As I’m sure you know by now, the Red Sox are currently wrapped up in their annual Awkward Personnel Moment of 2010, this time in the form of Mike Lowell.  The Sox were a scrote hair away from trading Lowell to the Texas Rangers before it all fell apart.  The fiasco was highly publicized, and with Adrian Beltre’s arrival via free agency, the 36-year-old (Happy Birthday!) is a man without a position.

Let’s assume that Lowell is untradeable.  This assumption might not be too far off, as Lowell will earn at least $12 million dollars in 2010, and the Red Sox are probably not keen on paying all of that salary given their proximity to the luxury tax line.  Is it possible to get Lowell a decent amount of plate appearances while optimizing the lineup?  I think it is.

Here are the assumptions I’m making when calculating this:

• David Ortiz, who typically plays in just about every game on the schedule, will see his playing time scaled back a bit against left-handed pitchers after struggling last season.  Lowell, who hit .301/.363/.503 against lefties last year while fighting injuries, will DH for Ortiz against a tough lefty roughly once per week.
• Adrian Beltre is coming off of an injury prone year, but even when he’s healthy, he’ll miss roughly 15 games in a season.  Lowell will fill in for Beltre here, playing 1B while Youkilis slides over to 3B.  I know, I know, Lowell has yet to play 1 inning at 1B in his Major League career.  I’ll wager the deed to my shit-hole condominium that you see Lowell donning the 1B mitt in a handful of spring training games.  The guy is desperately trying to market himself to other teams, and the best way to do that is increase his versatility.
• Kevin Youklilis is chronically bruised and banged up, and will likely not play in more than 145 games (his career-high is 147).  Assuming his missed time isn’t concurrent with Beltre’s (one would hope), Lowell will fill in here.
• Two out of the three players mentioned above will have one stint on the DL (again, not concurrent).  Lowell will start the majority of those games (20 out of 30).
• In 75% of the games that Lowell does not start, he will appear as a late-inning pinch-hitter, getting 1 plate appearance per game.

Considering the above, it is possible that Mike Lowell could see somewhere around 380-420 plate appearances in 2010, were he to stay on the Red Sox for the entire season.  Of course, the more likely scenario is that the Sox end up trading him at some point well before the July 31 deadline, but I just wanted to lay out a possible scenario where Lowell actually sticks around and helps the 2010 Red Sox win games.

Comments are closed