The Red Sox traded Connelly Early to the Nationals today in a trade that may or may not prove to to be a good move. That’s right: I’m not afraid of the hot takez!
It’s hard to say farewell to Early. A homegrown left-handed starter is the single most valuable commodity in baseball. But, moreover, he seemed like a genuinely great dude, one who burst onto the scene in memorable fashion last year, and, judging by the picture below, had already started production on a 1997 TBS sitcom called South Pause about two rookie pitchers who quit baseball to become small town detectives.
But for as much as the fans loved him, he had plenty of question marks in his game. Never a highly pedigreed prospect, Early’s home run rate started to tick up at an alarming rate this year and his FIP is a full run higher than his ERA right now. And, oh yeah, he’s injured, but that goes without saying in light of the fact that he’s a Major League pitcher.
Still, whenever you give up a young lefty who has already had big league success, you better get a good return.
So… is Curtis Mead good?
He has been this year. He’s shown real pop in his bat, and it’s of the right-handed “this guy would crush at Fenway” variety. He’s been getting on base, with a .351 OBP that will trail only Willson Contreras and Connor Wong when he joins the Red Sox lineup. And he’s hit righties nearly as well as he hits lefties.
The problem is that he’s shown these abilities for only the last three months. In the parts of three seasons Mead had played coming into 2026, he put up a total of -0.2 bWAR, with just 5 home runs and an OBP that sat right at .300. And if you’re wondering whether he made up for that black hole of a bat with production on other areas of the diamond, he didn’t; Mead has below average speed and is a butcher of an infielder whose natural position is DH. If Mead is coming over here to play in the infield, he’s mostly likely going to slot in at third, pushing Gold Glove-caliber fielder Caleb Durbin to second and, thus, downgrading two positions at once. Not great.
Of course, Mead could just be a bit of a late bloomer. He did come out of Australia, after all, where he didn’t even focus on baseball until giving up Aussie Rules Football as a teenager. And he showed enough talent stateside to crack the rankings of every major prospect list at one point or another, topping at #36 for Baseball America, #33 for MLB Pipeline, and #16 for Baseball Prospectus. Moreover, the numbers under the hood this year don’t point to luck, as he has an expected wOBA of .350 compared to his actual wOBA of .371. The Red Sox have pitching depth, even if it’s being majorly tested right now. They don’t have enough pop in the lineup. Dealing from strength to address weakness is what you’re supposed to do… as long as the deal isn’t too lopsided.
Sometimes players take some time to adjust to big league baseball. Sometimes players have flukey runs of good production and then turn back into whatever the Australian version of a pumpkin is. Craig Breslow is making a major bet that Curtis Mead fits into the former category.
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