Red Sox Release Pablo Sandoval

July 19: The Red Sox announced that Sandoval has been released.
July 14: The Red Sox announced that they have activated struggling third baseman Pablo Sandoval  from the disabled list and designated him for assignment.
Sandoval is midway through the third season of a five-year, $95MM contract that proved to be a fatal misstep for the organization. Signed on the heels of a six-and-a-half-year span during which he posted a very strong .294/.346/.465 batting line through 3533 plate appearances with the Giants (to say nothing of his terrific postseason work), Sandoval flopped in year one of the pact, hitting just .245/.292/.366 with 10 homers in 505 plate appearances. He made just seven plate appearances in 2016 before undergoing shoulder surgery, and his 2017 work has resulted in a dismal .212/.269/.354 slash through 108 PAs.
Boston will now be on the hook for the remaining $49.8MM that Sandoval is owed through the end of the 2019 season. With a trade effectively unfathomable, Sandoval can either be outrighted to Triple-A (if he accepts the assignment) or released, at which point any club will be eligible to sign him for the pro-rated portion of the league minimum.
Further exacerbating the pain that Sandoval has caused the Red Sox is the fact that his presence likely factored into the team’s thinking when it came to trading Travis Shaw to the Brewers this past offseason. Shaw, meanwhile, has broken out and been one of baseball’s most productive third baseman in his first half season with the Brewers.
For the time being, the Sox are deploying a makeshift platoon of Deven Marrero and Tzu-Wei Lin at the hot corner, and while that pairing leaves plenty to be desired from an offensive standpoint, it undoubtedly provides more defensive value than Sandoval brought to the table. Nonetheless, the Sox figure to be heavily linked to all of the third basemen that will be available on this summer’s trade market in the 17 days between now and the non-waiver trade deadline.
Of course, Boston also has a rapidly rising in-house option in the form of top prospect Rafael Devers, who ranks among the game’s five to 10 best overall prospects on most midseason rankings (No. 3 per ESPN’s Keith Law, No. 6 per Baseball America, No. 5 per Baseball Prospectus). Devers has yet to take an at-bat at the Triple-A level, and the team has said that he’ll head to Pawtucket before being promoted. That said, Devers has the potential to come up and impact the playoff race at some point in the season’s second half — particularly if president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski and his staff don’t acquire a more established option at the hot corner.


Wait just a minute....

 The Royals are another team with interest in Sandoval, FanRag Sports’ Jon Heyman reports, though the third baseman is still expected to land with the Giants.

Where the hell have the Giants been...

 Sandoval says he’s “waiting for Friday to make a decision,” with the Giants being “one of [the] options,”

Okay , hold the phone, the Panda is being hunted.

7:17pm: The Giants have agreed to a minors deal with third baseman Pablo Sandoval, according to MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez . Sandoval was released earlier today by the Red Sox, though the deal will not be formally entered until his contract has passed through waivers — which (all but certainly) will occur on Friday, Evan Drellich of CSNNE.com tweets.
While the match had been rumored, and is rather unsurprising on paper, it’s still quite a notable reunion for a player who was once one of San Francisco’s most visible stars. Both Sandoval and the Giants have had seasons to forget thus far. The former was released by his most recent organization after a third-straight season marred by injury and under-performance. And the latter currently sits five games back of the Padres in the NL West cellar.

Sandoval, now thirty years of age, was a popular and productive player for seven seasons with the Giants. Over his 3,533 plate appearances, Sandoval slashed a robust .294/.346/.465 and compiled about twenty wins above replacement. That performance earned him a five-year, $95MM contract with the Red Sox, who’ll pay the vast majority of the nearly $50MM remaining (less any prorated portion of the league minimum for time Sandoval spends in the majors from now through 2019).
The Giants tried to keep the affectionately nicknamed Panda, but extension talks never materialized and he spurned the organization in free agency — suggesting in comments at the time that he was happy to be moving on. But Sandoval never found his footing in Boston. His longstanding battle with weight was again an issue, and Sandoval missed all of 2016 with a shoulder injury. He got into shape and showed well this spring, but endured a DL stint for a knee problem and struggled both at the bat (.212/.269/.354) and with the glove (-6 DRS; -8.6 UZR/150 innings) over his 32 games in 2017.
It’ll be interesting to see whether Sandoval can jump start his career in the place he once thrived. First, though, he’ll have to earn his way back to the big leagues. It’s important to bear in mind that the sides won’t be committed to one another for very long even if things go well. Unless the deal provides the club with an option of some kind — and it is fair to note that Jose Reyes agreed to such terms with the Mets while the Rockies were paying his contract — then Sandoval will return to the open market at season’s end. That said, it’s possible to imagine an extended reunion if things go well, as the Giants don’t yet have a clear plan for the 2018 season at third base.

The Panda is back home.