Off Day News: Thornburg Released (7/10/19)

While the Boston Red Sox were on vacation during the All-Star break, Sox brass decided to cut their losses by releasing Tyler Thornburg. Now with the benefit of hindsight, the Thornburg trade can be seen as one of the worst of this decade. The Sox traded Travis Shaw at the end of 2016 thinking Pablo Sandoval was going to be healthy and ready for the 2017 season. Thornburg was coming off a few good seasons as a set-up man for the Milwaukee Brewers so the thinking was to get bullpen help for an expendable player. The trade backfired almost immediately as Thornburg suffered a season ending injury in Spring Training, Sandoval was released in July and Shaw has become a 30 home run hitter in Milwaukee. Thornburg was straight batting practice after coming off the Injured List in 2018 allowing 15 runs in 25 games and 16 runs in 16 games this season. Some people can't handle the pressure of pitching in Boston and maybe Tyler is one of them. The good news was it didn't take long to replace Shaw as Rafael Devers came up in 2017 and the Sox signed Mitch Moreland to play first, both were a major factor in the 2018 World Series run. Ironically the Sox got more out of Tyler's teammate in 2016, Blaine Boyer as a free agent than they did out of him. Maybe they should have traded Shaw for Jhan Marinez instead....oh well. Bye bye Tyler!

                                                From set-up man to batting practice