young enough that he can be considered an impact bat — he did hit 40 homers last year, albeit with a bad OBP. He’ll cost a pretty penny, but nowhere near what Votto, Braun or CarGo would require. He also won’t block Yoan Moncada long-term, as he’s a free agent after the 2017 season; one the Sox can re-sign if things go wrong with Moncada, or one the Sox can attach a Qualifying Offer to if they’re ready to let him walk.

Who goes back to Chicago? Blake Swihart, for starters. It’s not what I would do, but it’s clear to me from the beat writers that Dombrowski does not have faith in Swihart’s ability to catch. I disagree, but this is what I think will happen, not my plan. Joining him will be Mauricio Dubon (sorry, Matt), Williams Jerez and Henry Owens. Also coming back to the Red Sox will be Nate Jones, who we’ll get to in a minute.

How will the Red Sox bolster the bullpen?

It’s tough to see the Red Sox going all-in on Aroldis Chapman or Kenley Jansen after giving up so much for Craig Kimbrel a year ago. I also don’t see a Mark Melancon reunion in the cards, though I’d be fine with it. Instead, the Sox will make the relatively minor move of re-signing Brad Ziegler to a two-year deal to be their seventh-inning guy.

The real big improvement will come in the form of Jones, who’s under an affordable contract through 2020 with a good team option for 2021. Jones has a troubling injury history and is older than you’d like, but he’s also coming off of his best season and has high-leverage abilities. He’s not perfect, but if he’s on the mound he’d be a big improvement over anything the Sox ran out in the eighth inning last year.

“No left-handed reliever,” you ask? I’d go get one, but I think Dombrowski tries Fernando Abad out again. I doubt he makes it past May, and I can’t wait to hear Red Sox Twitter complain about the lack of LOOGY for two full months, until Dave overpays for one at the deadline. Wee!

Will the Red Sox add to the rotation? If so, how?

Not in a major way, no. The Sox already have six reasonable options, plus a palatable Triple-A arm in Brian Johnson. I think they add some depth that can compete in Spring Training and then go to Pawtucket — let’s say Henderson Alvarez — but your rotation for next year will be David Price, Rick Porcello, Drew Pomeranz, Eduardo Rodriguez and Clay Buchholz, with Steven Wright heading back to the bullpen until Pomeranz or Buchholz inevitably gets hurt.

Chris Sale and Jose Quintana are tempting, but they’ll just cost too damn much. The A’s have no reason to sell low on Sonny Gray, the Indians no reason to sell one of their good young pitchers, etc. And the FA market … god is it bad. Dombrowski saw this coming, and that’s part of why they gave away Anderson Espinoza for Pomeranz last summer.

Will the Red Sox trade more elite prospects? If so, for what/who?

Given the current composition of Boston’s farm system, this really means “will they trade Moncada, Rafael Devers, Michael Kopech or Jason Groome?” I’m pretty confident the answer is no for Moncada — he’s too good and too close. Devers is the best bet to be moved, but in the situation I’ve imagined he doesn’t have to be. With the pitching prospects, who knows. It wouldn’t surprise me if Dombrowski thinks they’re untouchable or if he trades one of them for Tyler Thornburg. We’ll have to wait and see. It’s tempting to sell high on Kopech right now, but on the other hand some of the reports we’re seeing are ungodly.

Miscellaneous Thoughts:

What about Travis Shaw? It’s back to Triple-A for them, which means the Red Sox will actually have a little depth. That’s a good thing!  Who will the third catcher be with Swihart gone? Let’s see if Chris Iannetta accepts a minor-league deal.

Heath Hembree? He’s the odd man out in this scenario. As a commenter pointed out below, he’s out of options, so he might be shopped for a C-level prospect. Alternately, the Sox could keep him and not re-sign Ziegler.

What does Pablo Sandoval do with Frazier aboard? Nothing, until he proves he can hit. If he does, he can work himself into a 3B/1B/DH rotation with Ramirez, Beltran and Frazier, especially against RHP. But counting on Sandoval for production is a fool’s errand. Anything he gives this team is a bonus.

Biggest Acquisition: Todd Frazier
Biggest Loss: Blake Swihart
Biggest Surprise: A White Sox trade, but no Sale/Quintana

Projected 2017 Opening Day Roster:

Photo by Rick Ostentoski/USA Today Sports Images