Lehr sold to Korean league

[redsrbetter]

ESPN - MLB Baseball Transactions - Major League Baseball

Are you freaking kidding me?

C Trent:

Interesting transaction today for the Reds

The Reds have sold the contract of minor league RHP Justin Lehr to the Doosan Bears of the Korean Professional League.

I thought he may be a decent choice to fill in if Matt Belisle struggled more and Homer Bailey wasn't ready or a starter went on the DL.

This makes no sense to me. Jocketty's first move is a baffling one. Then again, this may be the first step in many that Jocketty makes in an attempt to clean out Krivsky's guys.

[missionhockey21]

Really? You care that much? The guy is 30 years old, has been historically bad in his MLB career and while he hasn't gotten lit up in AAA, he hasn't exactly dominated either as the 2.41 ERA really doesn't show an overwhelming amount of strikeouts (K/9 of 5.85.) Would it hurt to keep him? No. But I really don't think he would be hard to replace either.

[redsrbetter]

Yes, but why get rid of him like that? He may do far worse than Belisle (who did have a good outing his last time out), but it is much better to at least have that option instead of getting that much closer to calling Bailey up. Bailey may have looked ready early on in the season, but he has made it clear that he isn't yet. But this move just make it that much closer for his call up because there really aren't too many other pitchers on the cusp. Shearn and maybe Thompson? That is it. Lehr at least gave us that option.

[Doro]

I agree with redsrbetter, what good can come of this?

[missionhockey21]

Lehr is not irreplaceable. If the Reds had no intention of using him outside of an emergency situation, the cash might be more worthwhile if they could fairly easily get another 30 year old AAAA type of pitcher from another club or through free agency. Jocketty is usually a pretty good evaluator of talent, if he thinks that a Korean team might be overvaluing his minor league stats relative to his talent, then I trust in that evaluation.

[redsrbetter]

He is definitely replaceable, and when you make that point I guess I can understand it better. I guess it all depends on how much money comes in return and if it is put to a good use. These are the type of deals that we normally don't see the true effects of it in the long run.

As for right now though, I still stand by the premise of worrying about them bringing up Bailey too quickly. Hopefully they at least put Shearn in front of him on the depth chart.

[NFLman2033]

a 30 year old AAA pitcher who isn't on the 40 man roster.. is no big loss at all no matter what type of season he was having

[redsrbetter]

Per Hal McCoy:

"Lehr had a clause in his contract that said if a Korean club approached him, we had to let him go and that’s exactly what happened,” said general manager Walt Jocketty. “We had an opportunity to match their offer but it wasn’t something we wanted to do."

I wonder if this can free up enough money to get rid of Patterson? I doubt they get $2 million in this deal (what the Reds likely still owe Patterson being 1/3 of the way through the season). But it could be money toward that cause. This also possibly makes room for Thompson to move up to AAA and Jordan Smith to AA.

So this could be much better than I thought and I like that it wasn't in Jocketty's control whatsoever. So I can't blame him for this at all.

[redsrbetter]

Or what if they use this money for a big signing in the draft? Remember how Brackman fell all the way to the Yankees because of his signing bonus? Maybe the money could be used in the draft. That would be nice.