Sanchez no-hits Arizona. D4.
In that respect, Epstein may escape the fate of Lou Gorman, the baseball lifer whose career tends to be judged on only one of the hundreds of deals he made over decades, the one that sent a little-known Double A prospect named Jeff Bagwell to the Houston Astros for Larry Andersen.
Bagwell, of course, went on to have a Hall of Fame-caliber career for the Astros; Andersen pitched a month for the Red Sox.
The Red Sox already have reaped greater returns on this deal, Lowell playing a splendid third base while regaining his batting stroke, and Beckett given a three-year, $30 million deal to demonstrate that he will become the ace the Sox thought they were getting.
But while Lowell will be 33 next year and Beckett has his doubters, Ramírez has been a sensation in South Florida. And last night Sanchez, in a 2-0 win against the Arizona Diamondbacks, became the first major leaguer to throw a no-hitter since Randy Johnson's perfect game against Atlanta in 2004.
``We could have used his no-hitter tonight," Rob Leary, the Red Sox minor league field coordinator, noted in an e-mail on a night that Sox pitchers allowed 14 hits, the 25th time in the last 36 games they've given up 11 or more hits.
``Seriously, he's a great kid we really liked," Leary wrote. ``I couldn't be happier for him. He worked hard to come back from an elbow injury [nerve transposition] to become a very good prospect. The big thing for him was he needed to create some leverage to his fastball. He didn't consistently get the downward angle you need to succeed."
That obviously isn't a problem anymore. Sanchez was still at Double A Carolina in late June, when a half-hour before he was scheduled to make a start, he was told he was needed. In New York. Against the Yankees.
