Brewers trade Thornburg to Red Sox

Later in the day, they also acquired Chris Sale.

“It was definitely a shock at first but I’m excited to start a new chapter”, Pennington said in a telephone interview shortly after the trade was announced. In 330 games over four minor-league seasons, he batted.306 with 14 home runs, 154 RBI and 73 stolen bases.

The pair of acquisitions positions the Boston pitching staff, already a very talented group, squarely in the conversation about the best units in baseball. A former draft pick of Milwaukee, Thornburg had a team-best 2.15 ERA in 67 relief appearances in 2016.

Dombrowski explained that the Red Sox’ interest in Thornburg dated back to before he became the Brewers’ closer for the final month of the season, with talks not really gaining traction until recently.

The Milwaukee Brewers are keeping the iron hot during the Winter Meetings, making their first major move by trading reliever Tyler Thornburg to the Boston Red Sox in exchange for corner infielder Travis Shaw, Double-A middle infielder Mauricio Dubon and Single-A pitcher Josh Pennington. Coming off of a red hot end to the 2015 season, Shaw surprisingly won Boston’s starting third base job previous year, beating out veteran Pablo Sandoval. He is under team control through 2020.

Besides Shaw, the Brewers also received Dubon and Pennington. Milwaukee finally committed to Tyler as a full-time reliever in 2016 and he became the big league club’s top bullpen arm and one of the more dominating pitchers in the MLB. If Fernando Abad recovers from his late 2016 struggles, Boston will have a solid right-handed setup man in Thornburg as well as an effective left-handed setup man in Abad, preparing the team for nearly any end-game situation that they face.

Dubon is a six-foot, 160-pound shortstop prospect who finished the 2016 season with Double-A Portland at the age of 22. Most of the hoopla surrounded the blockbuster deal involving Chris Sale, Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech and others, but the organization made two other moves. Oh, and they renewed their faith in Pablo Sandoval. If you feel like you’ve heard that about a thousand times, it’s because you probably have.

“We feel good about it”, said Dombrowski of Thornburg’s health. Pennington was selected by Boston in the 29th round of the 2014 First-Year Player Draft. The addition of Thornburg adds much needed depth to the Red Sox bullpen, as they had three major relievers hit the free agency this year – Brad Ziegler, Junichi Tazawa, and Koji Uehara.

The Red Sox have their relief help.

On its surface, this trade looks like your boilerplate present-value-for-future-value swap. Either way, the hole at third base will be filled sooner or later by one of the Red Sox’s young stars.