Ben Cherington vague on Lester trade rumors
Could Jon Lester‘s days in Boston be numbered? Rumors have been swirling around the Red Sox lefty all week, and GM Ben Cherington hasn’t had much to say on the issue.
Cherington was discussing the team’s plans for the upcoming winter meetings with the media when the subject of dropping Lester in order to pick up other pitchers came up.
“Anything is possible, but certainly it’s harder to do that, to subtract somebody from the rotation, we have a number of players that teams like,” said Cherington.
He added that there are a lot of things that the Red Sox have to think about heading into 2013.
“Look, we have to be open-minded; we lost 93 games. But our primary focus is to build the best team we can for 2013 and one that doesn’t in any way get in the way of a great team for a long time. That’s our focus, and that will guide us for the next several weeks. But you’ve got to be open-minded when you have a year like this, and we’re trying to build a team that will sustain a level of success over a long period of time.”
Early this week, Bleacher Report posted a story saying Lester’s name had been mentioned in talks between the Kansas City Royals and the Red Sox. It was reported by the Kansas City Star that the Royals were looking to pick up Lester in exchange for star prospect Wil Myers.
Myers isn’t Major League material just yet, but will be soon, and has been lauded as one of the hottest prospects in baseball for a few years now. If Myers were to head to Boston, they’d have him for six years.
Cherington hinted towards the Myers option, saying, “the value of young, controllable players is really, really high and understandably so.”
So, is Lester heading to Kansas City? Will the Red Sox see a new ace come up through their ranks? Only time will tell, but these winter meetings sure do look promising.
