Lowrie > Lugo

When Julio Lugo soon gets healthy, we'll find out the mettle of Terry Francona and the Red Sox front office. Because there's no way they should play their $9 million per year stinkfest over his rookie fill-in, Jed Lowrie.

Lowrie, as of yesterday, is sporting a .357 OBP and .451 SLG, good for a 110 OPS+. Lately he's been a doubles machine albeit with help from horrendous Rangers pitching. Lowrie's at-bats are still few, at 122, and if league pitching adjusts and sends him into a deep slump, Lugo's return as starting shortstop could be justified. But Lugo's 88 OPS+ this year, after a 65 mark last year, makes better offense more likely to come from Lowrie for the foreseeable future. Defensively, both players seem below average, but I'd be less surprised to see caches of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction than good evidence that Lowrie's fielding significantly outreeks Lugo's. In short, Lowrie seems quite promising, while Earl Weaver would have justly deemed Lugo "lucky to be in fucking baseball, for Christ's sake."

So we appear to have a perfect test-case: do the Red Sox value objective baseball performance over the avoidance of egg on face?

(Of course, they could also sign Barry Bonds, for the league minimum, and at the least acquire the best ever pinch hitter ever, and also piss off all of New England. Yes: there's no downside.)